ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a combination of structuralism and behaviouralism offers a number of advantages over conventional explanations of Irish emigration, not least those couched either in the logic of behaviouralism or in the logic of modernization theory. It then suggests the adventurous spirit of emigrants, Irish emigration has been a rational response to restructuring processes operating at the level of the Irish nation-state and at the level of global society. To the extent that emigration was still discussed in this 'new Ireland', it was a cultural tradition so deeply embedded in Irish rural life that it was considered inevitable and natural that Irish young adults should leave home to find opportunities abroad. However, voluntarism replaced structuralism in this literature, and most writers failed to develop a place-centred structural model of emigration capable of accommodating their behavioural findings.
