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The results of the 2016 Census confirm that Ireland is now an immigrant-receiving country, with a substantial immigrant population. The recently-published Migrant Integration Strategy recognises this, and insists on the importance of facilitating the integration of immigrants and those of immigrant origin in Irish society.

In February 2017, the Department of Justice and Equality published its new Migrant Integration Strategy. This was the first significant publication dealing with migrant integration in Ireland since 2008. In her foreword to the Migrant Integration Strategy, Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald described the strategy as ‘the first step towards realising the long-term vision of Ireland as a society in which migrants and those of migrant origin play active roles in communities, workplaces and politics’. David Stanton, Minister for State with special responsibility for Equality, Immigration and Integration, wrote of the need to ensure that ‘barriers to their integration are identified and removed’ (Department of Justice and Equality 2017: 2-3). The document sets out a range of general and specific actions for Government departments, agencies, local authorities and other public bodies for the period to 2020 (see Appendix 1 for an overview)

RESCuE: Patterns of Resilience during Socioeconomic Crises among Households in Europe, was a cross-national European project undertaken from 2014-2017 and funded by the European Commission under Framework Seven1. The project was carried out by a consortium of researchers from nine European countries: Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The project was co-ordinated by Dr. Markus Promberger of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, Germany. The research centred on identifying the contexts and practices associated with household resilience to the financial crisis of 2008.

This working paper provides an analysis of citizens’ resilience to the crisis in Ireland from a biographical and longitudinal perspective. It was produced as the ‘Irish National Report’ (D6.25) for Work Package 6 within the FP7 Project, ‘RESCuE: Patterns of resilience during socio-economic crisis among households in Europe.’ This paper applies the four themes of the lifecourse perspective: i) lives and historical times; ii) transitions and turning points; iii) linked lives; and iv) agency and visions of the future, to enhance our understanding of citizens’ varying capacities for resilience in the context of the crisis. It analyses how life course characteristics – including birth cohort and family life stage – intersect with structural disadvantage, past experiences of adversity and the timing of life transitions and events leading to different pathways through life. By adopting a qualitative approach, the RESCuE study provides additional insights on how people adapt to adverse transitions and engage in life planning. In particular, it yields rich data on the complex processes surrounding turning points in the life course, providing essential information for understanding how such ‘critical moments’ give rise to positive or negative trajectories.

This working paper is a qualitative analysis of cultural practices of resilience in Irish households. It was produced as the Irish national report for Work Package 5 (D5.23) within the FP7 Project, ‘RESCuE: Patterns of resilience during socio-economic crisis among households in Europe.’ The paper is structured according to guidelines provided by the national team from Poland1 who led the research on WP5. The paper includes an overview of cultural practices by participating households in Ireland. It examines the different forms of capital mobilized by Irish participants: symbolic, socio-economic, cultural, and social. It emphasises the emotional resources and affective experiences that people describe as calling on, or generating, in order to cope with adversity. In addition, the paper contains photographs provided by participants that supplement their experiences. It concludes with a summary of the forms of capital that have proven to be useful and important in overcoming, or coping with, crisis.

This working paper is a qualitative analysis of socio-economic practices of resilience in Irish households. It was produced as the Irish national report for Work Package 4 (D4.19) within the FP7 Project, ‘RESCuE: Patterns of resilience during socio-economic crisis among households in Europe.’ The paper includes an overview of the socio-economic characteristics of participating households in Ireland. It discusses the narratives of hardship provided by Irish participants and considers the varying practices adopted within households to cope with hardship. It concludes with an analysis of the degrees of hardship and forms of resilience experienced and displayed across different household types, and discusses some of the limitations of the concept of resilience.

This thesis is about the construction and performance of subject positions. Specifically, these include the subject position refugee and its negative constituent the bogus asylum seeker. Such a construction has over time become problematised throughout Europe and on the Irish asylum platform. This thesis reflects primarily the Irish platform in which the subject position refugee became problematised. As such, a genealogical investigation examines the emergence and problematisation of asylum in Ireland. A governmentality perspective focuses upon the regime of practices, the rationalities and technologies that activate a particular mode of governance in respect of asylum seekers. This thesis argues that the mode of governance, or subjectification process, in relation to asylum seekers is one of security, and the securitisation of asylum throughout Europe, Ireland included. This mode of governance creates a realm of abjection or state of exception in which the asylum seeker is curtailed in limbo. In Ireland, this limbo period is particularly visible through the dispersal and direct provision system that it operates. This thesis has a twofold focus upon the limbo period: firstly, the application process by the asylum seeker that I argue elicits a Procrustean style tactic of power, and secondly, the negotiation of encounters by asylum seekers as they excavate their way through the limbo period. This thesis fundamentally examines the subjectification process of asylum seekers, that is, how they are subjected to power relations that dominate them, but also how they resist this form of domination. What emerge is the complex and intricate relationship between domination and resistance and perhaps the inevitable new subject positions that this forms.