ABSTRACT
The emigrant is a prominent figure in Irish literature, a symbol of that nation’s history of austerity. Yet in recent years, Ireland has become a key destination for economic migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Poland. These communities have been met with xenophobia and racism despite the fact that they are phenotypically white. Ironically, this directly echoes the Irish experience, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Irish had to fight to achieve whiteness through the twin crucibles of politics and performance. And as a post-colonial nation that was recently re-racialised as one of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) of the 2008 economic crisis, Ireland’s European belonging — and the whiteness that entails — remains precarious, particularly in times of austerity. This chapter examines this racial precarity in two contemporary plays written by Northern Irish playwrights: Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015) and Rosemary Jenkinson’s Here Comes the Night (2016). Both plays compare histories of sectarian violence with more recent debates about immigration and diversity by featuring Polish characters whose invisible difference acts as both foil and mirror to the invisible difference of Catholic and Protestant, dramatising the contested category of whiteness in the north.
