Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- one Fleeing Ireland: social exclusion and the flight of Irish ‘unmarried mothers’ to England in the 1950s and 1960s
- two Responses in Britain to the PFIs: the repatriation of ‘unmarried mothers’ to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s
- three The ‘daring experiment’: London County Council and the discharge from care of children to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s
- four ‘Race’, ethnicity and Irish ‘invisibility’
- five Social services departments and Irish children and families in the early 21st century
- six ‘Maximising things for your community’: the views of social workers
- Conclusion
- References
- Appendix A Information derived from the Department of Health ‘Children in Need’ (CIN) survey, September-October 2001
- Appendix B Statistical responses to the questionnaire mailed to social services departments in England and Wales
- Index
- To order further copies of this publication or any other Policy Press titles please contact:
one - Fleeing Ireland: social exclusion and the flight of Irish ‘unmarried mothers’ to England in the 1950s and 1960s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- one Fleeing Ireland: social exclusion and the flight of Irish ‘unmarried mothers’ to England in the 1950s and 1960s
- two Responses in Britain to the PFIs: the repatriation of ‘unmarried mothers’ to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s
- three The ‘daring experiment’: London County Council and the discharge from care of children to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s
- four ‘Race’, ethnicity and Irish ‘invisibility’
- five Social services departments and Irish children and families in the early 21st century
- six ‘Maximising things for your community’: the views of social workers
- Conclusion
- References
- Appendix A Information derived from the Department of Health ‘Children in Need’ (CIN) survey, September-October 2001
- Appendix B Statistical responses to the questionnaire mailed to social services departments in England and Wales
- Index
- To order further copies of this publication or any other Policy Press titles please contact:
Summary
Luckier girls, on board a ship, watch new hope spraying from the bollard.
(Austin Clarke, ‘Unmarried mothers’, cited in McCormack, 1992)Carol Smart (2000) has maintained that archival research is vitally important and provides us with an additional way to comprehend the evolution of social policy and the discursive practices of the welfare state. Perhaps this is particularly significant in terms of how questions related to ‘race’ and ethnicity have been constructed. This and the following two chapters will examine, therefore, how Irish mothers and their children were responded to in the 1950s and 1960s. We will begin in Ireland where official concerns about the migration of ‘unmarried mothers’ in the period after the setting up the Irish Free State in 1922 provide part of the historical foundation for some of the issues examined in the rest of the book. An exploration of the situation within Ireland at this time enables us to examine how one particular group of Irish citizens felt compelled to make a brief, but expeditious, ‘flight’. Using more contemporary vocabulary, it could be maintained that the women who are the focal concern of this chapter left the national territory because they were socially excluded. Many, however, were then subjected to exclusionary practices in England and pressurised to return to Ireland.
As Walter et al (2002a, pp 15-19) argue, social exclusion has rarely been perceived as a cause of Irish emigration in academic literature (see also Powell, 1992). Here, the dominant explanatory models have tended to interpret post-1945 emigration as being prompted by economic factors with the employment situation ‘at home’ being viewed as the key determinant. More recently, Irish emigration has also been perceived in a more positive light in the context of more encompassing global mobility generated by the spread of the free market economy and technological changes (Brah et al, 1999). Nonetheless, in an historical and contemporary context, processes of social exclusion can be seen to have influenced decisions to leave Ireland. This relates to pregnant ‘unmarried mothers’ in the past and, perhaps, to the women currently travelling from the island of Ireland to Britain for abortions (Oaks, 2002).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Work and Irish People in BritainHistorical and Contemporary Responses to Irish Children and Families, pp. 21 - 38Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2004