Beyond ‘plastic paddy’: A re‐examination of the second‐generation Irish in England

Paddy and Biddy no more: An evolutionary analysis of the decline in Irish Catholic forenames among descendants of 19th century Irish migrants to Britain

“…In an essay on second-generation Irish, Campbell (2000) has criticized historians, such as Lees (1979) and Davis (1991), for using only fragments of Barclay's work to illustrate his loosening Irishness, and, indeed, the perceived sense of his hostility to the land and culture of his mother's birth. The key passage apparently speaks of the pressures which an immigrant felt:…”

Towards a (re)theorisation of the historical geography of nationalism in diasporas: the Irish diaspora as an exemplar

“…Although not cast in terms of the notion of emergence, a number of studies of the Irish diaspora already provide promising insights into these forms of hybrid cultures (Campbell, 1999). The intermeshing of Irish republicanism and local political discourses, for instance, provides a starting point for: O'Connor (1995) and Ryan's (1988) study of democratic party politics in Boston; Marston's (1989) analysis of labour struggles in nineteenth century Lowell; Jacobson's (1995) analysis of the response of the North American Irish political lobby to Cuba's drive for independence and the United States' imperial expansion into the Phillipines in the late nineteenth century; Davis' (1991) re¯ections on the relationships which existed in the early nineteenth century between Irish nationalism and the Chartist movement in the UK; and O'Farrell's (1987) account of the role of the Irish in the formation of Australian national identity.…”

The tyranny of transnational discourse: ‘authenticity’ and Irish diasporic identity in Ireland and England

“…It has been argued (e.g. Campbell ; Mac an Ghaill and Haywood ) that these middle‐class Irish migrants of the 1980s represented and positioned themselves as an ‘economic emigrant aristocracy’, simultaneously distinct from ‘traditional’ forms of Irishness within England and embodying a type of national authenticity with regard to ‘modern Ireland’. The parallel with the emerging state discourses of the Irish diaspora discussed earlier is striking: it may be argued that more recent migrants embody the modern transnational state to an extent that older migrants and those of Irish descent do not.…”

“…However, it ought to be noted that the use of the term ‘Plastic Paddy’ in second‐generation discourse is far from universal . Rather than the term providing a constraint on the articulation of authentic second‐generation Irish identities, others have challenged the term as a means of deconstructing singular territorially bound versions of Irishness, as noted by Campbell (). A similar example of such challenging is provided from my interview with Kate, a second‐generation Irish woman in her forties:

I don't like that term Plastic Paddy because it's not like you're a fake, ‘cause that's the – to me that the image is it's a fake paddy, I don't consider myself a fake Irish person, I'm just different you know, there's a spectrum of Irish and I'm on it somewhere.

Kate illustrates that, for her, the use of the term ‘Plastic Paddy’ is a means of positioning her as ‘fake’.…”