Publisher's Synopsis
This book examines the experience of the Irish Catholic working class and their descendants in Britain as a minority experience which has been profoundly shaped by the responses of both the British state and the Catholic church to Irish migrants. The book challenges notions that the Irish have smoothly assimilated to British society and demonstrates how the reception and policies that greeted the Irish in 19th century Britain created the framework within which the experiences of Irish migrants to Britain in the 20th century have been formed. Research about the education of Irish Catholics is used to investigate how a labour migrant group who, in the 19th century were large, visible and problematised were socially constructed as invisible by the mid-20th century through a process of incorporation and denationalization. - - The book questions the dominant 'race relations' paradigm that poses issues in terms of the opposition of blacks and whites and argues that the analysis of anti-Irish racism and of the experience of the Irish in Britain is critical for exploring the history of the development of a racist British nationalism. Colonial racism stemming from Anglo-Irish relations and the construction of the Irish (Catholic) as an historically significant Other of the English/British (Protestant) have framed the experience of the Irish in Britain. - - The book is a significant and overdue contribution to the sociology of 'race' ethnicity and the nation and to the socio-historical analysis of state education in Britain.
