Why is ‘Generation Emigration’ so nostalgic?

I’m a regular visitor to irishtimes.com, but only occasionally read the Generation Emigration pieces. I moved to New Zealand in 2003 and would presumably fit with the section’s imagined readership, even if I left Ireland at a time when talk of “generation emigration” would have felt antiquated - a signifier of the country’s past, rather than its present.

When I do read these articles, I usually find myself disconnected from the drift of the contributions, which often appeal to a sense of Irishness that I find alienating and politically regressive.

I have noticed at least two distinct kinds of contributions. The first seems to centre around the idea that the authentic emigrant must voice a deep, existential longing for Tayto crisps, Barry’s tea and “Mammy’s rashers”, as if a life without access to these haloed objects is a source of incurable melancholia.

These contributions personalise an advertising-driven vision of Irishness. They exemplify an Irish kitsch style that has its exact parallels in how New Zealanders are summoned to see themselves in a tin of Wattie’s baked beans, or a loaf of Vogel’s bread.

Such forms of cultural identification would be relatively harmless, if they were not regularly accompanied by a sentimental nationalism that sees a person’s nationality as the be-all and end-all of identity.

For example, there should be no shame in wearing your national or county colours on the streets of Sydney, Toronto or Hong Kong. Indeed, I sometimes feel like communicating some wild gesture of tribal recognition when I pass someone in Wellington wearing a Tipperary GAA jersey. But I wonder if these forms of identity expression can also become a form of identity entrapment, where the only thing non-Irish people are primed to see is our Irishness?

Most of the time, working as a communications academic in New Zealand and elsewhere, my Irishness has been neither here nor there. It is a valued aspect of my identity, but it doesn’t annihilate other dimensions.

However, I have had enough encounters abroad where the only thing someone sees is my “Irishness”, which usually means being confronted by a pantomime version of identity that I can - at best - half-heartedly laugh off.

One time, when checking into a Brisbane hotel, the desk clerk did his best (and not very good) impression of the O’Reilly builder sketch from Fawlty Towers. Another time, while sitting in a Wellington café, a 20-something waitress playfully scolded me for not reading an “Irishy” book, and for not having a particularly strong “Irishy” accent. Five minutes later the café soundtrack abruptly changed to Van Morrison and the Chieftains singing I’ll Tell My Ma.

The second kind of Generation Emigration contribution I have seen is one where the cosmopolitan emigrant expresses a relief to be no longer living in Ireland, as they rhapsodise about how much better life is elsewhere.

No doubt life is often better elsewhere. Ireland is not a country one would look to for affirmative expressions of the public good over the last 20 years or so.

The country is looked to alright, but primarily for its capacity to facilitate multinational corporations; the version of Ireland Inc that now seems to be coming back to life in the form of the “Irish recovery story” circulating in international business media.

My problem with the self-congratulatory cosmopolitan perspective is how it pays homage to a modernity happening elsewhere, in opposition to all the regressive things associated with “parochial”, “traditional”, “corrupt” and “church-ridden” Ireland.

Reading these articles, you could sometimes be left with the impression that the problems of pre- and post-crash Ireland were (and are) uniquely Irish problems, rather than symptoms of a capitalist system that has equivalents in other countries too.

In contrast to these two themes, maybe our transnational condition might be better captured by stories which are less fixated on whether a person is here or there, and more focused on the problems and political dysfunction that connect us all.

I am talking about voices and perspectives that transcend any distinction between Ireland and abroad - be it the story of the precarious worker, the indebted student, the feminist activist, the LGBT campaigner, the climate change protester, the homeless man, the unemployed woman, the temporary visa holder, the over-mortgaged family, the deskilled professional, or the atomised individual.

To be fair, we saw a version of this in some of the coverage of the recent same-sex marriage referendum on Generation Emigration, where LGBT Irish people abroad shared their experiences and comparisons between Ireland and where they live now.

Such stories might politicise the place of the emigrant (and not just “our own” emigrants), but also take us beyond the twin pitfalls of a sentimental nationalism or glib cosmopolitanism.

Being an emigrant could become a potentially creative resource for making new kinds of political connections, rather than a defining marker of identity signalled by the phrase “generation emigration”.

Sean Phelan is originally from Co Tipperary and has been based in Wellington, New Zealand since 2003. He lectures in media and communication at Massey University's Wellington campus.