Immigration and
Social Cohesion

Bryan Fanning

Issue 391, vol.98, Autumn 2009

Over the next two years Ireland, with only one-tenth of the population, accepted over half (or 160,000) as many immigrants as did the UK (86,900 Polish people, 29,000 Lithuanians, 14,600 Latvians, etc.)

According to a 2007 statement (Migration Nation) from the Ministry of State for Integration Policy, “The important point for all Irish citizens to understand is that immigration is happening in Ireland because of enormous recent societal and economic improvement”. Economics had emerged as the defining nation-building project of the last half-century in Ireland. And so economics was prioritised above culture : it coincided with secularisation and with the removal of essentialist nationalism from the political mainstream in response to the Northern conflict – factors which arguably culminated in a generic modernity incapable of conceiving the integration of immigrants (or indeed Irish citizens) in terms of anything other than labour market participation. Economic growth, then (and the enlarged workforce required), suddenly loomed larger than social cohesion and the needs of real people immigrating with real families.

Up and until this demarche, it was our state ‘securocrats’ who had called the shots in regard to immigration. By the year 2000, the total number of asylum seekers here had not risen above 10,000. But even when their numbers had climbed from only 1179 in 1996 to 3883 in 1997, the increase was enough to spark panic in politicians to provoke media headlines about them ‘swamping’ the country. A ‘dispersal’ policy was introduced – with ‘direct provision’ of hostel accommodation. Next the 2004 Referendum removed the birthright to citizenship from the Irish-born children of non-citizens.

Under this dispensation, many Africans (who in 2009 comprise Ireland’s second largest immigrant community) remained asylum seekers for years and were not allowed to work. Today, however, our African immigrants are ‘hungry to participate’ in civil society. Africans here have been at the forefront of bottom-up immigrant political participation (one example being Rotimi Adebari, elected mayor of Portlaoise in 2007). African candidates in 2009 were typically involved in capacity-building roles in immigrant community groups, were active church members, and had participated in a number of existing community organisations at local level.

The country’s voluntary and religious sectors seem to have grasped from the outset the crucial role at community level in fostering social cohesion. However, the two relevant government reports to date (A Two Way Process, 2001, and Migration Nation, 2008) largely neglect the local, concrete issues. And a society like Ireland which shirked investing in integration when times were good, faces particular challenges towards doing so when times are tough.