A collection of essays, the contributors to this volume describe the experiences of Irish migrants who moved to Wales. The essays also examine in depth the social and cultural impact the Irish immigrants made on the country.

A collection of essays, the contributors to this volume describe the experiences of Irish migrants who moved to Wales. The essays also examine in depth the social and cultural impact the Irish immigrants made on the country.

Immigration and Integration: The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922 is the first book-length study of the Irish in modern Wales. Emigration has been one of the defining experiences of modern life for the Irish, and a significant number of the Irish diaspora settled in Wales during the nineteenth century. In this pioneering work Paul O'Leary examines the causes of emigration and seeks to understand the experience of Irish immigrants in Wales. Initially, there was little evidence of Celtic solidarity and the Irish often met with violent hostility from the Welsh. Nevertheless, by the late nineteenth century the tortuous process of integration was well underway and appeared to be relatively trouble free in comparison with the Irish experience in many other parts of Britain. The author considers key aspects of immigrant life in depth: pre-famine immigration; the role of the Irish in the labour force; criminality and drink; the establishment of community institutions, ranging from Catholic churches and schools to pubs and bookshops, from friendly societies to political organizations; the mobilization of support for Irish nationalist organizations; and Irish participation in the labour movement. In each case the author links the distinctive experiences of the Irish to developments in Welsh society.

In 1960 the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) commissioned a report on Irish immigrants in England and Wales. It is now published for the first time, along with a critical response from the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau (CWSB) - established in 1942 by Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid. The report was prepared for the ICMC by A.E.C.W. Spencer, when he was director of the Newman Demographic Survey (the NDS was an agency within the Newman Association of Great Britain which drew on Catholic expertise in the applied social sciences). The report was prepared for the ICMC's congress in Ottawa in August 1960, but was not presented at the congress, nor was it published subsequently.

This edited collection explores Ireland’s complex relationship with migration in novel and innovative ways. The contributors – leading scholars of migration from the disciplines of anthropology, geography, history, media studies, sociology, sociolinguistics and women’s studies – draw on new research to provide insights into emigration from and immigration to Ireland, both past and present. The chapters, which range from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, cover topics as diverse as migrant women and children in Ireland, the role of the Irish Catholic in migration networks, and recent Irish migration to Australia. They are organised around three cross-cutting themes: networks, belonging and intersections. They focus on the migratory process rather than on migration as a uni-directional movement of people. Though centred on Ireland, the collection has broader implications for the ways in which migration is conceptualised. The collection will appeal to scholars of migration and Irish studies, and to readers with backgrounds in a range of social science and humanities disciplines, including geography and sociology.

Considers migration to, from and within Ireland in the twenty-first century, covering the Celtic Tiger era of mass immigration to Ireland as well as the dramatic growth in levels of emigration that has occurred since the Irish economic collapse.

This collection of essays demonstrates in vivid detail how a range of formal and informal networks shaped the Irish experience of emigration, settlement and the construction of ethnic identity in a variety of geographical contexts since 1750. It examines topics as diverse as the associational culture of the Orange Order in the nineteenth century to the role of transatlantic political networks in developing and maintaining a sense of diaspora, all within the overarching theme of the role of networks. This volume represents a pioneering study that contributes to wider debates in the history of global migration, the first of its kind for any ethnic group, with conclusions of relevance far beyond the history of Irish migration and settlement. It is also expected that the volume will have resonance for scholars working in parallel fields, not least those studying different ethnic groups, and the editors contextualise the volume with this in mind in their introductory essay. This book was previously published as a special issue of Immigrants and Minorities.