EMIGRATION HAS LONG been an integral part of Irish social and economic life.

In the face of worrying anti-immigrant campaigns, it is timely that we consider what our own history of emigration can tell us about the lives of immigrants.

A large body of Irish-language writings starkly reminds us of the self-evident but often overlooked fact that Irish emigrants, as soon as they arrived in any host country, immediately attained the status of immigrants.

Their stories, as relayed in autobiography and fiction, poetry and song, serve as personal testimonies that could inform our understanding of immigration in Ireland and lead to greater tolerance and empathy.

The challenges of immigrant life are often foregrounded in literary works. These include experiences of displacement, homesickness, culture shock, language difference, poor living conditions, precarious employment, hostility of the host community, social marginalisation and alienation.

Pádraic Ó Conaire’s novel Deoraíocht (1910) is set in London, where Ó Conaire worked for fifteen years with the British Education Board. The novel tells the story of an economic migrant from Galway, Micil Ó Maoláin, who is left disfigured and disabled after an automobile accident.

When he can’t secure conventional employment, he becomes a performer in a travelling show, where his disability is cruelly exploited. Befriended by factory worker Mag Mhór, he finds a sense of community in the bars frequented by sailors, vagrants and other disaffected emigrants.

The hybrid culture he encounters amongst the Irish community in London’s ‘Éire Bheag’ does not sustain him, however, and he ends up amongst the beggars and social outcasts who frequent London’s public parks.

Images of unfortunate and destitute Irish immigrants recur throughout the decades and certain motifs appear regularly:

Emigration of the 1990s features in works such as Áine Ní Ghlinn’s poem sequence ‘Páidín’ from her collection Deora nár caoineadh / Unshed tears (1996) that depicts a young Irish man sleeping rough behind Waterloo Station in London, and Gearóid Mac Lochlainn’s ‘Paddy’ from his collection Na Scéalaithe (1999) which laments the suicide of a young Belfast man in........

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