Together with a team of researchers, I am now completing the book that will summarise the Migrant Networks project which was part of the Trinity Immigration Initiative, a philanthropically funded three-year research project.
The Migrant Networks project lasted from 2007 to 2010, during which time Ireland went from the last throes of Celtic Tiger capitalism to the recession, and intercultural Ireland made way to a more fearful, meaner society.
We were fortunate to be working with members of migrant-led associations during this time when priorities changed, when many associations were forced to look outside Ireland and make global links (not a bad thing in itself) and, crucially, when funding for migrant-led activities (and also indigenous community development projects) became scarcer.
As part of the project we mapped Ireland’s migrant associations, finding more than 430 associations and networks – some still active, others since wound down or changed. This is the nature of migrant-led associations; they are often the brainchild of an individual or a small group of migrants who were engaged in community work in their countries of origin, and who decided that the best way of assuaging the tribulations of migration is to establish an association of likeminded people with whom they share a language, a culture, a way of being in the world. But these associations change with time, in response to the political and social climate of their new country.
As groups consolidate, elect committees, write constitutions and strategic plans, they apply for funding and participate in the ‘intercultural’ conversation. But they also offer members a safe haven, training and other services not otherwise available, such as advice on legal, health, accommodation, education, employment matters. Many offer Irish government and non-government bodies training and deal with sensitive issues like asylum, gender-based violence and FGM.
Based on interviews we conducted with leaders and members of migrant-led associations, we decided to focus on migrant-led activism in the belief that what migrants do in Ireland falls within the definition of activism, even though the term is often taken to mean militancy.
But more importantly, writing the book made us think about certain things, such as the definition of ‘migrant’. When does one stop being a migrant? I came to Ireland 42 years ago, one of my children was born in Ireland, my partner is second generation Irish – am I still a migrant? Are Hong Kong Chinese business people, working here since the 1950s, still migrants? The same question goes for people accorded refugee status – when do they cease being refugees?
But a more important question relates to our right to speak about and for migrants. Academics have been instrumental in constructing racial and ethnic categories. Many reputations are built on researching and writing about racialised others. But can we write about other people without constructing ‘the other’?
This is not merely navel-gazing. In light of the appropriation of migrant experiences by NGOs and statutory bodies, we must ask again and again: who speaks for whom, and who is entitled to speak for migrants? Is it merely those of us who support migrants and immigration, or can any researcher apply for funding to research migrants regardless of his or her politics?
In the book we document some acts of appropriation, but no extent of agonising about the ‘permission to narrate’ frees us from our relatively powerful position as belonging to Trinity College, and (mostly) enjoying the benefits of EU citizenship.
Dr Ronit Lentin is head of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann.
