Bringing together leading authorities on Irish women and migration, this book offers a significant reassessment of the place of women in the Irish diaspora. It compares Irish women across the globe over the last two centuries, setting this research in the context of recent theoretical developments in the study of diaspora. This collection demonstrates the important role played by women in the construction of Irish diasporic identities, assessing Irish women's experience in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. This book develops a conversation between other locations of the Irish diaspora and the dominant story about the USA and, in the process, emphasises the complexity and heterogeneity of Irish diasporan locations and experiences.

This interdisciplinary collection, featuring chapters by Breda Gray, Louise Ryan and Bronwen Walter, will appeal to scholars and students of the Irish diaspora and women's migration.

Reviews

Well known for her academic publications and public advocacy on the political rights of the Irish Diaspora.

Introduction: Irish diaspora studies: theories, concepts and new perspectives - D. A. J. MacPherson and Mary J. Hickman
Part I: concepts and theories
1. Irish women and the diaspora: why they matter - Mary E. Daly
2. Thinking through transnational studies, diaspora studies and gender - Breda Gray
Part II: Irish women and the diaspora in Britain
3. Exploring religion as a bright and blurry boundary: Irish migrants negotiating religious identity in Britain - Louise Ryan
4. Irish-Catholic women and modernity in 1930s Liverpool - Charlotte Wildman
5. The thermometer and the travel permit: Irish women in the medical profession in Britain during World War II - Jennifer Redmond
6. Reflecting on gender and generation differences in celebrating St Patrick's Day in London - Mary J. Hickman
Part III: Irish women and the diaspora in the British world
7. Placing Irish women within and beyond the British Empire: contexts and comparisons - Bronwen Walter
8. Border crossings: being Irish in nineteenth-century Scotland and Canada - S. Karly Kehoe
9. Irish Protestant women and diaspora: Orangewomen in Canada, c.1890-1930 - D. A. J. MacPherson
Index

Editors

D. A. J. MacPherson is Lecturer in History at The Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands

Mary J. Hickman is Professor of Irish Studies at St Mary's University, London