Irish Migration, 1900–1950

Abstract

As migration within and between most parts of the world accelerated in the twentieth century, there was a gradual decline in the importance of Europe (Hoerder 2002, 443–583; Castles and Miller 2003; Bayly 2004). Global economic and political forces, already significant in shaping Irish migration patterns in the century before 1900, became all the more powerful in the century ahead (MacLaughlin 1997, 7–10; O’Toole 1997; Kuhling and Keohane 2007, 55–62; Inglis 2008, 106–14). We might think of Irish emigration as a component of one phase of globalisation eventually giving way to immigration to Ireland as a component of a second phase (O’Sullivan 2006, 118).