The transracial mother/child dyad and the politics of citizenship in Ireland

During the last two decades, Ireland has witnessed extensive migratory change which has dramatically impacted the overall profile of the Irish population. In particular, the arrival of immigrants of a non-white phenotype has unsettled narrow racialised constructions of Irish identity (King-O’Riain 2007). In recent years, the multiracial family formation and the social phenomenon of mixed ‘race’ children have also emerged as features of the Irish familial landscape. Moreover, the Citizenship Referendum 2004 re-configured Ireland’s citizenship regime by re-affirming Irishness as firmly located within the realm of ‘blood-ties’ and kinship: a purity of ‘race’ that has evolved across generations (Crowley et al. 2006). By thus privileging the principles of jus sanguinis, it is fair to say that racialised discourses of inclusion and exclusion are deeply interwoven into the very fabric of Irish society and its institutions (Ni Laoire et al. 2011). In fact, the mixed ‘race’ Irish citizen, who simultaneously embodies the potential for assimilation into, and de-stabilisation of the Irish nation, raises important questions related to notions of citizenship and political membership (Enright 2011). In the context of everyday encounters, such citizens can be positioned as ‘other’ and as manifesting incompatibility with an authentic Irish identity (Morrison 2004). Through the unique lens of the family milieu, this thesis aims to provide insight into how citizenship is lived by the mixed ‘race’ citizen and more specifically, how the racialised dynamics of citizenship are negotiated by the white mother and her mixed ‘race’child(ren) who are positioned differently vis-à-vis legitimate Irish citizenship. In fact, the growth of the multiracial family constellation challenges the public-private dichotomy which has been a defining feature of social and political theories of citizenship to date (Turner 2008). Framed by theoretical concepts related to citizenship, gender and ‘race’, this research is guided by the overarching question ‘how are issues of ‘race’ and belonging mediated within the transracial mother/child dyad’? I draw on interviews with key mixed ‘race’ activists and the experiential narratives of twelve white Irish mothers and fifteen mixed ‘race’ (black African/white Irish) children. Although the racialised insider/outsider dichotomy is at work in the interviews and continues to frame terms of belonging in Ireland, the narratives of both mother and child move us beyond the binary in term of both subjectivity and lived experience. Indeed, their everyday narratives point towards a re-calibration of citizenship at the margins and offer new framings of national identity. However, being positioned in the paradoxical, in-between space of the nation, it becomes apparent that the (non) belonging experiences of the transracial mother/child dyad are rendered invisible within existing parameters of a politics of citizenship which fails to incorporate alternative types of political subjectivity. However, the lived experiences of the transracial mother/child dyad can be captured by a re-theorisation of political subjectivity through Kristeva’s (1991) work, which acknowledges the incomplete and fragmented nature of the subject. This thesis, therefore, contributes to wider theoretical debates related to how political subjectivity may be experienced beyond the statist insider/outsider framework.