The Dublin riot - Ireland's wake-up call (original) (raw)
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Ireland and immigration: explaining the absence of the far right
Patterns of Prejudice, 2007
This article seeks to explain the absence of far-right political formations in the relatively short political history of the Republic of Ireland, especially in relation to immigration, and how the 'mainstream' nationalist parties have implemented a racialized governance of Ireland via the issue of citizenship. This question is raised by the observation that while dominant ideas on the racial purity of indigenous populations and the highly ambivalent attitudes and policies on immigration pursued over the last decade are characteristic of a broader European trend, in the Republic it has not been accompanied by meaningful far-right political mobilisation. Indeed, Ireland presents itself as something of a counter case, in that increasing hostility toward Others has been identified in the midst of rapid economic growth and political stability, and that the parties manifestly opposed to immigration have accumulated less than 1 percent of votes whenever they have stood for election. The State has however amended the constitution in order to qualify ius soli citizenship entitlement in the case of particular categories of people: those whose parents are not Irish nationals. Whilst this might seem a relatively minor alteration in the context of the EU, where children born in a member-state of foreign parents may have to wait until their 18 th birthday to qualify as nationals, it should be placed in the Irish context of State responses to Ireland"s transition to a country of immigration, and the role of nationalist-populism in the country"s political culture. The development of political parties in the Republic of Ireland has followed an idiosyncratic path. A particular combination of specific factors has led to a centre-right populist mainstream developing at the expense of both the Far-right and the Left. Relative to the Farright and immigration, the salient points in the history of Irish politics are; i) The impact of the crucible of independence struggle and civil war; ii) The subsequent dominance of the national question over class politics; iii) The dominance of Fianna Fáil; iv) Centre-right populist mobilisation; and, v) The neo-liberal turn of the post-1997 administrations and its impact on discourses surrounding immigration. i) The origins of the party system (independence struggle followed by civil war) are sui generis. The two largest parties, Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG) reflect a split in the forces that fought the British in the war of independence (1919-21), then each other in the subsequent civil war (1922-23). Fine Gael was created in 1933 out of the original pro-Treaty party, Cumann na nGaedheal (1923-33). The anti-Treaty side had refused to acknowledge the 1921 Dáil over the continued symbolic links of subservience to Britain. Having rethought this position, De Valera founded FF and successfully contested the 1927 elections. Patterns of party support have relied for generations on loyalties to the pro-or anti-treaty side. ii) The key contemporary nationalist parties; FF, FG and Sinn Féin (SF), as well as their previous embodiments, have won over 70% of the vote at every election since 1926. This should alert us to an Irish anomaly, in that the focus of debate has not been the traditional left/right dichotomy (or class politics), but the "national question", i.e. the policy to be adopted to overturn partition and reunify Ireland. In fact, the under-development of the Left goes hand-in-hand with that of the Far-right. Factors favouring the growth of Left and farright parties have been absent due to the particular context of the Irish economy and
“Against Europe, by Dint of Europe”: The Dublin Regime and the Contradictions of European Populisms
Scienza e Pace, 2021
Does Europeanisation of borders and migration policies necessarily infringe national sovereignty? This paper proposes to question this commonplace by analysing the entanglement of three internal tactics of bordering promoted by national-populists in the wake of the 2015 “crisis” with the Dublin Regulation – namely, the EU legal framework governing the allocation of asylum seekers across EU Member States (MS). Not only does the biometric database related to Dublin Regulation (the EURODAC) enable national authorities to diminish the number of applicants for whom they are deemed responsible, but it may also be used in a variety of ways for setting administrative traps against other categories of third country nationals (TCN). Thus, against the widespread belief, this paper argues the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) might be, in some respect, highly needed for enacting national sovereignty in the Schengen context. Whereas the policies presented here were publicised in the name of “re-nationalising” the management of asylum flows against the EU leadership, they might have paradoxically relied on the wide usage of dataveillance instruments offered by the EU itself. Thus, this article will finally offer a better understanding of some ambivalences of Eurosceptical parties in their relation to the CEAS.
Ireland: Racial state and crisis racism1
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2007
This article theorizes the state as central to the construction of racism in the Republic of Ireland, which, since the 1990s economic boom, has become an in-migration destination. State racism culminated in the 2004 Citizenship Referendum, in which, at a majority of four to one, the Irish electorate voted for the removal of birthright citizenship to children of migrants. Based on Goldberg's theory of the racial state, which, in constructing homogeneity, obscures existing heterogeneities, and on Foucault's theory of biopolitics, leading to the state supposedly caring for the population through a series of technologies aiming to regulate and manage racial diversities, the article examines recent developments in Ireland's immigration and asylum policies. The debates around the Citizenship Referendum are theorized as constructing what Balibar terms 'crisis racism', blaming migrants for the problems of the system.
Ireland: Racial State and Crisis Racism
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2007
This article theorises the state as central to the construction of racism in the Republic of Ireland, which, since the 1990s economic boom, has become an in-migration destination. State racism culminated in the 2004 Citizenship Referendum, in which, at a majority of four to one, the Irish electorate voted for the removal of birth right citizenship to children of migrants. Based on Goldberg's theory of the racial state, which, in constructing homogeneity, obscures existing heterogeneities, and on Foucault's theory of biopolitics, leading to the state supposedly caring for the population through a series of technologies aiming to regulate and manage racial diversities, the article examines recent developments in Ireland's immigration and asylum policies. The debates around the Citizenship Referendum are theorized as constructing what Balibar terms 'crisis racism', blaming migrants for the problems of the system.
An end to “Civil War politics”? The radically reshaped political landscape of post-crash Ireland
Electoral Studies, 2015
The European debt crisis has impacted on electoral politics in most European states, but particularly in the Republic of Ireland. The severe nature of the economic crash and the subsequent application of austerity policies have brought large fluctuations in political support levels, with the three parties that have dominated the state since its foundation e Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour e all being adversely effected. The extent of these changes is highly controlled both by geography and by class, with political allegiances proving to be highly fluid in certain parts of the state. Growing support levels for left wing parties and groupings, but most notably Sinn Fein, appear to be moving Irish politics away from the old "Civil War" style of politics and bringing it more into line with the traditional class cleavage politics of continental Europe.
A ‘Carnival of Reaction’: Partition and the Defeat of Ireland’s Revolutionary Wave
Irish Marxist Review, 2015
For more than a generation, establishment historians and their acolytes in the southern media have dominated public debate about the nature and form of the Irish revolution. In their rendering, the Rising constituted an unnecessary skirmish between a benign, reforming empire and ultra-Catholic madmen and militarists. For many ordinary southerners, understandably cynical about the influence welded by the Catholic Church and a corrupt political establishment since partition, the seeds of conservatism seem apparent from the outset, flowing inevitably from the Rising and the revolutionary upheaval that followed. Since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969, especially, a persistent and well-resourced effort has been made to show that partition reflected immutable differences between antagonistic ‘ethno-national’ or ‘ethno-religious’ blocs. Despite their rhetorical nationalism, the Dublin elite, fearful that northern political instability might spread southwards, went to great lengths to b...
Austerity, Populism, and Water: Ireland's strange populism and the inevitability of the local
Jean Monnet Working Paper Series No 7/2017
Austerity and economic hardship are common themes in the narratives about the causes of contemporary populism. Ireland, having endured a decade of austerity and a very severe EU-IMF bailout, might therefore seem to be a fertile bed for populism. But Ireland has (so far) seen the effects of populism only in a limited and unusual form. There has been neither a great left-wing populist rise, nor a new nationalist, populist right. Populism manifested chiefly in a movement – powerful and influential in its limited way – to resist payment of water charges. The introduction of domestic water charges with the aim of reducing water waste and improving water infrastructure resulted in massive backlash, far greater than those from more severe consequences of austerity such as tax hikes, sweeping cuts in expenditure, a colossal bank bailout, and very high unemployment. It spawned a populist political movement, rallying and uniting left-wing political parties and creating a major lobby and protest group. Massive demonstrations were held. Workers installing water meters were obstructed and harassed. A senior government official was trapped in her car by water protesters, leading to prosecutions of a number of water protesters for false imprisonment along with considerable public controversy around accusations of political policing. Many Irish people refused to pay water bills sent to them. This has been the major issue championed by anti-austerity and left-wing populist parties, with calls for wide-scale boycotts and protests and even suggestions that a right to water should be inserted into the Irish Constitution. It has been the focal point of Irish politics for the last half decade, affecting the outcome of both local and general elections. This is a strange story of populism. On the one hand, many of the risks often associated with populism – government capitulation to populist demands, creep of mainstream parties towards populist causes, a splintering of the parliament – actualised in Ireland. On the other hand, they actualised in an unusual way that has left the political establishment largely intact: the party that led the imposition of austerity remains in power; political and structural reforms have been minor; concessions to populism have been largely limited to the issue of water. It seems as though populism was contained. I have two goals in this paper. First, I wish to map the idiosyncratic Irish experience, so that it can be considered in discussions of populism; and secondly, I wish to use this example to make a broader point about the local nature of populism. Certainly, Ireland’s experience of populism can only be properly understood in light of its public law and conventions: its electoral system, executive dominated government, centrist political culture, and particular economic circumstances all played a role. From this, it might be thought that generalisable lessons could be learned from the Irish experience about avoiding the worst effects of populism, but I wish to argue that the opposite is true: Ireland’s unique experience shows the irreducible complexity and locality of populism. Populism is always contingent and local, reacting the peculiarities of political culture and circumstance. The best way to study populism is not through theory and search for similarity, but through observation of diversity. While we might see some similarity, pattern, and convergence in populism around the world, this is largely happenstance, and populism will always be recast and remade in each and each place to produce distinct and often unpredictable results. It is, even if while it seems to sweep the world, fundamentally a local phenomenon. The surprising and peculiar characteristics of the Irish case help illustrate the local nature of populism, which should inform any analysis of contemporary populist movements.
Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 2017
Across the EU, the Great Recession begot economic and political crisis heralding a renewed march towards populism and party system fragmentation. Much commentary about Ireland remarked on the absence of a populist surge of the type seen in many other bailout states (Clifford, 2016; Pappas, 2015). But is this characterization of the Irish experience accurate? The imposition of austerity policies and the protracted recovery propelled long standing critics of the Irish economic model centre stage and in common with many other states, party system fragmentation advanced with the long dominant centrist parties suffering severe losses at general elections (Marsh, Farrell and McElroy, 2017; Kriesi et al., 2016). New and more radical political forces did emerge and general elections in 2011 and 2016 were among the most volatile in Western Europe since 1945. The traditional parties of government experienced a sharp contraction in their vote shares but they retained their hold on power and th...