This is the final seminar in the Department of Arts Lunchtime Seminar Series will take place on 28 April from 1.15-1.45pm. Zoom details can be found below.
Gues speaker Dr Hazel O'Brien will speak about Ireland’s rapid economic and social change since the 1990s has transformed Irish society; mass immigration and increasing ethnic diversity has forced Ireland to confront what it means to be Irish in the contemporary era. These trends have driven increases in religious diversity which now exists alongside a simultaneous decline of Ireland’s traditional faith, Catholicism.
The conventional construction of Ireland as White, Irish, and Catholic has long excluded those who do not fit this criteria, however Ireland has not developed a strong political representation of far-right populism, unlike many of its European neighbours. Yet, throughout 2019 and 2020 anti-immigration movements became more visible and Irish politicians increasingly used negative rhetoric against minorities for political gain. In recent years we have seen an adaptation of exclusionary rhetoric which nonetheless still serves to reinforce the traditional construction of ‘Irish’ as White, Irish-born, and Catholic.
This presentation will outline this development. It questions if, and how, understandings of religious and ethnic diversity have been incorporated into dominant frames of Irish identity, and the mechanisms through which Ireland’s traditional definitions of belonging are being recreated in an era of Fortress Europe.
About the speaker
Dr Hazel O’ Brien is a sociologist of religion and a lecturer at Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland. She is interested in the relationship between majority and minority religious cultures, and the relationships between religious, ethnic, and national identities.
Zoom details
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https://wit-ie.zoom.us/j/98218864768?pwd=UXlHc3Y2N0xoUXp3cll4ZzVHMFN2Zz09
Meeting ID: 982 1886 4768
Passcode: 856028