Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971 (review)

Scholars have paid most attention to Irish migration during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the human dramas of famine, transportation, and political radicalism could bring statistics to life. Within a historiography driven by a nationalist project, attention dwindled when pressures to leave the country changed. Delaney's work tackles a relatively neglected destination and period—Britain in the sixty years between the establishment of the Irish Free State and the beginning of a net migratory flow back to Ireland. His study provides a detailed analysis of official policies toward, and discourse about, Irish movement at a time when the relationship between Ireland and Britain had to be reinvented. Delaney mixes demography, sociology, communications, and political history in the interests of a "rounded assessment" of exodus from the Irish Free State. His tracing of changes in official attitudes to emigration is a valuable addition to the literature on Irish migration.

Delaney anchors his study in the statistics of Irish movement, charting net flows, as well as cyclical changes and shifts in the characteristics of those leaving the country. One of the frustrations of studying Irish migration into Britain stems from the ease of travel; no controls at ports meant no individual records of the migrants. Much of what she tabulates comes from the manipulation of decadal census data to infer who is missing, given current mortality rates. Delaney compensates for these lacks in his data by adding information from travel permits and interviews. The book focuses on four periods—the interwar years, 1940 to 1946, 1947 to 1957, and 1957 to 1971—during which time emigration varied with relative economic conditions. Movement into Britain remained heavy until 1926, diminished during the depression years and wartime, became more intensive after 1946, and then peaked during the 1950s. As the Irish economy began to develop during the 1960s, population decline reversed, the number of immigrants outstripping emigrants in 1971. The story of who moved and why remains fairly constant. Young, single, unskilled workers from the west and northwest left to find steady jobs and better prospects. The post-1971 story deserves more attention.

Delaney shows how the politics of gender and of migration intersected. Disturbed by the numbers of young single women migrating to Britain, Roman Catholic authorities lobbied actively, but ineffectively, with the Irish government for various extra services and welfare measures to protect female emigrants. Although Irish policy tolerated emigration in general, disapproval of teenage females' freedom to move to British cities prompted discussion of age- and gender-specific restrictions of the right to leave the country. Delaney argues that labor-market needs and commitments to individual rights trumped cultural norms about gender and propriety.

The most surprising part of Delaney's story is the lack of change in emigration to Britain despite political separation. After the establishment of the Irish Free State, Irish citizens retained not only the right of free movement into Britain, but voting and welfare rights there as well. Neither party was prepared to carry their political divorce down to the level of the average citizen. The motives of the British state seem clear enough. The Irish were white, English-speaking, low-waged workers, who paid their own transport costs. The motives of the Irish deserve more careful analysis. What led some migrants to the Midlands or Lancashire, rather than London? Emigration is a process, as well as a life-cycle stage, and it fits into wider patterns of movement and settlement.