ABSTRACT

The Republic of Ireland’s long history as a sending country for migrants is a familiar story, and the country’s designation as an “emigrant nursery” 1 was apt when migrant outflows exceeded inflows and natural population growth for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recently, there was a dramatic—albeit short-lived—change in this familiar account. Coinciding with an unprecedented period of economic growth, as well as political and social transformations, Ireland experienced a momentous shift in migration trends. Beginning in the mid-1990s and for roughly a decade, the number of immigrant arrivals to Ireland consistently exceeded emigration from the country. Although the rate of emigration has picked up again in association with the current global economic slowdown, 2 the impact of inward migration in Irish society and, more specifically, the ways in which asylum seekers become legible and ‘legitimized’ in this context are worthy of attention.