Correlates of Primary Healthcare Access and the Moderating Effects of Gender: A Cross Sectional Analysis of Irish Migrants

Despite long established comparatively poor health outcomes there has been limited research into the healthcare access of Irish migrants in the UK. This study examines the relationship between demography, self-reported health (SRH) and social support and healthcare access and the influence of gender on these associations. Data was collected as part of a community-based action research project with Irish migrants in London (n = 790). Hierarchical logistic regression was used to predict self-reported access to a GP (compared with no reported access). The effect of gender was measured via interactions entered in the second step of the model. Older participants and males were less likely to report GP access. SRH was a significant predictor. Gender moderated the relationship between SRH, social support, employment and GP access. Findings highlight the help-seeking vulnerability of male and older Irish migrants and the potential of social support in promoting healthcare access for males.

Death in the Diaspora

As the British expanded their empire from near colonies such as Ireland to those in remote corners of the world, such as Barbados, Ceylon and Australia, they left a trail of physical remains in every parish where settlement occurred. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to both colony and metropole. This collection by leading migration historians and archaeologists seeks to explore what this evidence tells the twenty-first century reader about the attachment remote British and Irish migrants had to ‘home’ in life and death. As well as making public statements about imperial allegiance, the bereaved carved in stone the reunification of disparate families in death. Such mourning left an important seam of material culture that has hitherto received scant comparative analysis by scholars. Focusing on nodal areas of British and Irish trade around the world, each chapter reveals the social, religious, political and personal milieu of remote migrants in all continents where the British and Irish lived, worked and ultimately died.

Introduction – Death in the Diaspora: British and Irish Gravestones

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the historical use of headstones and epitaphs in the commemoration of death during the period of British overseas imperialism between c.1608 and 1960. It examines the ways that previous scholars from a number of disciplines have interpreted such memorials and highlights the book’s specific contribution to both death studies and diaspora studies. Each chapter in the volume seeks to compare and contrast different temporal and spatial contexts, including Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Australasia, to explore how and why British and Irish migrants and their families and friends tried to display attachment to home on gravestones.

The Fiction of the Irish in England

This chapter examines the way in which Irish fiction has engaged with one of the most persistent features of Irish history over the last 200 years, the migration of its people to England. In doing so, it highlights how novels and short stories have played a role in mediating the experiences of Irish migrants in England and how writers have used fiction to fashion a means by which to articulate a sense of Irish cultural identity abroad. The analysis demonstrates how, over two centuries of fiction about the Irish in England, there has been a discernible shift of emphasis away from matters of primarily public concern to those of a more private dimension, resulting in works that illuminate latent as well as manifest features of the diasporic experience and its attendant cultural allegiances and identities.

Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World

Does an Irish Atlantic exist? Indeed, forgetting Ireland when studying the Atlantic world was frequent as the island was easily integrated into English or British history. However, late studies have put forward not only the unavoidable presence of the Irish in the Atlantic world but also their agency, through commercial and ideological exchanges. Green being the color of the Irish, tinting the Atlantic Ocean green was self-evident, and it gave birth to the Green Atlantic. Among academic works, no one has defined this idiom. It is understood as the transatlantic circulation of Irish people, ideologies, and goods. We believe that the Green Atlantic stems from a comparison with the Black Atlantic. This idiom has become trendy these days, however, with publications and conferences using it. The least we can say is that the Green Atlantic was an unwanted Atlantic: whether it was the Irish indentured servants sent to the colonies or the Irish migrants flowing into America as a result of the Great Famine, the Irish were unwanted “others.” They were deemed unreliable and lazy, and they often were compared to the African slaves or the Native Americans as a savage people hard to civilize. Despite the discrimination they suffered as a result of both their religion and their origin, Irish people have left their mark on many aspects of Atlantic societies. Think of the Carrolls, the Kennedys, and most American families that can claim Irish ancestry with pride now.

Ireland-US Relations

Irish and American histories are intertwined as a result of migration, mercantile and economic connections, and diplomatic pressures from governments and nonstate actors. The two fledgling nations were brought together by their shared histories of British colonialism, but America’s growth as an imperial power complicated any natural allegiances that were invoked across the centuries. Since the beginnings of that relationship in 1607 with the arrival of Irish migrants in America (both voluntary and forced) and the building of a transatlantic linen trade, the meaning of “Irish” has fluctuated in America, mirroring changes in both migrant patterns and international politics. The 19th century saw Ireland enter into Anglo-American diplomacy on both sides of the Atlantic, while the 20th century saw Ireland emerge from Britain’s shadow with the establishment of separate diplomatic connections between the United States and Ireland. American recognition of the newly independent Irish Free State was vital for Irish politicians on the world stage; however the Free State’s increasingly isolationist policies during the 1930s to 1950s alienated its American allies. The final decade of the century, however, brought America and Ireland (including both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) closer than ever before. Throughout their histories, the Irish diasporas—both Protestant and Catholic—in America have played vital roles as pressure groups and fundraisers. The history of American–Irish relations therefore brings together governmental and nonstate organizations and unites political, diplomatic, social, cultural, and economic histories which are still relevant today.

The moderating effect of functional social support on the association between unfair treatment and self-rated health: A study of the resilience of a community-based sample of Irish migrants in London

Despite research demonstrating the health promoting effects of social support, few studies have examined the moderating effect of functional social support on everyday unfair treatment for migrant communities. This study investigates whether functional social support moderates the association between unfair treatment and poor self-rated health for Irish migrants to the UK. Analysis of a purposive sample of Irish migrants in London was conducted ( n = 790). Interaction was analyzed via hierarchical logistic regression. Irish migrants who perceived unfair treatment were over three times more likely to report fair/poor health (odds ratio = 3.47, 95% confidence interval = 2.0–6.02). Higher levels of support in times of crisis were associated with reduced poor health. Higher levels of instrumental or practical support from neighbors moderated against the negative effect of unfair treatment on self-rated health (odds ratio = 0.29, 95% confidence interval = 0.08–0.96) and had a protective stabilizing effect. Instrumental support may have a protective-enhancing effect for female migrants. Results support other studies which indicate that instrumental support is most influential in the context of adversity. Interventions that promote neighborhood social capital may build resilience to unfair treatment for migrant communities in large cities.

“All of That Class That Infest N.Y.”

Ryan Keating’s work examines the linkages between national loyalty and ethnic identity, turning to the subject of Irish American immigrants. Looking at Irish-American communities in Connecticut and Wisconsin, Keating surveys their response to the infamous 1863 New York City draft riots. People of Irish descent faced severe discrimination and hardship. Their ethnicity and Roman Catholicism caused many non-Irish to doubt their loyalty and assimilation into American life. The many Irish migrants among the rioters was were taken as “evidence of broader ethnic disloyalty,” writes Keating, which “symbolically and intrinsically linked these events to larger issues surrounding the loyalty of Democrats.” Keating shows, however, that there was widespread disapproval of the rioting among Irish-Americans in other communities. It indicates both the complexity of their responses to the war’s divisive issues and the lack of a monolithic character to Irish immigrants living in America. They were eager to demonstrate their national loyalty through such means as military service. Keating argues that their identities became as deeply entwined with their communities and adopted nation as with a common Irish heritage.

Liberating Free Labor

Chapter 1 follows the enterprising activities of Vere Foster, a member of the Anglo-Irish gentry who funded the emigration of approximately 1,250 Irish women from post-famine Ireland during the 1850s. Foster’s efforts serve as a case study that illuminates the ideologies of white settlerism and Anglophone imperial unity, and shows how they worked together in concert. Foster was convinced that the best way to govern rural Ireland’s surplus population and inadequate lands was to finance and coordinate the integration of young migrant women into wage labor positions as servants in the United States, in areas of the country where the supply of white female workers was scarce. In order to assuage concerns about the moral and sexual dangers that free markets and migration posed to young Irish women, Foster endeavored to establish transatlantic networks of migration rooted in what he presented as racial and familial values of protection and mutuality. As this chapter concludes, the Irish migrants Foster sponsored developed different interpretations of what it meant to work for wages in household service, and what the commodification of their labor signified to both Ireland and the United States.