Parading Multicultural Ireland: Identity Politics and National Agendas in the 2007 St Patrick’s Festival

Abstract

s Day Parade offers up images of green clad participants giving a performance of imagined Irishness. In 2007, however, along with the usual Irish school children, tidy town pageants and Irish American marching bands that have dominated the parade since its inception in 1995, 650,000 spectators came out to see Brazilian samba bands, African drummers, and a host of Irish and immigrant community groups. The cultural diversity amongst participants was evidence of the festival organizers' aim to increase the presence of the "New Ireland" in its pageant. The reasoning behind Dublin City Council's emphasis on participation by multicultural communities in the parade was to help alleviate racial tensions within the nation and to foster understanding amongst cultures in the city's changing social landscape.

Festival Cities

“…The American parades contributed much of what might now be considered imagined Irishness (Maples, 2009), replete with marching bands, step dancers, people wearing leprechaun wigs, shamrockery and the rest. The sense of open festivity attached to the event invited mass participation from those with precious little or no association with Ireland, leading to sizeable crowds and generating commensurate trade for the hospitality industry.…”