ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of debates surrounding 1980s emigration from the Republic of Ireland and the shifting positions of the Irish in London in this decade. It investigates the gendering of emigration and immigration and how these processes might be understood in relation to discourses of 'multiculturalism' and 'diaspora'. The chapter first focuses on the profile of 1980s emigration as well as official and academic responses to it. It then addresses the encounter between the 1980s generation of Irish immigrants and a London that was celebrating its cultural diversity through official discourses and policies of 'multiculturalism'. Finally, the chapter pays closer attention to gendered experiences of immigration to London by considering key themes identified in research with Irish women immigrants to London. It concludes with a brief discussion of discourses of 'multiculturalism' and 'diaspora' and how these discourses frame the gendered Irish emigrant/immigrant experience at the end of the twentieth century.
