ABSTRACT

Contrary to the predominantly male image of Irish migrants, embodied in the Paddy and Mick stereotypes, the majority of Irish migrants to Britain in the twentieth century have in fact been female (O’Sullivan 1997). Irish workers, both male and female, have long been a reserve pool of labour for the British economy (Hickman 1998).1 Unlike many other flows of migrant women into Britain in the post-war period, Irish women arrived not as part of family groups but predominantly as young, single migrant workers (Travers 1997). Along with migrants from other regions such as the Caribbean, Irish workers were actively recruited to fill specific vacancies in the British labour market after World War II. For example, during the 1940s and 1950s large numbers of young Irish women were recruited to Britain as student nurses (Walter 2001). Even into the 1960s, more than one in every ten nurses recruited to hospitals in the south east of England was born in the Irish republic (Walter 1989). After decades of recruitment of Irish student nurses, by the early 1970s there were 31,000 Irish-born nurses in Britain, constituting 12 per cent of all nursing staff (Daniels 1993, 5-6). Although there is a growing awareness of the contribution made to British society by women migrants, Irish women are often forgotten or neglected in studies of female migration.2