UCC’s symposium reaches out to emigrants
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UCC’s symposium reaches out to emigrants
16.06.2011
Is emigration from Ireland today as bad as the 1980s? Who is leaving? Will they come back? What factors are likely to influence their decision? Will people stay away for good if the economy doesn’t recover quickly? What can we learn from the experiences of European neighbours who also have a tradition of high emigration, like Poland and Portugal? A round table at University College Cork next Monday, 20th June, hosted by the university’s Institute for the Social Sciences in the 21st Century, will consider these questions. It will also use internet technology to enable those most directly concerned – emigrants – to listen and participate directly in the symposium.
‘Internet technologies like Skype, Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we communicate globally’, says co-convenor Piaras Mac Éinrí, who lectures in migration studies at the Department of Geography, ‘we want to use the same technology in this case to link directly with those who are at the heart of the issue – recent emigrants – and learn from them’. With a daughter in Australia and a stepson in England, he has a very personal as well as a professional interest in this topic. His co-convenors are Dr Caitríona Ní Laoire, a specialist in return migration and migrant children, Dr Allen White, with a particular interest in migrant children and transnational families, and Dr Linda Connolly, director of the Institute. They will be joined by Joe O’Brien of Crosscare Migrant Project, a Dublin-based emigrant advice agency run by the Catholic Church, Dr Mary Gilmartin of NUI Maynooth, who will be looking in! particular at the impact of emigration on the GAA, with many club members moving to other clubs within a fast-growing Diaspora GAA movement, Dr Joana Azevedo of the University of Lisbon, who will discuss Portuguese migration to other European countries, and Agata Piękosz, a Polish-Canadian who is completing her PhD at the University of Toronto and will be discussing Polish migrants in the Irish context, drawing in particular on the views of Polish Catholic chaplains working in Ireland.

Full details, including information about registration for the free webinar, are at http://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/text-124167-en.html



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