Contemporary ‘Outsiders’ in Narratives of Belonging in Cork’s Cemeteries: Reflections on Experiences of Irish Travellers and Recent Polish Migrants

Abstract

This chapter explores how cemeteries function as spaces of inclusion or exclusion for recent migrants and longstanding ‘outsiders’. It does so by focusing on experiences of the Polish and Irish Traveller communities, the most recent and longstanding minorities in Cork, Ireland. As such it highlights the many ways mobilities intersect with identity and belonging within the contemporary Irish context.

1 Introduction

In contemporary cities, cemeteries and associated practices of memorialisation represent important spaces for the expression of belonging and identity, mediating personal, place-based and historical factors. They illustrate the changing histories of a given place through the lives and deaths of the individuals memorialised inside their walls, fences or hedges, often reflecting life-journeys by noting places of birth as well as death in memorials (Maddrell, 2011; McClymont, 2018). This therefore gives cemeteries a particularly important role in documenting the migrations and mobilities of the place in which they are located. Exploring these, and the associated inclusions and exclusions in policy and practice which bring about their current form, offers a way to understand migration and belonging which is currently under-researched. Practices around death and remembrance are expressions of fundamental human experience, but are culturally and geographically particular, and the ability for minority groups to ensure appropriate and timely actions can be undertaken with regards to the death of a relative or community member is, as we have seen across this volume, of the utmost importance for a sense of belonging and acceptance.

This chapter draws upon experiences and views of the Traveller and Polish communities in the city of Cork, Ireland to offer new insights into these issues. Irish Travellers are nomadic people who were only officially recognised as a distinct ethnic group in Ireland in 2017,¹ and who are also ethnically distinct from English gypsies or European Roma despite being often classified together through the sedentist gaze of nation states. They lack a written history of their own and are largely ignored by recorded Irish history, so clear understandings of origins and evolution of traditions are absent (Gmelch & Gmelch, 2014). Discrimination against Travellers is commonplace, which, although similar across European contexts, is notable here because, as discussed below, the Irish national context is more pro-migrant than many other countries discussed in this volume. On the other hand, widespread migration to Ireland is a recent phenomenon, only emerging on a visible scale since the late 1990s as Ireland’s economy boomed, but especially since the accession of eight eastern European countries to the EU in 2004, including Poland. Both Travellers and Polish communities are traditionally Roman Catholic (within Ireland as a Catholic country) and are also considered white, if ‘white other,’ as discussed at greater depth below. This therefore presents an interesting opportunity to explore the similarities and differences experienced between these groups with regard to their sense of belonging as mediated by and expressed in cemeteries and death rituals. It explores how acceptance granted via whiteness is conditional and does not necessarily relate to time spent in a context or place of birth – to relative mobility or immobility – and that such lines of differentiation and discrimination impact on feelings of belonging and the possibility of honouring the dead in a culturally appropriate manner.

The chapter first explores migration in the Irish context, both in terms of numbers and policy direction, and literature about Polish migration to Ireland and Traveller communities in Ireland. The chapter then turns to theories of whiteness to frame the discussion of belonging and exclusions in the Cork case, noting the importance of both self-identification and acceptance from state structures in this. It then draws on findings from interviews and presents images of both Traveller and Polish graves in Cork cemeteries to illustrate areas where these framings of whiteness/belonging intersect with practices around death and remembrance. It concludes by reflecting on the role of cemeteries to show ways into these debates about migration and mobility, both in practical terms, but also in more symbolic and spiritual ways.

2 Mobilities in Ireland: Irish Travellers and Polish Migrants

Traditionally, Ireland has been perceived as a nation of outmigration, with “the highest and most sustained per capita rates of emigration in Europe” (Mac Éinrí & White, 2008, p. 153) in the 1960s and continuing to remain high into the 1980s. It is not until the mid-1990s that this trend begins to be reversed with the period1995–2004 seeing net immigration of over 200,000 (ibid., p. 154) with large numbers of native Irish people returning to Ireland making up a large proportion of this, but also an increase in people seeking asylum in Ireland, notably from Nigeria, Congo, Algeria and Romania. Unlike its near neighbour, Britain, Ireland’s national policy discourse on migration has been largely, at least in general statements of intent, positive and accepting: “(p)olitical leaders attempt to demonstrate that welcoming migrants is part of Irish national identity, and that hosting migrants reinforces rather than threatens Irish identity” (Elliott, 2019, p. 566). Although racist sentiments are expressed within political debate, they are not seen as doorstep issues at election time, or have mainstream party-political support (ibid.). The Brexit debate, and role of Irish/British/EU relations in this, has only strengthened this position of Ireland as a tolerant nation, expressing migration issues in terms of human rights and compassion rather than a ‘hostile environment’ (Grierson, 2018; Griffiths & Yeo, 2021).

Despite this overall positive attitude to migration in the Irish political mainstream, there remain questions about the assumption of belonging and acceptance of minority practices with Mac Éinrí and White claiming that “[b]ehind a policy of vague respect for multicultural ideas there lurks a de facto assimilationism” (Mac Éinrí & White, 2008, pp. 161–162) and that this is particularly relevant with regards to the exclusion of long standing minorities, which is echoed in this paper with regards to the feelings of exclusion and discrimination held by Traveller communities. Lentin (2007) and Lentin and McVeigh (2006) examine how racialisation and diaspora play roles in the construction of Irish identity, and how this has played out in recent political events, including the 2004 citizenship referendum, the result of which granted Irish citizenship to people of Irish descent who do not and have not lived in Ireland more readily than to those born in Ireland of migrant parents. The boundaries defining insiders and outsiders are therefore not simple to navigate nor fixed permanently, but politically and individually constructed, reconstructed and challenged. This making and remaking of boundaries also intersects with debates around ‘whiteness’ and identity hierarchy in European context.

Polish migration to Ireland and the historical treatment of Traveller communities tell two very different stories about minority identity and acceptance in Ireland. Polish migrants, as white Christians (and specifically Roman Catholics), are seen as ‘fitting’ with the host country; their religious identity not perceived as threatening (Gallagher & Trzebiatowska, 2017). Moreover, Polish Catholicism has been easily accepted into the structure of the Catholic Church in Ireland with Polish masses being delivered in the majority of parishes across the country. Here the shared Catholic identity is seen as mitigating against a need for further integration. Roman Catholicism is an international identity (see Eade & Garbin, 2007 on Polish Roman Catholic pilgrimage in diaspora), and it is therefore acceptable to remain ‘Polish’ rather than necessarily becoming ‘Irish’ to integrate. However, migration to Ireland has also allowed for individual responses to the maintenance of religious identity, rather than being something essential to acceptance:

The existence of Polish masses and the efforts invested in the formation of Polish congregations all perform a vital role in maintaining faith for those committed to institutionalised Catholicism. For others, the host country serves as a catalyst for questioning what has been taken for granted in Poland. (Gallagher & Trzebiatowska, 2017, p. 437)

This shared basis for identity offers grounds for acceptance and belonging in an open way, with personal choice and agency playing a role in decisions about life, and about death, as explored below.

This contrasts strongly with the history of Travellers within Ireland. Throughout their presence in recorded history in Ireland, Travellers have been seen as problematic (Helleiner, 2001) and discrimination against Travellers remains widespread today across social groups and all political leanings (Fetzer, 2017). Social attitudes surveys reveal that “Travellers are the least-liked ethnic group in the country” (Fetzer, 2017, p. 196). It was not until 2017 that Travellers were recognised as an official ethnic group in Ireland, emerging out of long political campaigns against a policy arena which previously viewed nomadic lifestyles as “aimless wandering carried out by individuals, rather than as a cultural norm of the Traveller community” (Boyle et al., 2018, p. 6) reflecting, in part, conceptual troubles with the mobility of nomadism within sedentist culture (Sutherland, 2014). However, Travellers view the idea of nomadism as central to their identity, whether living in ‘bricks-and-mortar’ or caravans (Delaney, 2003) with links to extended family being critical. In this sense, nomadism suggests more than an itinerant lifestyle:

[Nomadism] signifies a way of thinking about the world, as much as a way of living through it. Indeed, many Travellers are at pains to point out that nomadism is not restricted to those who live in caravans or on halting sites—it is not dependent upon acts of physical movement, they argue, but, rather, it is suggestive of a certain mindset and an approach to life. (Delaney, 2003, pp. 85-86)

Even with changes in policy moving towards greater acceptance of the cultural value of Traveller ways of life from the mid-1990s onwards (Boyle et al., 2018), Travellers and Traveller culture remains under-represented and mis-understood in Ireland (Pavee Point, 2015). Moreover, debates emerging from issues about Traveller ‘integration’ or assimilation raise interesting points about issues of mobility and (national) identity for this chapter’s focus. Travellers have not been written in as part of ‘the nation’ within Irish history and are seen as outside of the struggle for Irish independence: “Such readings have also been used to deny Travellers a place in Irish society and to see them, rather, as an irritant and an anachronism in the modern nation state” (Delaney, 2003, p. 82). This labelling of Travellers as anachronistic relates to the different perceptions of nomadism held by Travellers and the Irish authorities. Nomadism has been seen as a problem to be solved by the authorities; the cause of Traveller deprivation and exclusion and something to be remedied by a settled life.

As such, Travellers present different issues to modern nation states than migrants from other countries do, because their concept of nation is at odds with the way territory and movement are conceived in sedentist cultures or the ‘settled’ community. This is particularly important in Ireland as a country conceived in a history of struggle for independence founded on “the primacy of a territorialised identity and the importance of rootedness and kinship with the land” (Delaney, 2003, p. 87). Polish migrants, with shared Roman Catholic identity and heritage as well as European citizenship, arguably present a less problematic presence in Irish society than a Traveller population who have spatially co-existed for hundreds of years with the settled Irish population. Polish migration to Ireland is understood within the sedentist lens of (fixed) nation states – moving from a defined ‘here’ to an equally defined ‘there’ – rather than the nomadic mobility of Travellers which undermines such a bounded understanding of place. In turn, this weave of nationalism(s) and sedentism raises interesting issues about belonging, identity and whiteness, which in turn have practical implications for decisions about burial and memorialisation.

According to 2016 statistics, 14% of Cork’s population is non-Irish (17,183), and moreover, Cork has seen the largest non-Irish population increase in Ireland (Cork City Profile, 2018). This is comprised mainly of EU/UK migrants with Polish being largest non-Irish nationality population (2.6%) followed by British/Northern Irish: 1.5%, Lithuanian: 0.4%, Other EU: 5.3%, Asian/Asian Irish: 2.8% and Irish Travellers: 0.7% (ibid). In this chapter we explore how this relates to practices around death and memorialisation in Cork, but first turn to the idea of whiteness to frame some of the discussions around differentiated belonging.

3 Whiteness, Identity and Patterns of Exclusion

The conceptual debate on whiteness provides greater depth in looking at patterns of inclusion/exclusion for the Polish and Irish Traveller communities in Cork. It offers critique of white as ‘normal’ and looks for how its privilege is maintained or deviated from, seeing it as “a set of values and practices rather than simply a skin colour” (Webb, 2019, p. 4). As a theoretical perspective, its roots can be traced back to the work of W.B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks, with academic scholarship growing rapidly in the past three decades (Botterill & Burrell, 2019, p. 24). Both Travellers and Polish migrants (in Ireland, but also elsewhere in Western Europe) are not visually marked as non-white, but both groups remain viewed as different from mainstream national/Irish identities as ‘others’ or ‘outsiders.’ We use these terms in inverted commas to highlight the subjectivity of these boundaries, and highlight patterns of differentiation rather than accepting these definitions as natural or in some way accurate reflections of citizenship or identity. By identifying this position, rather than allowing whiteness to appear as unproblematic or to conflate the experiences of all migrant/minority groups, we are able to see how this is constituted by different patterns of mobility and subsequently identify patterns of privilege, acceptance and belonging within practices of death and memorialisation and in turn see how death and memorialisation practices make and remake these claims.

In writing about Polish migration to the UK, Botterill and Burrell state, “[h]owever inflected the whiteness of Polish migrants has been, as Garner (2007, p. 66) points out, ‘not being white, and being black are two very different things’” (Botterill & Burrell, 2019, p. 26). Webb points out how problematic this status of ‘white but not quite’ is for Gypsy-Traveller communities in the UK, seeing them as “simultaneously disinherited from the concept of minorityhood and the protection of multiculturalism” (Webb, 2019, p. 7) as well as being ‘othered’ from the white majority culture. This chimes with wider research into ‘white’ identities in Europe, and the way material cultures such as dress play a role in these (Krivonos & Diatlova, 2020). Migration between European countries, and the attitudes towards ‘outsiders’ in a new context reflects hierarchies of European space, and a lack of evenness or access to the same privileges of whiteness. Mobilities themselves, therefore, further complicate any unitary sense of white identity.

Issues of belonging intersect with debates on whiteness, identity, class and boundaries. There is not scope within this chapter to provide a comprehensive overview of this research, but a brief outline brings forward issues which are relevant for this discussion. As Kuurne and Vieno state, belonging is forged in “the intersection of personal experience, social processes and materiality” (Kuurne & Vieno, 2022, p. 283). The idea of whiteness can be part of all three. Within European mobilities, it is an important part of the way in which “actors manage to gain access to various social and material goods that are distributed on the basis of belonging” (ibid., p. 285). Claims to belong can be founded in shared ‘whiteness,’ or hierarchies of whiteness can be used to further differentiate between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders.’

Literature specific to Ireland is limited, but some parallels can be drawn with work from the UK. Notions of belonging and acceptance are complex and positioned within ill-defined spaces of colour and cultural markers of normative nationhood (Clarke, 2020, p. 102). The concept of whiteness unevenly governs processes of inclusion and exclusion. As well as being a barrier to differentiate against people of colour, it also governs norms of acceptability within the category of ‘white’ as is seen in the following discussions. Whiteness may be an initial boundary marker of inclusion/exclusion but is not automatic grounds for inclusion into a white national space. As Clarke explains:

Thinking not only about boundaries but also about hierarchies of belonging draws further attention to the complexity of belonging but is also vital in plural societies where those marginalised within hierarchies often include formal citizens who, in other spaces and times, are constructed as belonging. (Clarke, 2020, p. 97)

These debates echo those of racialisation, and the means of exclusion employed against ‘others’ who are not seen to fit in a given location both historically and contemporarily (Garner, 2013; Holloway, 2003; Krivonos & Diatlova, 2020). So, whiteness may lead to acceptance and privilege in certain scenarios, but its internal hierarchies and patterns of exclusion along intersectional identities such as class, add complexity to this. This is important to note, as shared Catholic (white) identity between the Traveller and Polish communities and mainstream Irish society does not lead to equal levels of acceptance for practices around death and memorialisation, as is explored below in the discussion of our research. The shared whiteness (and here religious/cultural Roman Catholicism) can operate as a smokescreen to discrimination within this category (Clarke, 2020; Webb, 2019) making it harder to apprehend and understand. Moreover, and importantly for research into death practices and memorialisation, belonging is not a unidirectional phenomenon. For someone to belong to a nation, they need to identify as belonging to that community themselves and be recognised as part of it: it is as “much about being recognised as belonging as it is about self-identification, a substantive sense of belonging requiring recognition – if not acceptance – in the eyes of existing members” (Clarke, 2020, p. 96) or as Kuurne and Vieno put it: “People are often positioned between multiple settings of belonging, which may produce conflicting expectations” (Kuurne & Vieno, 2022, p. 285). This hints at notions of boundaries and the acceptability or hybridity of co-located identities, in life and in death, and the complex social and political issues which underpin the everyday implementation of policy, planning, maintenance and rules governing spaces of burial and remembrance.

4 Background to Research

The research discussed in this chapter is a small part of a wider European funded project looking at the cemeteries as public spaces of belonging (CeMi; see introduction of this volume). Cork is the second largest City in Ireland, with a population of 210,000. As noted earlier, Ireland has only recently become a country of immigration rather than emigration and, as stated earlier, Cork has the most notable increase in migrant populations in Ireland. There are thirteen cemeteries in the Cork City Council area and one nearby crematorium. Cremation makes up only 19.61% of bodily disposal in Ireland (The Cremation Society, 2021), and the Island Crematorium in Cork is one of only five in all of Ireland. Grave rights in all the cemeteries are leased in perpetuity.

This paper is based on twelve semi-structured stakeholder interviews with people in the burial service, wider funeral service provision, Polish community and Traveller community in Cork, one biographical interview, and one email conversation, as well as visits to the cemeteries and crematorium.² The majority of this research was undertaken in September 2019 as, due to COVID-19, much further planned fieldwork was cancelled, while a small number of interviews took place virtually. Topic guides were used for the stakeholder and biographical interviews. We asked stakeholders to discuss their background and their role, then moved to understandings of migrant and minority communities and their specific needs, and the usages of cemeteries and crematoria as a form of public space. Any interviews after the COVID-19 pandemic began also included questions on how this had affected their work and community. The biographical interviews covered questions about the respondents life, their experiences related to death remembrance, and their usage and perceptions of cemeteries and crematoria. The interviews were transcribed verbatim by the researchers and then coded inductively using Atlas.ti. These codes were then developed in dialogue with the team of CeMi project research associates. All transcripts in the CeMi project were additionally coded for comparative analysis. In this chapter we only use transcripts from Cork that specifically mention Polish, Traveller, or migration issues and needs. Due to the COVID-19 disruptions to fieldwork, and that the Traveller and Polish experience in Cork is just one part of the larger CeMi project and not its central focus, the sample size for this chapter is limited. The fieldwork is therefore presented as snapshots of experience to begin to develop insights into the relationships between mobilities, whiteness and death/remembrance in contemporary Ireland rather than a large-scale empirical account of practice. Through both a limited number of interviews, and also observations of cemeteries, it opens questions for further research about ‘whiteness’ and the ‘work’ of belonging in this context.

There is limited academic research into practices of death and remembrance in Irish Traveller communities in Ireland. We next set out some background information to contextualise the findings we go on to present, but these should be seen as generalisations for context and will not accurately reflect the whole experience for all groups or families. The Traveller community generally follow the traditions of the majority Irish Catholic community in death and remembrance, but in distinctive ways. Burial is practiced, and each part of a funeral – the ‘lay out,’ the Mass, the funeral, prayers at the graveside, a graveside Mass 1 month after burial and a graveside Mass 1 year after burial and erecting the headstone – are seen as essential to a respectful and dignified burial (interviews with Mary, a Traveller woman in her 50 s; and Carole, a representative of Traveller advocacy organisation, also in her 50 s).³ These are all large events, with an expectation that the wider community will attend and travel far to do so. Again, large numbers of people attending a funeral is common among the Irish ‘settled’ communities too, but Traveller funerals tend to be larger (interviews with Mary and Carole). Cemeteries and family plots are very important places for memorialisation and connection to ancestors and family, and despite aspects of nomadism in life, a specific cemetery is used for families across many generations. Traveller communities in Ireland experience higher levels of traumatic death (suicide and other sudden death) than the general population (Tobin et al., 2020) and ethnographic research suggests that memorial practices of Traveller communities have become more elaborate and larger in scale in the last few decades, which can be problematic in terms of the cost incurred for families of the deceased (Gmelch & Gmelch, 2014). Due to this limited body of work, when reflecting on the practices observed and discussed in our research, we also draw on literature discussing death practices of Travellers in England but wish to highlight that we understand there are marked contextual, historical and cultural differences. Rather, this is a question of drawing on what academic literature there is to help understand these issues in Ireland.

Unsurprisingly, Polish funerals in Ireland also remain an under-researched topic, but it is useful here to highlight some of the funerary traditions from a Polish context to see how practices are accommodated or have changed. Polish traditions have developed out of Slavic culture, influenced by the Christian church from the Middle Ages onwards (Kubiak, 2016). Burial is the main means of bodily disposal with cremation rates reaching 15% in 2012 in Poland (ibid.) and attitudes to cremation vary by age, education and region (urban/rural). In the post-war era, funeral practices were dominated by state undertakers, but remained influenced by Catholic cultural practices which also supports the low uptake of cremation. From the 1990s onwards, funerals and memorials have become more lavish and expensive although there is variation amongst groups of people. However, 95% of funerals in Poland are currently Catholic ceremonies, linking to family expectations even if individuals are non-believers.

5 Experiences and Understandings of the Polish Community

The paper now turns to present findings from research with the Polish community in Cork. Three tentative themes emerge from this. The first is the sense of choice in bodily disposal and remembrance, and how this relates to wider decisions about mobility in the life course of those related to the deceased. This relates closely to the second theme: the importance of maintaining cultural heritage and identity within a new nation; in death as well as in life. Finally, the chapter reflects on what this means about the identity of the public space of the cemetery and of Cork/Irish identity.

If they think about Ireland as their home country they want to bury members of his family here; if not, they go to crematorium and keep an urn in his houses or in special places in the cemetery. (Father Andrzej, Polish priest based in Cork)

The above quote expresses the overall strategy and decisions for Polish people and families faced with a death in Ireland: it is based on personal choice and means and is not curbed by limitations imposed by Irish regulations. Choices around burial and cremation spring from personal perspectives on belonging and assumptions about where ‘home’ is (see McClymont et al., 2023), both for the deceased and for their family, mediated through the differing costs for burial, cremation, and repatriation of bodies or cremated remains. Therefore, Polish community members may choose to be buried in Ireland, or cremated in Ireland and either then send remains back to Poland or to keep in a special place, be this in a house or cemetery, in Ireland or in Poland. The scope for mobility or mooring is wide here. This is assisted by the structural support of the Roman Catholic church. As Jozef, a Polish community support worker in his 40 s, notes: “Well, the Polish priests are actually set in the Irish dioceses and are able to assist in the burial process.” This institutional support is important both for recent migrants to be able to access and understand the system and their choices, but also for Irish burial authorities in understanding needs and wishes of the Polish community.

For some in the Polish community memorialisation appears to be less problematic in contrast with the Traveller community as discussed below. There are also instances where it appears to reflect a wish to be part of Irish society, as Jozef expressed: “We are here to get integrated but we don’t want to lose our heritage.” John, a stonemason we spoke to commented that of the few Polish headstones he has worked on, most do not choose to have them inscribed in Polish: “There’s not many. They keep it English most of them.” These comments are reflected in the experience of visiting cemeteries in Cork, where many graves with Polish names or other identity markers can be found with inscriptions in English. In these cemeteries, it is not uncommon to find Irish graves marked in both English and Irish (see Fig. 8.1), so dual language memorials do not therefore cross boundaries of acceptance in ways that they might do in other settings. This raises interesting challenges for notions of belonging – of accepting and acceptance (Clarke, 2020); becoming part of Irish society does not necessitate a total loss of Polish identity: dual belonging appears to be manageable in this situation. From our research, the balance of integration and heritage retention for Polish migrants does not appear problematic in death and memorialisation, linking to the expressed attitudes of pro-migrant and pro-EU policy discussed above. Irish identity, and the recent experiences of moving from a society of emigration to immigration, appears open to of the idea of diaspora and distant or dual belonging and offers more varied and diverse possibilities as acceptable national identities (although this is not always the case as noted by Lentin, 2007).

Fig. 8.1

Similarities between Irish and Polish graves in terms of style and layout, St James’ cemetery, Chetwynd. (Photograph by Danielle House)

On the columbarium in Cork, we observed Polish plaques (see Fig. 8.2) marking cremated remains interred there. This resonated with Gallagher and Trzebiatowska’s (2017) comments about how migration allows individuals to revisit what is important about their faith and identity in the freedoms of a new context. The ability to choose cremation (rather than the traditional practice of burial) and mark remains in this way appears to demonstrate this, and may indicate the security in an identity which must accept changes in practice rather than hold tight to traditions, as well as factors such as economics or uncertainty about the duration of migration to Cork. The outworkings of individual identity and its marking on gravestones and memorials have wider significance than that just pertaining to individual mourners. Cemeteries are important public spaces in any city (McClymont, 2016; Skår et al., 2018) and those who are memorialised there reflect certain aspects of the history of that place. The increase in migration to Cork and subsequent migrant graves will change the landscape of the city. This was noted by Jozef:

Fig. 8.2

Polish Cremated remains, translated as ‘Forever in our hearts. Rest in peace,’ St James’ cemetery, Chetwynd. (Photograph by Danielle House)

Ireland as a country is based on the clans. They’ve been for years here, you have O’Driscoll’s here, McCarthy’s there, kind of, we are newcomers! We are all different. And this country has been isolated for years, there was no such immigration. So something new for them as well. We’re changing the focus, the scope.

It will be interesting to see whether this remains as seemingly uncontentious in the future and is likely to map out in tandem with wider political, social and economic changes in Cork and in Ireland.

6 Experiences and Understanding of the Traveller Community

As expected from the literature and policy reviews, and the history of Travellers in Ireland, the experience of Traveller communities in Cork’s cemeteries was much more problematic than that of Polish migrants. In this section, four themes are also drawn from the findings, which in part parallel the discussion above. It first outlines issues of discrimination, both explicit and implicit. It then looks at how identity maintenance is experienced and managed very differently from that of the Polish community, and then what role Traveller graves have in Irish and Corkonian public space. Finally, it reflects on what these findings reveal about mobility, place attachment and family from the perspective of a nomadic culture, and how this is still so contrary to mainstream or settled understandings of space.

A key issue of contention is the acceptable size of memorials in Cork’s cemeteries. Headstone height is limited to 1.2 meters (see Fig. 8.3) and there is also a proscription on plot boundaries and other adornments. This is for ease in the maintenance of the lawn cemetery style, and regulations on headstone size are viewed as fair, equalising and aesthetically pleasing by the authorities, with officials and stonemasons noting points such as “it’s only fair to everyone, if you have a plot and someone puts up a big headstone, so it’s fair. And everyone’s the same […] It’s uniform, it’s easier to maintain” (Mike, cemetery registrar, male, 50 s).

Fig. 8.3

Signs regulating cemetery space, St Mary’s cemetery, Curraghkippane. (Photograph by Danielle House)

However, amongst the Traveller community and their representatives, the view is that, as the only community which this policy adversely affects, this has been a deliberate policy choice to limit their preferred memorialisations which are traditionally larger than those of the settled community (see Figs. 8.4 and 8.5 for the impact of these regulations). This is perceived by some within the community as part of ongoing attempts to make Traveller communities assimilate and change lifestyle and cultural practices to ‘fit in’ with those of mainstream Ireland:

Fig. 8.4

Large-scale memorial for a Traveller family, St Catherine’s cemetery, Kilcully. (Photograph by Danielle House)

Fig. 8.5

Traveller memorials with height restriction in place, St James’ cemetery, Chetwynd. (Photograph by Danielle House)

What came about for us is that we would have bigger monuments on our graves than settled people. I don’t know why but it’s important for us. And each local authority passed a law that they need to be a certain height, you know. So Settled [people] aren’t forced to build higher, we were forced to build smaller ones without any explanation. Again, without explicitly saying this is for Travellers but we are the ones that have bigger headstones. (Carole, representative of a Traveller advocacy organisation)

For the Traveller community, maintaining identity, in death as well as in life, is highly important. This has a very different dynamic to it than with the Polish community in Cork, due to different histories, and different perceptions of their power or repression in Irish society. Dual belonging is not something as readily achievable: working towards, or achieving one set of affiliations requires the disavowal of another one. This is explained well in Carole’s comments: “The thing is, marginalised groups, minorities, who’ve had so much change forced on them, tend to hold on to traditional stuff much more. Whereas for Settled people traditional stuff, they would have let it go.” Mary describes: “Over the years a lot of Settled people have given out about [large Traveller memorials]. They say that Travellers’ tombstones are overpowering the other graves.” Yet she goes on to explain how despite their resistance to assimilation, they have to a large extent conformed. Due to the height restrictions headstones have got smaller, and due to the prohibition on grave curbs they no longer build small walls around the tombs: “In the past Travellers would have those, they’d build little walls around the tombs, but they’re not allowed to do that anymore. So that’s changed as well.”

The importance of memorialisation has a long history in Traveller communities in England as is noted in Okely’s (1983) classic ethnography: “an inability to afford an appropriate monument is seen to bring shame upon the family” (Okely, 1983, p. 195, cited in Parker & McVeigh, 2013, p. 306). This is seen in more detail in the following two comments from the same respondent:

It’s to show their love for the person that’s gone. If it’s a parent they show that those parents was loved and the family can’t do enough for them. If it was a young person, they show the grief of the loss of that young person. And the only way they have doing that now is by getting these elaborate grave tombstones and that. They can’t do it in person anymore, but they can do it in the elaborate tombstones. And it’s a sense of pride as well, to show the country and show other Travellers we’re not going to let our loved ones down, we’re going to give them the best tombstone that money can buy. (Mary)

This demonstrates the (unintentional) harm done by the universal regulations on memorial height and other restrictions (see Maddrell et al., 2021). Elaborate and large headstones are a very important part of Traveller culture and community, and by disallowing them, Traveller communities feel they cannot honour the dead in the ways they wish to. However, in maintaining their chosen memorial practices, they continue not to ‘belong’ to (settled) Irish society. Another way this is manifest is through the proscription on purchasing adjacent plots and plots in advance of a death. Mary gave a story of her relative, who is concerned for her brother who is buried alone, not in a family plot:

She’s so anxious that he’s not left on his own you know. In years to come if his wife or some of his family are there with him it’s not such a thing. But for us, and I don’t know if this comes from the exclusionary experience in life, that even in death we don’t want to be left on our own do you know what I mean? (Mary)

As discussed above, within the Polish community in Cork, there is a predominant sense of choice guiding decisions about bodily disposal and remembrance: choice for repatriation or burial in Ireland; choice about memorial practices which are accepted in local cemeteries. This is notable in the adoption of cremation and use of a columbarium in Cork. Changing from traditional burial does not appear to be a threat to Polish diaspora identity, as inscriptions can still be in Polish. However, this sense of acceptance and choice is not present within the Traveller community. A history of policies of assimilation and denial of value in Traveller culture have led to retrenchment of practices for fear of loss of identity. Moreover, there is not a ‘homeland’ to be returned to as Travellers are indigenously Irish rather than (recent) migrants. This makes official practices which work to assimilate Traveller traditions, in burial and memorialisation as well as in other aspects of life, even more threatening because they are perceived as an attack on their identity and being.

Here, the role of Traveller graves in and as part of public space raises different issues to those discussed in relation to the Polish community. Instead of Traveller memorials being perceived as part of the civic history of a place, representing its diversity and change, Traveller respondents viewed cemeteries as private places for the families of the deceased, but shared spaces for both the Traveller and Settled communities:

No, I think [a cemetery is] private. I think it’s private. When we go to a graveyard we go and look at all Travellers in the graveyard, if we never knew the Travellers. But know there’s a Travellers grave we’d go and look at their grave, and bless their grave. (Mary)

Carole commented:

For the graveyards, it’s probably the one leveller, you know. We’re all the same, in the graveyard we’re all the same. In fact I suppose we’re more united in the graveyard than any place else. There’s a man two plots down from my brother who was a big business man in Cork. We talk to his family standing by the grave. In any other context we would never meet or talk to each other. (Carole)

This first comment differs from the wider debate in literature about the public vis-à-vis private nature of graves in a public cemetery (Woodthorpe, 2010). Traveller graves are held in high regard by the Traveller community, and seen as their community space, rather than only private spaces of mourning for a family. Traveller graves connect the community to itself, giving memorials a different meaning and importance. Yet as the second comment explains, cemeteries are a shared space where the Traveller and Settled communities come together, despite potential conflict over memorial aesthetics and traditions.

The importance of proper memorialisation for Traveller communities demonstrates the different understandings of community held by nomadic (even if not ‘on the road’) communities as opposed to the sedentist majority/state. Their sense of place and belonging is not bounded by fixed notions of space be this at the city or country scale (Cork or Poland for example) but by the sense of Traveller identity and (extended) family pride. This reflects the mindset of nomadism discussed by Delaney (2003) which sets Traveller identity apart from other national identities and demonstrates its significance for death, remembrance and memorialisation practices. The paper now reflects further on the experiences of these two communities for the ideas of identity and belonging discussed above.

7 Discussion: Identity and Acceptance in the Cemetery

Our exploratory research into cemeteries, bodily disposal and remembrance practices in Polish and Traveller communities in Cork reveals the multi-layered and hierarchical experience of having ritual and memorial traditions accepted in public cemeteries. Further, it demonstrates how whiteness is a differentiated experience; serving as routes into, or barriers to, acceptance and belonging. It also reveals the importance and complexity of cemeteries as public spaces, civic spaces and private emotional spaces.

Polish experience demonstrated how the institutional privileges of shared white Roman Catholicism allowed for matters of burial, bodily disposal and remembrance to be managed positively, and as a process in which those involved felt they had informed choices which allowed for their personal wishes and cultural heritage to be respected. Burial or cremation in Ireland is one choice, whereas repatriation, of a body or of ashes is also possible and supported notwithstanding relevant concerns about individuals’ finances. Polish migrant culture is flexible enough to accommodate pragmatic and personal choice around place of burial and dispersal. When living as a migrant across two countries, place-based attachment could be expressed in either or both, with the dispersal options in Ireland not excluding or denying Polish heritage. Ireland’s cultural as well as religious Roman Catholicism provided a general assumption of burial as preferred method of bodily disposal, and hence no issues of inequitable costs as seen elsewhere (see Maddrell et al., 2021 for a discussion of the impact of price rises on Muslim burial in Huddersfield) or fears of land shortages (see McManus, 2015). This was compounded by the institutional support of Polish priests as part of the Irish diocese. Further, there was a sense that an increased Polish presence, in life and death, would be a positive attribute to Irish cities, to increase their diversity and hence cosmopolitanism as new sites of immigration rather than emigration, though it remains to be seen whether this attitude will change over time. Here whiteness as a shared identity does not remove all differences between the Polish migrant community and the majority Irish community but our research also demonstrates the ease of accommodation of certain practices at least at the level of policy-makers and community representatives.

Traveller experience revealed the converse: whiteness and Roman Catholicism did not serve as privilege, or easy routes to acceptance, but instead can be seen as masking the discrimination and prejudice faced by the Traveller community. Institutional norms of memorialisation, codified in cemetery and memorial regulations, are expressed by the authorities as fairness and equality for all. The aim of cemetery managers in establishing these is to ensure that no-one is negatively impacted by the behaviour and choices of those with rights to a neighbouring grave. In our research, these regulations have proved unproblematic for Polish migrants, as well as for the small but increasing number of Muslim burials in Cork, so these regulations are not necessarily to the detriment of accommodating the needs of all other groups. However, Traveller culture, and the attendant expression of this in wishes about memorialising deceased loved ones, are beyond the scope of acceptable normality as defined by the Cork burial authorities. This resonates with Traveller experience elsewhere, as Parker and McVeigh note: “Oversize memorials are also a common feature [of Traveller graves in England]; some of the largest cover multiple plots, while others contain vases, plaques and other graveside offerings that are positioned outside kerb boundaries – in contravention of cemetery regulations” (Parker & McVeigh, 2013, p. 305). They go on to offer an interesting explanation for this:

A further possibility is that the memorials have taken the place of expensive custom-built caravans as a medium for the expression of understandings of ethnicity, wealth and status. The growth in the size, expense and decoration of memorials with explicit expressions of Gypsy-Traveller identity has occurred at the same time as restrictions have been placed upon travelling, and the manufacture of custom-built caravans has ceased. The cemetery has now become one of the primary areas of interaction between different Gypsy-Traveller families, as well as between Gypsy-Travellers and non-Gypsies. As a consequence, its importance in the negotiation of identity may have grown. (Parker & McVeigh, 2013, p. 305, emphasis added)

This is interesting for two reasons which relate to the themes of this chapter. The first is that due to their status as a ‘forgotten’ minority, the Traveller community are often viewed as troublesome individuals rather than a group with distinct traditions and needs which could be accommodated within a framework of multiculturalism: their acceptance as an ethnic group as late as 2017 in Ireland supports this claim. The Traveller populations are small – less than 1% of Cork’s population – and due to their whiteness can be overlooked as a minority that needs support through multicultural policies. Yet although overlooked in terms of superficially positive multicultural policy, the Traveller community are certainly not forgotten by authorities, who comment on and complain about Traveller behaviour.

Second, distinctions between the settled and Traveller communities may be sharply drawn by members of both groups, but their shared whiteness leads these differences to be framed differently than between a non-white racialised group. As Delaney (2003) argues, Travellers, because of their nomadism, were not see as part of the Irish nationalist project. Moreover, their practices remain outside of the domestication of national space, and therefore are unacceptably alien (Hunter, 2016, following Hage, 1996). However, as they are spatially (and historically) located within Ireland, they do not have another national identity to claim. Instead, their sameness, or lack of different and explicit national identity, makes their claims to different needs for memorialisation less easy to define and justify. Instead, they could be classed as deviant individuals who will not follow codes which are set out on generalised principles of fairness (as expressed by Matthew Parris in the UK press, see Purdy-Moore, 2021). In turn, this accentuates feelings of fear and defensiveness in Traveller communities, for whom maintaining their cultural identity becomes more important, and this is in turn again expressed through practices of memorialisation as one of the few publicly visible and lasting material edifices of their identity.

The notion of belonging as reciprocal is useful here to think about the implications and meaning of this more fully. As Clarke (2020) discussed (explored above), to belong you need to want to be part of the community in question, and it needs to want you as part of it. With the Polish community in Cork, this reciprocity of belonging appears to be evident; acceptance and integration are facilitated and welcomed, but not at the expense of loss of cultural heritage, reinforced in events such as the Polska Eire Festival which describes itself as “a nationwide celebration of Irish-Polish friendship and culture” (Polska Eire Festival, 2019). Being buried in Ireland with an epitaph in English, with Polish symbolism or noting of country of origin on the grave, appears to be a positive choice for those who wish it, and there are other options for those who do not. Traveller identity, on the other hand, stands firmly outside of such patterns of belonging. Traveller practices, although in so many ways the same Roman Catholic traditions, do not readily fit with official practices, and Travellers feel their identity threatened by calls to comply with regulations; seeing these as part of a legacy of assimilation rather than an opportunity to ‘belong’ and therefore even and fair policy for all cemetery users. This difference in experience of flexibility around death practices is shaped by Ireland as a country and its institutions, but very much about the communities themselves. The Polish community does not need to be defensive it its identity expression, as the advocacy organisation representative explained, they want to be integrated while not losing their heritage. Within the Traveller community there is a strong social pressure to conform to community tradition, even if this means financial debt. Therefore, some of the restriction of cultural hybridity comes from settled communities (regulations), some from Traveller communities (social pressure), and some comes from the interface of the two where their culture feels threatened and must be defended and strengthened. These differing views are reflected in the way cemetery space is perceived by both groups. Polish representatives see the emergence of more Polish memorials as a positive, diversifying claim on the public space of the cemetery and part of a process of settling, whilst Travellers see their memorials as deeply connected to identity, ancestry and place – a place to defend and celebrate their culture.

8 Conclusions

To conclude, we turn to questions of ‘deathscapes’ and of mobility and reflect on what our findings say to these wider debates and questions of belonging and exclusion. Within Cork’s cemeteries, whiteness operates in different ways, or the differentiated privileges of whiteness are revealed as patterns of inclusion and exclusion within this. Both accepted practices (burial in perpetuity, with marked graves) and established restrictions (heights of memorials, kerb marking) allow for the inclusion of diverse peoples and practices, but remain based on cultural assumptions of ‘normality’ and attendant exclusions of deviant practice. These assumptions lie within sedentist notions of national identity and place-based belonging which in turn frame the importance of burial and the marking of graves in ways which are different to the views of Traveller communities. As Parker and McVeigh (2013) note in relation to experience in England, the cemetery therefore becomes one of the few places where the settled community and Traveller community encounter each other, and one of the few spaces where this differential identity can be performed or presented. It therefore becomes an arena of contested practices and contested belonging, unlike the Polish community whose diaspora identity seems to be managed and positively contained within Irish cemeteries, both accepting of and being accepted within majority practice (Parker & McVeigh, 2013, following Clarke, 2020).

Our research findings raise interesting points for reflection on the idea of mobilities and migrations, and how ‘deathscapes’ offer a unique and important lens in the understanding of these issues. The contrast between the Polish and Traveller communities in Cork reveal complexities around notions of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders,’ woven together by Roman Catholicism, whiteness and ideas of national and internationalism. Moreover, it reveals the opportunities for and limits to the notion of belonging. Polish needs are framed within positive individual choices: ones where past and future, or hybrid identities can co-exist and their presence in cemeteries as public spaces are seen positively, reflecting Ireland’s European and Internationalist status. The nomadism of the Traveller community, whether practiced in terms of caravan dwelling on the road or not, unsettles these notions of mobility. For Travellers, identity is not marked through language and national symbols but through a sense of respect for the deceased expressed by the scale of a memorial; something meaningful within the cultural expectations of this community, and necessarily different from that of the settled community. Ways of managing this are challenging, and call for deeper and different understandings of how identity is mediated through and by mobilities.