Arrivals and Departures

On Being a Woman of Ireland and of Elsewhere

I’d never flown to or from Knock Airport until this weekend. Having been told by others how beautiful it is to fly into, and with its religious back-story that brought Father Ted references to mind, I was excited for it.

But if Knock was built as a place of arrival — somewhere to bring people from all over the world to the nearby shrine of ‘The Sanctuary of Our Lady at Knock’— it felt, to me, like a place dense with departure.

Behind a toilet door, an Irish recruitment company offered jobs in London to those willing to make the move. In the long Ryanair queue, I wondered if I was the only person on the Birmingham flight who hadn’t been to the same Irish wedding that weekend — a passenger manifest of ‘English cousins’. Their hooded eyes and ‘big Irish heads’ (that’s legitimately a thing) betrayed their English accents as first/second generation Irish in Britain.

‘Flying’, often impromptu, trips home to Ireland have been a usual part of my life since I moved to Britain ten years ago. There is a routine and rhythm to crossing the Irish Sea that my body has grown used to, can do unconsciously and with minimal effort. But no matter how regular or often, I think of similar themes on every journey:

Of arrival and departure, of all those who have made the same trip, of Ireland’s long-held narrative as a place of Departure; a place where people leave and come back in a different form, or never return, the family they create elsewhere and instil a strong sense of ‘Irishness’ in, and my sadness and worry about how Ireland increasingly resists the newer story it holds as a place of Arrival.

In Knock these thoughts took on a density I’d never felt before. Arrivals and Departures were not just zones of the airport. They felt the very purpose of the place, the whole reason for its existence. Depart. Return. Leave. Arrive.

I wondered if many women left from here? Or used it as their link back to home? I googled as I waited for my gate to open. Couldn’t find any data. But considering that single women have numbered among the largest group (as compared to families, married or single men etc.) of individuals in Ireland’s long history of emigration, I imagine some, many, had.

I wondered if the ones who left were as fortunate as me to be able return freely and often? Did they feel the same need to nourish their feet in the ground of home? Yet be glad to leave it again? Did they find the back and forth challenging too?

When you move between two places —have a foot in two different countries and cultures— you have to work hard to be congruous in both. Get adept at the little things you change, the codes you switch between to not upset, gall, or confuse whomever’s social system you find yourself in. Slow down/speed up speech, change the shape of vowels, choose the best topics for conversation, apply the correct cultural references, not confuse which social expectation is important in each place — behave accordingly.

A back and forth person is never whole. But made of fragments and pieces. A bag of pebbles and rocks collected from each place, that don’t belong together. Cannot be neatly knitted or made as one. You just learn to carry them as best you can. How not to sound like too much of a w*n*k*r when you tell everyone back home (in Ireland) about the ‘pebble’ you encountered elsewhere. And how not to sound ‘too Irish’ abroad when you talk of things from home.

Many of the women interviewed for the Women of Ireland Project speak of similar themes. They are women of Ireland and elsewhere. Women of many pebbles and rocks gathered from different places, cultures, and heritages.

One, who brilliantly described herself as ‘American-Irish’ to denote the direction of her arrival (i.e. she is American, but not Irish-American returning to Ireland many generations later), said something I think of often. That when you move away from one place and arrive in another, the life you led in the prior —the experiences you had, the people you knew, the feelings you felt while there— are known only to you. No one in the place you arrive has any access to them, any way of knowing you before you entered the space and place they now see you. Only (unless you moved with friends or family) you know what life you had before you arrived. Only you can keep it alive.

“So, I think what's really funny about…. being an immigrant is you in some ways lose access to the part of your life that existed before and in total absolute absence of every single person that is in your life now…. unless you have, you know, I have a really close friend, one of my best friends who I met when I was nine in elementary school…. and she now lives in Manchester, so I get to see her and her family quite often. But I mean, honestly, until she moved [to Europe]…. there has been no frame of reference for my life, except for within myself, here on this island. So it's really, it's a very strange circumstance”

Women of Ireland Project Participant

I wonder if that feeling might also be heightened if your place of arrival is Ireland? Because Ireland, I have learnt from the women I’ve interviewed, denies all non-Irish experiences or sees them as (unconsciously) threatening?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Ireland is not quite the land of A Hundred Thousand Welcomes (Céad Míle Fáilte). Friendly — always up for a chat and willing to help— yes, but Welcoming — accepting of ‘newcomers’— no. Interviews with women who are of Ireland and elsewhere have made this abundantly clear me.

Ireland, the land of departure, has an issue with arrival. It comes in many different forms but what underpins it, I’ve come to conclude, is a gate-keeping of Irishness. And it doesn’t take much to be ‘othered’ as ‘not Irish’ or ‘not Irish enough to be Irish’.

“I think I'll probably end up talking… about otherness, because that's, I think that's really what my experience of being a woman of Ireland is”

Women of Ireland Project Participant

Among the women I’ve interviewed it’s things like; having a parent(s) who is not from Ireland, regardless of whether you’ve been born or raised in Ireland; the ‘wrong’ accent, where ‘wrong’ can be a ‘not from round here’ or ‘not Irish’ accent, or even a ‘posh’ accent (which means you must be Protestant or English, even if you’re not, and therefore ‘not Irish’); being non-white; being part of the Irish diaspora (those who return to Ireland and have grown up feeling deeply connected to Irish culture most strongly have their ‘Irishness’ denied by other Irish people); being a ‘blow-in’, or; being from or connected to any other country or culture.

At it’s most brutal, this othering and gate-keeping of ‘Irishness’ involves out-and-out racism and discrimination (of non-white and/or people of mixed cultural background or heritage), and in its most subtle (but still brutal) it’s the social disciplining (the slagging, teasing, shaming, ridiculing) of behaviours which don’t conform with social norms and convention in Ireland.

“I think I had a lot of characteristics when I first moved here that tended to be made fun of or not enjoyed by some elements of Irish culture”

Women of Ireland Project Participant

And what it all amounts to is a denial of any form of Irishness or connection an individual feels to Ireland that does not pass the ‘Irish litmus test’ (I’m still not quite sure what exactly is included on the ‘litmus test’).

Ireland is a place you can leave, a place from which you can depart but —perhaps because of its colonially induced mistrust of ‘outsiders’ and how recent the narrative of ‘arrival’ has entered the Irish psyche— not so easily arrive.

What of the experience of the departure, then? Of being one of the thousands of women who left Ireland for opportunity, adventure or necessity. That single women have been the largest group to leave across Ireland’s emigration history says something. Some historians name it as an ‘opting-out’ of Irish society and the strict norms women were held accountable to.

I just left without giving it much thought. An opportunity arose and took it. It felt like a natural next step. But only once I was away and out from under the ‘Sauron’s eye’ like gaze of judgement and social monitoring that is part of everyday Irish life did I realise how essential it was. I never would have become myself, the person I am today, if I had not left. Breathed openly and freely in a place of complete anonymity. I left for opportunity then discovered its necessity.

But there is a particular experience to being an Irish person in Britain that requires a certain watchfulness, or a self-monitoring of your own Irishness. The women of Ireland and elsewhere who have also ended up in Britain say the same. Of all the places they’ve lived or travelled, only in Britain have they felt the need to mute their Irishness.

“When I was in France being Irish was easy. Like being 'openly' Irish. That sounds terrible but there is this kind of, I don't know. It's strange… But in the circles I moved in, we celebrated our differences… but I find I have to quieten my Irishness here [in Britain]. Whether it be my accent. Or my speed of talking”

Women of Ireland Project Participant

Maybe it’s a product of the long history of animus between Ireland and England. Maybe elements of Irish culture just don’t work there. Maybe we’re overly sensitive. Maybe that’s just part of the experience of someone who left. It’s a conflicting feeling, because there’s no denying that Britain has been a place of soft landing for many a woman of Ireland. The place where women shunned from Irish society have found refuge.

That feels like a story of the past, of an older Ireland, but it’s not. I remind myself of that every time I cross the Irish sea, think of my privilege in being able to be a ‘back and forth’ woman unlike those who left because they had to. I think of one of the women I interviewed who never expected to leave Ireland until it became a matter of safety. Of how Britain has been a place of soft landing for her and her child. Given them space, accepted her as a ‘single mother’, passed no judgement on her child and allowed them to both recognise and heal from how they were treated in Ireland because of such things:

“There is something really difficult about… being from a colonised place. And then you kind of feel like you're going asking for the coloniser to take you back…. But actually, the UK has been a safe haven for women like me for a long time…. I have had the most amazing support since I arrived here…. So, there is something about the UK being a safe haven for Irish people. But that feels difficult. It feels difficult”

Being a woman of Ireland and elsewhere is a challenging thing. Nuanced and complex. An individual, unique, yet deeply shared and collective experience. It’s part of Ireland’s story as a place of Departure. But departure always involves arrival. And I am left with questions for how best I can ‘Arrive’ and ‘Depart’. Of how I can carry the many pebbles and rocks I have gathered as an emigrant and an immigrant. Of whether Ireland will ever be a place of true ‘Arrival’?

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