AS PART of my training for ordained ministry in the Methodist Church in Britain, I have been invited to situate my own experience of migration within global theological perspectives, particularly those emerging from African and Latin American contexts.
Engaging with migration studies has revealed my story as part of a much larger global, political and theological pattern of power, privilege, and displacement.
Migration, therefore, is not an abstract concept for me; it has shaped my family, my childhood, and my ministry.
This was my reflection:
‘No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’
My experiences of migration begin with my family – Irish as far as memory, records and DNA tests go.
My parents’ siblings came to England in the 1950s when Irish migrants reported signs in B&B windows reading: ‘No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’. My parents came to London in 1966 as economic migrants – my father alone first, then my mother and four older siblings when work and home were secured. My parents spoke of Ireland as ‘home’, and of what I later learned anthropologists call ‘the myth of return’, that they might go ‘home’ eventually. While some peers did, my parents stayed.
My younger sister and I were born into an Irish community in London. As second generation Irish, I was called a ‘plastic Paddy’: neither English enough for England, nor Irish enough for Ireland. I was educated in Catholic schools (1975-1989) alongside peers of Irish heritage and from other European, Asian, African and Caribbean countries.
Though my parents experienced prejudice, they came from a majority White country and expressed casual racism as many of their culture and generation did at that time. This tension continued as siblings with Irish passports, children of economic migrants, shared views resistant to migration from elsewhere, especially from the global majority.
My eldest brother’s perspective broadened through studying and working abroad. Visiting him in South Africa (1991) and Chile (1995) was transformative. In Johannesburg I worked in a restaurant where I met Afrikaaners keen to convince me that ‘God made white skin for a reason’, and a colleague who took me to see the lived reality of apartheid in the Soweto township. My undergraduate degree dissertation was on the portrayal in South African literature of the Dutch Reformed Church’s appropriation of the biblical ‘Promised Land’ narrative to justify dominating and even eradicating indigenous tribes.
In Santiago I witnessed the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship which included forced disappearances and mass exile of political opponents.
In both cities, my brother and his family lived in a gated community of White European ‘expats’ (the term they preferred instead of ‘migrants’) and employed a servant from that country. I resisted being ‘served’ but adapted when I realised that my resistance was interpreted as prejudice against them.
Between 1989 and 2003 I moved frequently for study and work, living at more than 20 addresses in 14 years. I moved to Liverpool in 2003 and found greater belonging here than anywhere since London, due to the profound influence of Irish migration on the city’s culture since the 19th century.
In my current ministry I have advocated for migrants seeking refuge and asylum in the UK because of sexuality, gender identity, and faith. I have supported some to win leave to remain and appealed against detention and deportation for others. I have drawn on my experience of migration to help others navigate a legislative environment that can be as hostile and exclusionary as those 1950s B&B signs. My experience of being ‘neither here nor there’ as a child of migrants has helped me to stand together in the gap with those still searching for home.
The power and privilege of language
As I revisited these memories through the lens of migration studies, I became aware of how much language shapes experience. Terms such as ‘economic migrant’, ‘expatriate’, ‘second generation’, and even ‘Plastic Paddy’ are not neutral descriptors but markers of political, racial, and cultural power. Reviewing my family’s history in the context of the language and historical accounts of migration has helped me to uncover the power embedded in these labels and the privileges they conceal.
Terms such as ‘economic migrant’, ‘expatriate’, ‘second generation’, and even ‘Plastic Paddy’ are not neutral descriptors but markers of political, racial, and cultural power.
In my initial reflection I noted how white Europeans preferred ‘expat’ to migrant; the International Organization for Migration’s Glossary on Migration (2019) confirms the colloquial use of expatriate ‘to identify nationals who have taken up residence in a foreign country’, and the contradictory legal definition: ‘A person who voluntarily renounces his or her nationality’. The context of the term’s use is therefore vital in determining the correct meaning.
Two 20th century accounts from first- and second-generation Irish migrants on the ‘Our Migration Story’ website place the 1950s ‘No Irish’ discrimination within a wider hierarchy: Irish migrants, though marginalised, were still preferred over Black and Asian people from the British Empire in post-war recruitment.
The stories of Irish nurses in wartime Britain and Music and migration: songs from the Irish in Birmingham identify ‘push’ factors such as high unemployment in Ireland, ‘pull’ factors like British labour shortages, and data about people claiming Irish identity in Britain, providing a macro-context for my ‘London-Irish’ upbringing.
Irish musician Paul O’Brien’s experience of ‘dual cultureship’ and of the label ‘Plastic Paddy’ as a derogatory and shameful signifier of those who ‘perform an Irish identity but lack the “audible signifier” of an Irish accent’, mirrored my ‘second generation’ experience.
As our tutor in African theology, who is from Ethiopia, observed, Irish migrants experienced discrimination yet were still preferred over Black and Asian people from the British Empire. In the same way, second-generation White Europeans may face questions of belonging, but not to the same degree as second-generation Black Britons, whose lack of the ‘visible signifier’ of white skin continues to shape how belonging is policed. This reminded me of a Sri Lankan colleague’s experience of being called a ‘cocounut’, i.e. brown on the outside, white on the inside, neither truly Sri Lankan nor truly British.
Recent comments