The epistemology of erasure from Irishness

From Plastic Paddies, children of not real emigrants , to not real nationals and Ireland is full

Bibliographic Data

ID24237692
AuthorsMairtin Mac An Ghaill (0000-0002-5713-3109, Birmingham Newman University)
Year2026
Pages1-24
Publication date2026-10-20
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueIrish Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0967-0882 • E-ISSN: 1469-9303
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09670882.2026.2748353
OpenAlexW7223057138
LanguageEN
References cited28

Plastic Paddy, an epithet of derision and subjugation emerging during the 1980s/1990s, attained an international iconic representational status. In response, the paper suggests a critical intervention, A Critical Sociology of Diaspora Epistemology, enabling a re-reading of the complexity of socio-cultural relations between 1980s/1990s elite migrants and second-generation diaspora in Britain mediated by Irish state governance, regulation and bordering. A wider context is the complexities of displaced Irish anxieties’ captured in a state-mediated generational class-based internal nationalism that continues to be played out. The Republic’s post-Independence national(ist) stance of demographic and symbolic bordering/re-bordering – “we can’t all live on a small island” – resonates across public life. This includes: the 1950s generation “as not real emigrants,” the second generation as “not real Irish” and the 2004 Referendum removal of automatic entitlement to citizenship for Irish-born children as “not real nationals,” alongside populism’s (early 2020s) far-right slogans: “Ireland is full.”

Epistemology · Erasure · Irish diaspora · Irish emigration · Irish identity · Irish nationalism · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Irish and British Studies · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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