ABSTRACT
Emigration is not a homogenous experience for those who leave with participants having different motives for going: how their travel is organized and paid for, how they integrate and assimilate in the host country, etc. Thus, there are eight million stories to be told by those who left Ireland in the nineteenth century. Up to recently the story of Irish emigration has largely been told through the evidence from officials and government agents in Ireland and the host country who encountered the emigrants and who largely displayed an intolerance and hostility towards those who left. As Kevin Kenny points out, the diaspora and emigration can be studied ‘only to the extent that the surviving evidence permits. And it is especially difficult to find diasporic sensibility among the poor and minimally literate who constitute the bulk of most mass migrations’. 1 This is especially true of the Irish emigrant experience, in particular the Great Famine emigrants. The difficulties are exacerbated as the Irish were a transient group involved in step migration as they sought work and a better life not only in the host countries they went to, but also in a number of other countries. Only recently has the value of emigrant letters been acknowledged and championed by Kerby Miller, David Fitzpatrick and others. 2 The letters tell us about the emigrants’ experiences regarding family news and their feelings towards the host countries they settled in. For some, leaving Ireland was a liberating experience; for others, while they were living in the large industrial centres in the United States and Britain, their hearts were back in Ireland. Ruth-Anne Harris suggests that the letter writing may be representative of the less-assimilated immigrant, their output diminishing as they became more accustomed to life in the new countries and increasing when they became disenchanted with life there. 3 Unfortunately, the Irish Famine emigrants have left few traces of their own feelings and experiences, and as a result we are largely dependent on newspapers and officials records which often provide a biased and one-sided portrayal of those who left.
