UCC emigrant symposium to reach out to emigrant audience

 

UCC’S WORLD WIDE WEBINAR AIMS TO REACH

A WORLD WIDE EMIGRANT AUDIENCE

Is emigration from Ireland today as bad as the 1980s? Who is leaving? Will they come back? What factors are likely to influence their decision? Will people stay away for good if the economy doesn’t recover quickly? What can we learn from the experiences of European neighbours who also have a tradition of high emigration, like Poland and Portugal?

 

A round table at University College Cork next Monday, 20^th June, hosted by the university’s Institute for the Social Sciences in the 21^st Century, will consider these questions. It will also use internet technology to enable those most directly concerned – emigrants – to listen and participate directly in the symposium.

 

‘Internet technologies like Skype, Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we communicate globally’, says co-convenor Piaras Mac Éinrí, who lectures in migration studies at the Department of Geography, ‘we want to use the same technology in this case to link directly with those who are at the heart of the issue – recent emigrants – and learn from them’. With a daughter in Australia and a stepson in England, he has a very personal as well as a professional interest in this topic. His co-convenors are Dr Caitríona Ní Laoire, a specialist in return migration and migrant children, Dr Allen White, with a particular interest in migrant children and transnational families, and Dr Linda Connolly, director of the Institute. They will be joined by Joe O’Brien of Crosscare Migrant Project, a Dublin-based emigrant advice agency run by the Catholic Church, Dr Mary Gilmartin of NUI Maynooth, who will be looking in particular at the impact of emigration on the GAA, with many club members moving to other clubs within a fast-growing Diaspora GAA movement, Dr Joana Azevedo of the University of Lisbon, who will discuss Portuguese migration to other European countries, and Agata Piękosz, a Polish-Canadian who is completing her PhD at the University of Toronto and will be discussing Polish migrants in the Irish context, drawing in particular on the views of Polish Catholic chaplains working in Ireland.

 

Full details, including information about registration for the free webinar, are at http://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/text-124167-en.html

 

Lost Generations or Transnational Sojourners?

Emerging perspectives on contemporary

Irish and European (e)migration trends

 

A Symposium hosted by the Migration and Integration Research Cluster

Institute for Social Sciences in the 21^st Century and Irish Social Sciences Platform

University College Cork

 

Monday June 20^th 2011

2.00 - 5.30pm

O’Rahilly Building, Room ORB156, UCC

 

Contact details:
Piaras Mac Éinrí p.maceinri@ireland.com 0035321 4904361 skype maceinri

Dr Allen White allen.white@ucc.ie 0035321 4904129

Dr Caitríona Ní Laoire c.nilaoire@ucc.ie 0035321 4205144

 

Round Table Description

The movement of migrants in and out of Ireland and other ‘peripheral’ European states is part of a complex pattern of transnational and circular flows of migration, marked by changing patterns of migrant origins and destinations, globalised processes of dis/investment, changing life-course transitions, the remodelling of national and international labour markets and rapidly shifting European regional dynamics. In this context, how can we make sense of the re-emergence of mass outmigration from certain EU states? And how are narratives and discourses of migration being re/shaped in the national imaginaries of contemporary EU societies?

In this symposium, we draw together emerging perspectives on recent outmigration flows from and return flows to three European states - Ireland, Portugal and Poland - raising questions about the place of ‘emigration’ in contemporary European societies. 

Confirmed Speakers:

Dr. Joana Azevedo, Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology, Lisbon
Dr. Mary Gilmartin, Department of Geography, NUI Maynooth
Piaras Mac Éinrí, Department of Geography and ISS21, University College Cork
Joe O’Brien, Crosscare Migrant Project
Agata Piękosz, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto

All Welcome! Please email ucc.emigration.workshop@gmail.com to reserve your place.

We anticipate that webinar access will also be available for participants who wish to log in from outside UCC, Cork or Ireland. Contactucc.emigration.workshop@gmail.com now for further details.

This is an initiative of the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21^st Century and the Irish Social Sciences Platform in collaboration with the Polish Embassy in Ireland.

Workshop convenors: Piaras Mac Éinrí, Allen White, Caitríona Ní Laoire, Linda Connolly

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