Irish women in London: national or hybrid diasporic identities?

While culture, religion, and economics are frequently used to describe and theorize nationalisms and national identity, gender and migration are frequently overlooked (see Smith; Anderson; Gellner). Jill Vickers asserts that the lack of attention to gender relations in the formation of collective identity and the development of cultural cohesion has led to large gaps in the theorization of nationalisms. Nira Yuval-Davis asks why women are "hidden" in the various theorizations of nationhood, when women play such a central role in the biological, cultural, and symbolic reproduciton of nations. Women's guests for national identity and their complicity with many of the practices that uphold national identities are as yet unexamined (see Curthoys 173). Women's migration, movement, and identification with nation or place have, in my view, important contributions to make to our understanding of how national identity is produced and how it changes across and within national boundaries.