Integration in Ireland

The everyday lives of African migrants

By (author) Fiona Murphy, Mark Maguire

Paperback - £19.99

Publication date:

20 September 2012

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719086946

The integration of new immigrants is one of the most important issues in Europe, yet not enough is known about the lives of migrants. This book draws on several years of ethnographic research with African migrants in Ireland, many of whom are former asylum seekers. Against the widespread assumptions that integration has been handled well in Ireland and that racism is not a major problem, this book shows that migrants are themselves shaping integration in their everyday lives in the face of enormous challenges.

The book will appeal to scholars and students interested in migration and ethnicity and to a general reading public interested in the stories of integration in Ireland. The book is situated within current anthropological theory and makes an important contribution, both theoretically and empirically, to understandings of the everyday and a site of possibility and critique.

"this book argues that integration in Ireland is a bottom-up process, in which empowerment is vital. It offers a short and very useful introduction into the lives of Ireland’s immigrants and it is sure to appeal to both scholars in the field and the general reading public."

(Nanette Solan-Schuppers, University College Dublin, Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014)

The book is well written and provides a comprehensive window into the situations facing African migrants in Ireland in their quest to belong.