Illegal in Ireland, Irish Illegals

Diaspora Nation as Racial State

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6074640
AutoresRonit Lentin (0009-0008-4166-4950, Trinity College Dublin, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen22
Número4
Páginas433-453
Fecha de publicación2007-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIrish Political Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0790-7184 • E-ISSN: 1743-9078
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07907180701699182
OpenAlexW1977767760
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas20

This article examines the discursive political reformulation of Ireland as ‘diaspora nation’, which, while explaining the narrowing of citizenship entitlement of non‐citizen migrants resident in Ireland in the wake of the 2004 Citizenship Referendum, paradoxically also makes sense of the juxtaposition of ‘entitled’ Irish illegals in the US with ‘unentitled’ illegal immigrants in Ireland. It uses social and political theory – Goldberg’s formulation of modern nation‐states as racial states, Foucault’s theorisation of biopolitics, and Agamben’s positing of ‘states of exception’ and of the position of those people falling outside the remit of citizenship as ‘bare life’, to discuss the racialisation of immigration in twenty‐first century Ireland. The article uses the political juxtaposition of the 2006 hunger strike by a group of Afghan asylum seekers, deemed illegal by the Irish immigration regime, with Irish illegal immigrants in the US, considered entitled to American citizenship, to illustrate Ireland’s discursive shift to a ‘diaspora nation’ which arguably led to the 2004 Citizenship Referendum

Diaspora · Ethnology · Irish · Linguistics · Political science · Sociology · Computer Science · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration