Abstract
This article examines oral history interviews of migrants from Northern Ireland to Britain, specifically a group of ten people who left the North during the Troubles. It reads their interviews for, on the one hand, accounts of migration as liberatory or as generative of new subjectivities and new possibilities; and on the other hand, expressions of nostalgia, ambivalence or uncertainty which exist alongside those more optimistic narratives. In doing so, it highlights a specific form of dichotomised composure within this selection of oral histories and argues that the specificities of this composure are suggestive of some of the discourses that operate around the relationship between Northern Ireland and Britain, as well as of the contested memory of the Troubles. They also reveal aspects of the complicated history of multiculturalism in Britain, and of various forms of social repressio
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 259-279 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Irish Studies Review |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
This work was enabled by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), grant reference AH/R008426/1. We thank our interviewees for the participation in this study.Keywords
- Literature and Literary Theory
- Sociology and Political Science
- History
- Cultural Studies