The famished soul: resonance and relevance of the Irish famine to Irish men’s accounts of hunger following immigration to England during the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

The famished soul: resonance and relevance of the Irish Famine to Irish men's accounts of hunger following immigration to England during the 1950s and 1960s

All the world's a stage: How Irish immigrants negotiated life in England in the 1950s/1960s using Goffman's theory of impression management

“…The oral history method is a distinct technique which places the narrator of his/her life story centre stage. It thereby gives a platform for those whose experiences have been consigned to the margins of history (Casey and Maye-Banbury, 2016; Maye-Banbury, 2018, 2019; Maye-Banbury and Casey, 2016; Perks and Thompson, 1998). In the context of this paper, oral history may be construed as a temporal medium which reveals the importance of space, place and time in mediating accounts of Irish sociocultural identity.…”

“…Without exception, all had worked in low skilled employment as coal miners, domestics, hotel receptionists, housekeepers, labourers and factory workers among others. Irish immigrants typically held numerous temporary jobs which afforded little opportunities for promotion (Casey and Maye-Banbury, 2016; Maye-Banbury, 2018, 2019; Maye-Banbury and Casey, 2016). On the one hand, this heteroglossia of employment practices made it challenging to envisage a collective work related identity which had evolved over space, place and time.…”

“…The importance of sensory memory in understanding the Irish immigration experience noted by Maye-Banbury and Casey (2016) helps us understand Bridie's account of her early years in Manchester. For Bridie, the term being separated her ‘home turf' held a particular poignancy.…”

“…I used to be like that. The only thing I could hold on to was the pot of coffee.On arrival in England, many Irish men and women lived in the euphemistically named ‘boarding houses', the minimalist digs which resembled homeless hostels (Maye-Banbury, 2018; Maye-Banbury and Casey, 2016). Personal props were conspicuous by their absence, reflective of the poverty of Irish immigrants experienced during the 1950s and 1960s.…”

“…Sensory memory plays a key role in recollections of place. For example, the merits of Proustian scholarship are important when recreating Irish immigrants' reconstructions of their formative experiences (Lahiri, 2011; Maye-Banbury and Casey, 2016; Wright, 2009). Goffman, however, favoured the physical delineation of the space in which we are located, notably its décor, the physical context in which it is located and any objects which communicate the nature of setting.…”