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Narratives of ‘Innocent IrishChildhoods’: Return Migration andIntergenerational Family DynamicsCaitríona Ní Laoire aa Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century , UniversityCollege CorkPublished online: 30 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Caitríona Ní Laoire (2011) Narratives of ‘Innocent Irish Childhoods’: ReturnMigration and Intergenerational Family Dynamics, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37:8,1253-1271, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2011.590928

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Narratives of ‘Innocent IrishChildhoods’: Return Migration andIntergenerational Family DynamicsCaitrıona Nı Laoire

There is growing recognition of the significance of circular and return migration in

contemporary global migration flows. Although many return moves involve adults

accompanied by their children, these migrant children are a relatively invisible and

under-researched group. In this article I explore the experiences of children who have

moved to Ireland with their Irish return-migrant parent(s)*a group who were born and

spent part of their childhoods in Britain, the US and elsewhere, and who, as part of the

Irish return-migration phenomenon of the late 1990s�2000s, have moved ‘home’ with

their parent(s) to a country with which they have strong, yet often ambiguous, ties. Using

participative research methods with children and parents in some of these families, I

explore the interrelation of notions of childhood, identity and place in the return

narratives of both the parents and the children. Irish return migration is often

constructed in terms of home-coming and is assumed to involve the unproblematic

reinsertion of Irish nationals in their home country. I argue that, related to this, the

notion of ‘innocent Irish childhoods’ permeates familial narratives of return migration.

Adult return migrants construct their own and their children’s migrations around this

particular idyllisation. I reflect on the ways in which children in return-migrant families

relate to this notion, and may challenge but also reproduce these idealised narratives of

return. In this way, I show that involving children as active research participants can

highlight internal dynamics in migrant families and challenge hegemonic constructs of

return migration.

Keywords: Return Migration; Children; Family Migration; Narrative; Childhood;

Ireland

Caitrıona Nı Laoire is Research Coordinator at the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century at University

College Cork. Correspondence to: Dr C. Nı Laoire, c/o Dept of Geography, University College Cork, Cork,

Republic of Ireland. E-mail: c.nilaoire@ucc.ie.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Vol. 37, No. 8, September 2011, pp. 1253�1271

ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/11/081253-19 # 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2011.590928

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Introduction

This study is situated in the context of emerging literatures which deconstruct both

the mythologisation of return migration (e.g. Christou 2006; Long and Oxfeld 2004;

Markowitz and Stefansson 2004) as well as the adult-centred nature of migration

research (Bushin 2009; Dobson 2009; and the other articles in this special themed

issue of JEMS). I begin by looking at the place of children in the return-migration

literature. After an explanation of my methodology, I explore narratives of return and

‘innocent Irish childhoods’ from the parents’ perspective, segueing into their

children’s own narratives and experiences of this childhood concept. These are

analysed from the viewpoint both of the notion of the freedom, space and safety

which life in suburban or rural Ireland offers them, and of the ideas of the innocence

and lack of sophistication prevalent in their parents’ notions of an idyllic childhood

in Ireland. The children’s accounts of their own migration experiences sometimes

reproduce but also frequently challenge those of their parents. I conclude by

recommending that researchers incorporate children’s perspectives much more

routinely in any studies of the family-migration phenomenon.

Children and Return Migration

Recent international migration statistics point to the significance of circular and

return migration in contemporary global migration flows, as migrants are increas-

ingly likely to take part in temporary or cyclical moves (IOM 2008). Although many

return moves will probably involve adult migrants accompanied by their children

(given that restrictions on family migration tend not to apply in cases of return

migration), these migrant children are a relatively invisible and under-researched

group. Indeed, family migration research in general tends to overlook children’s

experiences (Bushin 2009). Some studies do point to the importance of the presence

of children in families’ decisions regarding whether to stay or return. For example,

Dustmann’s (2003) behaviouralist model shows that the presence of children can

actually make intention to and realisation of return by parents less likely, due to the

perceived long-term social and material benefits to the children of life in the host

society. Research by Ley and Kobayashi (2005) appears to support this, finding that

Hong Kong migrant families in Canada seem less likely to return to Hong Kong at the

stage in their life-course when they have children. Indeed, having children is believed

to reduce the propensity to migrate in general (Fischer and Malmberg 2001).

According to Tsuda (2004: 134), ‘the presence of family produces a greater social

commitment among immigrants to the host society, therefore making them more

willing to become settlers and permanent residents’. This is related not just to

schooling and education (see also McSpadden 2004), but also to the positive roles

which children can play in facilitating parents’ social connections and involvement in

host communities (Orellana 2001; Tsuda 2004).

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However, other research suggests that, when migrants with children do return to

their country of origin, this is also often constructed by the parents as being for the

benefit of the children. For example, Gmelch (2004) found that some return migrants

to Barbados felt that the move would provide their children with better educational

opportunities than were available to them in inner-city schools in Britain. In an Irish

context, Nı Laoire (2008) argues that return migration is closely associated with the

child-bearing and -raising stage of the life-course among recent return migrants, and

that return migrants point to the lifestyle benefits of life in Ireland for their children.

It could be argued, then, that both staying and returning decisions in families with

children are rationalised by parents with reference to their children’s best interests.

While it is clear that the presence of children is a very important factor in families’

decisions about return migration, research that recognises children’s and young

people’s subjectivities in this process is rare (although see Hatfield 2010; Knorr 2005).

Little is known about children’s involvement in family decision-making around

return or about their experiences of return, which is unsurprising given the lack of

research on children’s roles more generally in family migration (Bushin 2009).

Gmelch’s (1980) review of studies on return migration refers to the paucity of

research which even mentions children, pointing to one exception, King’s (1977)

study. This study highlighted the problems, including language and cultural

difficulties, experienced by children of school age who moved to Italy with their

return-migrant parents during the 1970s. Since then, research on children’s

experiences of ‘return’ migration has been piecemeal, fragmented and rare (although

considerable research has been conducted with adult second-generation or ancestral

‘return’*Christou 2006; King and Christou 2010; Potter and Phillips 2006; Tsuda

2004, 2009). Exceptions to this include Knorr’s (2005) study of the experiences of

children of German background who migrated from African countries to Germany

with their parents, and Hatfield’s (2010) research with children in migrant

households returning from Singapore to Britain.

Methodology

Previous research by the author explored narratives of return among recent adult

Irish return migrants (Nı Laoire 2008). This revealed that children and childhood

figure prominently in adult narratives of return migration in a number of ways. The

decision to return is often explained in terms of a belief that Ireland is a good place in

which to bring up children (see also Ralph 2009). This reflects powerful nostalgic

discourses of childhood idylls and the ‘myth of return’, in which migrants draw upon

selective and idealised memories of their own Irish childhoods in order to represent

Ireland as a better environment for their children to grow up in than was available in

the destination society. This is part of a broader ‘quality of life’ narrative in which the

return migrants tend to idealise the non-material aspects of life and to deny any

economic motivations for either the original emigration or the return, although a

large body of research attests to both the harsh economic conditions which

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1255

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contributed to high emigration in the 1980s (e.g. Mac Laughlin 1994) and the

economic boom which facilitated large-scale return in the 1990s�2000s (e.g. Jones

2003). This use of nostalgic discourses of childhood idylls raises questions regarding

the ways in which children relate to the family’s migration decision, how they

experience life in Ireland and how they relate to their parents’ hopes and expectations

about life there.

My research for this paper aimed to address these questions and to prioritise, as far

as possible, the voices of the children themselves in narrating their experiences. The

project set out to explore the experiences and identity processes of children who

move to Ireland with their return-migrant parent(s), focusing in particular on family

and peer dynamics, negotiations of inclusion/exclusion and identities, and on

relationships with place. The research involved working with families who had moved

to Ireland, where at least one parent was Irish, and there was at least one child who

took part in that move to Ireland. Some of the families had one or two Irish-born

parents and some had one or two second-generation Irish parents. Sixteen families*including 36 children and young people and 21 parents*participated. All lived in the

Cork�Kerry region in south-west Ireland, including urban, rural and suburban

locations, and all moved to Ireland during the period of high return migration

between 1995 and 2007. My study does not claim to be representative of all return-

migrant families in Ireland, which would be very difficult given the lack of data and

the dispersed and invisible nature of the population, but other studies have found

that return migrants have higher educational qualifications than the resident

population (Barrett and Trace 1998) and that male graduate returnees earn on

average 10 per cent more than similarly qualified residents (Barrett and O’Connell

2001: 10�11). However, the sample has a strong middle-class (though not entirely)

character and includes a range of geographical, family-composition and social-class

profiles which reflect as closely as possible the known characteristics of this

population.

My methodological approach*in its emphasis on the use of child-centred

participative techniques*draws on developments in what has been termed the

‘new social studies of childhood’. It is based both on the recognition of children as

social beings with agency and subjectivity, and as worthy research participants in

their own right (James and Prout 1990; James et al. 1998), and on the use of methods

which allow children to communicate in ways with which they feel comfortable and

competent (Thomas and O’Kane 1998). This meant using a range of techniques in

different combinations, including drawing, photography1 and a number of other

participative activities, depending on the participants’ ages, abilities and interests.

This is particularly important in research which aims to uncover children’s

perspectives in a context such as family migration where adult perspectives tend to

be dominant. It is through spending time with children and young people, and

creating the space in which they can communicate their own views rather than

perform particular expected roles, that alternative perspectives emerge from children

which go beyond and sometimes even contradict standard and learned narratives.

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This highlights the importance of using the kinds of participative technique with

children which allow these non-standardised or non-learned narratives to emerge. In

this way, a more open and dialogic model of socialisation than the direct parent-to-

child model emerges, whereby children are viewed as competent social actors and

active participants in parent�child relations (Wyness 2006). Children, therefore, are

viewed in this research as competent narrators of their own lives and, following

Smart’s (2006) approach to narrative analysis, the focus is not on eliciting children’s

experiences of migration as if their accounts are simple factual recollections, but on

understanding how they interpret and make sense of these past experiences.

My encounters with the children occurred in their homes, and all family members

were invited to participate. This family and home-based focus facilitates the

exploration of intergenerational dynamics and sets children in their familial contexts,

in line with the ‘children-in-families’ approach (Brannen and O’Brien 1996).

Research shows that the family context is an extremely important site for children

and young people’s construction of narratives and thus for their developing sense of

self (Bohanek et al. 2006). Repeat visits were made to each family (on average three to

four visits with each family over a period of up to two years between 2007 and 2009),

conducting participative research activities with the children and teenagers, and

in-depth interviews with their parents. Usually, the parents were not present during

my time with the children, and neither were children present when I interviewed the

parents. In the next sections I identify some of the key narratives of return migration

used by both parents and children, and explore in particular the extent to which they

construct shared narratives of return.

Narratives of Return and ‘Innocent Irish Childhoods’

Recent international surveys have suggested that Ireland compares very well

internationally on measures of quality of life, safety and childhood wellbeing.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures, Ireland is the safest country

in Europe (Lavery 2007) and, among 41 WHO countries, its children are some of the

most physically active and the most likely to have friends (Minister for Health and

Children 2008). In addition, Ireland’s quality of life was deemed in a 2005 article in

the Economist (‘The world in 2005’) to be the best in the world. Media coverage of

such figures reinforces older traditional idealised notions of the nature of Irish

childhoods. Kiberd (1995) identifies these notions as an important component of

early twentieth-century nationalism whereby ‘childhood had to be reinvented as a

zone of innocence, unsullied and intense, from which would emerge the free Irish

protagonist’ (Kiberd 1995: 101). It is quite likely that the recent positive global images

of life in Ireland are undergoing significant changes as a result of the current

economic crisis,2 even if they are images which emphasise the non-material aspects of

quality of life. However, this article focuses on return migration during the so-called

Celtic Tiger era and the associated phenomena of Ireland’s positive global image and

increased in-migration.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1257

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The return narratives of many of the participants reproduce the positive types of

evaluation reported above. Many of the parents narrate the family’s return migration

in terms of providing a ‘better’ life for their children, referring to safety, spatial

freedom, quality of life and ideas of childhood innocence. It is not unusual to

construct return migration in terms of such non-material gains, involving, as it often

does, a move from economically wealthy migrant-receiving societies to more

economically marginal sending societies. This is an inversion of the classic discourse

of migration as a move from the traditional to the modern in search of opportunity

and material gain. Related to this, return migration is usually rationalised in terms of

quality of life, family reasons and non-material benefits (for example Lidgard and

Gilson 2002; Nı Laoire 2008; Razum et al. 2005; Tiemoko 2003), although Ley and

Kobayashi (2005) show that this association of emigration with economic reasons

and of return with quality-of-life reasons can sometimes be reversed.

Representations of Ireland as a haven from modernity recur in the mythology of

Irish emigration, associated with particular notions of family, community and non-

material values (Duffy 1995; Miller 1990). In opposition to this, destination societies

(usually England or the US) tend to be represented as places of danger, immorality

and anomie, and of moral threat to innocent young Irish migrants (Ryan 2002). This

is based on pervasive ideological dualisms which associate Irish society with tradition,

community and authenticity, in opposition to the modernity and individualism of

more-urban, industrialised societies such as Britain and the US. Although it has its

roots in what Duffy (1995) terms the ‘thatched cottage’ nostalgia of the 1940s and

1950s, this classic dualistic motif persists, and is adapted and reworked by return

migrants as they make sense of their own biographies. Contemporary narratives of

return draw on historically very powerful, often essentialised, discourses of place,

migration and identity. For example, Hayward and Howard (2007) show that Irish

government campaigns to attract return migrants to Ireland during the ‘Celtic Tiger’

era used romantic and primordial images of Ireland. The romantic notion of return

to an idyllic place, based on highly polarised constructions of home and away, is one

narrative among many that are used by Irish return migrants. This does not imply

that return migrants necessarily have idealised and essentialised notions of Ireland,

but that they can use this narrative as an explanatory tool to make sense of their

emigration and return experiences.

I argue that these constructs of Ireland as a particular type of space intersect with

dominant Western concepts of childhood in narratives of return migration. The idea

of childhood as a time of innocence and vulnerability dominates in Western society,

contributing to essentialised notions of idealised innocent childhoods and of the

child as a being in need of protection (Jenks 1996; Valentine 1996). This idea was

influential in Irish nationalist discourse of the early twentieth century, which

represented childhood as an idealised zone of innocence, connected closely to the

celebration of the peasant and nostalgia for older forms of culture (Ferriter 2002;

Kiberd 1995). Throughout the last century, the idea of the child as a being in need of

protection was central to the dominant vision of the family as the bedrock of the Irish

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nation. Helleiner (1998) highlights the influence of the discourse of child protection

in Irish society in the twentieth century, pointing to a widespread acceptance,

reflected in the Irish Constitution’s emphasis on the centrality of ‘the family’, that a

protected childhood was a necessary foundation for adult Irish citizenship. However,

evidence shows that the state and society frequently failed to live up to these ideals

(Commission to Enquire into Child Abuse 2009; Ferguson 2000; Ferriter 2002).

Existing research suggests that narratives of ideal (Western) childhoods figure

prominently in accounts of migration and staying in diverse contexts. For example,

Bushin (2006) argues that ideas of idyllic rural childhoods are central to narratives of

counterurbanisation in England, while Horton (2008) highlights the centrality of

discourses of ideal modern childhoods in motivating migration from Latin America,

and others (for example, Tsuda 2004) show that migrant decisions to ‘stay’ are

frequently justified with reference to what is best for children. It could be argued,

then, that childhood, as a powerful and loaded concept, is mobilised in order to make

sense of, and give meaning to, different types of migration/staying decisions. I

therefore examine here the ways in which a particular notion of childhood is

mobilised in narratives of return migration. I explore the intersection of notions of

childhood, migration and place in both parents’ and children’s narratives and draw

on some ideas from developments in social studies of childhood and in children’s

geographies.

As Pain (2004) and others have pointed out, hegemonic ideals which associate

childhood with innocence and vulnerability inform assumptions of risk which are

articulated through highly spatialised discourses of fear, in other words, ideas of safe

and unsafe places. These intersect with particular notions of the rural as ‘safe and

good’ (Halfacree 1995; Haugen and Villa 2006). Jones (1997) and Valentine (1997)

have explored the ways in which dominant concepts of childhood, innocence and risk

intersect with such notions of rurality, contributing to the production of what Jones

(1997) calls ‘rural childhood idylls’*the powerful idea that the country childhood is

characterised by innocence, wildness, play, closeness to nature, safety and freedom.

This can be related to a tendency in late modernity to construct childhood in terms

of stability, nostalgia and sentiment, whereby the child becomes the site of adult

longings for nostalgic visions of times past (Jenks 1996). In an Irish context, the rural

has historically held a central place in the national imaginary and has been idealised

as epitomising qualities of authenticity, safety and nurturing, which have been

transferred to discourses of the nation itself and connected to idealisations of Irish

childhood.

Many adult return migrants in my research reproduce these dualisms as they

narrate their return migrations in terms of providing safe, healthy environments for

their children to grow up in. Embedded within this narrative of Irish return

migration is a belief in the existence of what could be called ‘innocent Irish

childhoods’, in other words, a belief that childhood as experienced in Ireland is

somehow characterised by innocence and safety, very similar to Jones’ (1997) ‘rural

childhood idylls’, but associated with the imagined national space of ‘Ireland’. For

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1259

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example, Maguire and Shirlow (2004) found in their research with parents and

children in Northern Ireland that images of the relative safety of rural Ireland were

opposed to representations of England as crime-ridden and dangerous. My adult

participants also construct ‘Ireland’ as a safe space for children in comparison to

other societies. For example, Gill3 compares the environment in which her young

children are growing up now, in a suburban location, to the large urban centre where

they had been living in the south of England:

You know, we lived in a town that had some really rough parts to it in Englandand . . . I know it’s the same here. You see it in [this town] don’t you? You know, it’sthe same everywhere. We haven’t escaped it here but I don’t think it is quiteas . . . you know, quite as hard as it can be in England in some places.

In this quote, Gill recognises that there are ‘rough parts’ in Ireland, just as there are in

England, but she emphasises that somehow it is worse in England. She goes on

suggest that teenagers in the town in which they currently live are not as threatening

as teenagers in England:

You go out around the town [in Ireland] in the daytime and you might have all the[secondary-school] children wandering around. You never feel, a big gang, a group,coming towards you like that, you never feel intimidated by them, they are kindof . . . .Whereas I think in England some of the secondary schools, if you are passinggangs that, like that, you could feel quite intimidated. Which I don’t here, so Iwould say that would be the main difference.

There is a suggestion here that ‘youth’ as an age category is more innocent and child-

like in Ireland. The notion that, in Ireland, children could enjoy their childhood and

not be forced to grow up too quickly, based on Western moral discourses of

childhood, recurs throughout my research. It draws on anti-modern ideologies which

associate spaces deemed to be outside modernity*for example, certain imaginings of

Ireland*with wholesomeness and innocence. In talking about the factors that

motivated his family’s return move from a town in southern England to a village in

rural Ireland, Michael reinforces ideas of freedom, safety and innocence:

It’s better for the kids, we done it for the kids. Whether they’ll appreciate it in a fewyears’ time, it’s hard to know. Certainly they’ve got a lot more freedom here. If youwere in England you just couldn’t be letting them out . . . it’s just madness overthere, you don’t know what*at [Caoimhe’s] age, now 16*she would have to beup on her own two feet and out working and that would be it, she would be classedas an adult, whereas here she’s still a child.

This helps Michael and his family to justify their migration decision and is a central

motif in their narratives of return migration. This idea is also reflected in parents’

narratives about education in Ireland. Popular discourses in Ireland, with which most

of these parents grew up, construct the Irish education system as equal or superior to

that found anywhere in the world. However, many of them find*when they move

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back to Ireland and can compare their children’s experiences in two different

systems*that their children appear to be further ahead than non-migrant children in

terms of proficiency in basic skills. Some of the parents interpret this positively and

comment about what they see as the more ‘laid-back’ and less competitive education

system in Ireland. Indeed this was one of the reasons given by Joan for moving back

to Ireland:

The system for children [where we lived previously]*they start school very earlyand a lot of intense schooling, a lot of parents doing a lot of work with childrenafter school all the time . . . particularly for boys. It was a competitive sort of systemfor boys going into secondary school systems. . . . I still felt strongly that the Irisheducation system was a good education system. You know, there are a lot of goodthings about it even with all the warts and all, yeah, I just sort of feel like kids canlearn, but still sort of enjoy their childhood.

In this way, these narratives of return migration stand in opposition to the idea that

staying in the modern, urban host society is ‘better’ for the children, by opposing the

stresses of competitive education systems and the anomie of modern urban societies

to the perceived child-centred nature of the ‘home’ society.

Of course, the realities of life for children in Ireland are far more complex than is

suggested by international surveys and these popular narratives of return migration.

For example, a closer examination of international data reveals that Ireland ranks

among the highest of WHO countries on measures such as alcohol and drug use

among children (Minister for Health and Children 2008), while it is accepted that the

provision of recreation and play facilities in Ireland is limited (National Children’s

Office 2004). It must also be pointed out that not all participants draw on the

narrative of innocent Irish childhoods and not all return migrants have been in a

position to buy into the positive global image of Ireland. There is anecdotal evidence

of families going abroad again because of unfulfilled expectations. My research, by its

very nature, focuses on those families who have not re-migrated; in deconstructing

their narrative of innocent Irish childhoods, I expose its inherent contradictions and

incoherence.

Children and Narratives of Innocent Irish Childhoods

Drawing on Bushin (2009), one could argue that, in the context of the power of

discourses which place very high expectations on parents to do the ‘best’ for their

children, decisions such as whether or not to migrate are rationalised with reference

to children’s best interests. It is not surprising, then, that return-migrant parents

narrate their migration decisions in this way. What is less predictable is how the

children themselves narrate their migration experiences and relate to their parents’

narratives. In the remainder of the article, I explore children’s engagements with these

narratives of innocent Irish childhoods*how children either reproduce or challenge

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1261

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such narratives within the context of experiences of everyday life in Ireland for these

families.

Some reproduce these narratives of innocent Irish childhoods unproblematically.

For example, Cait (age 15) talks about what she sees as the lifestyle differences

between England and Ireland. She refers here to when her family used to go to Ireland

on holiday before they moved back to a rural area. Cait reflects the ideological

dualism which associates Ireland with community and non-material values, while

England is constructed in terms of individualism and consumerism:

Coming to [this town] on a summer’s day and I’d go outside and I used to makefriends. You can’t do that in England*have your kids running around outside.Lives are a lot more private in England*people don’t tell you things because theydon’t know each other and why bother? Here, people have known each other forever. In England, people are coming and going so much, the aim is to have a goodjob, house, car. Here, people want to be happy.

Thirteen-year-old David also reproduces a traditional�modern dichotomisation of

Ireland and his previous country of residence*an urban area in East Asia*when

questioned on the best things about moving to [a suburb in] Ireland:

Probably being closer to family, I guess . . . Or, it’s a bit better here as well becauseit’s not as polluted, there’s more space, like we have a garden and there’s a lot morefields. But then it’s not as futuristic as [where we lived].

While he is positive about aspects of life in Ireland, such as being near family, the lack

of pollution and more space, he balances his list of ‘the best things about living here’

with a statement about where he moved from being more ‘futuristic’, implying that

this has positive connotations. Thus, he contradicts the moral discourse which

constructs the traditional as unproblematically ‘good’ and the ‘modern’ as

unproblematically ‘bad.’ So, while he reproduces the traditional�modern dualism,

it does not necessarily mean the same to him as it seems to mean to Cait, above. This

highlights the multiple and complex ways in which children and young people engage

with narratives of innocent Irish childhoods. This is explored in depth here in

relation to two key aspects of this narrative*freedom/safety/space and innocence/

lack of sophistication.

Freedom, Space and Safety

A prominent narrative among return-migrant parents is the idea that Ireland is a

good place in which to bring up children because of the greater freedom, space and

safety which the children can apparently enjoy there. It is interesting to examine the

extent to which this notion of freedom and safety coheres with the realities of the

everyday experiences of return migration. Many of the participants have, in fact,

moved from urbanised environments outside Ireland (such as large towns in the

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south of England or cities on the east coast of the US) to less-urbanised or more-rural

environments or to middle-class suburban areas with plenty of green spaces. Most of

the parents, and many of the children, feel that where they live now is safer for

children than where they lived previously. This means that the children do have

greater spatial freedom and do play more outdoors with neighbouring children in

areas where they are perceived to be safe while also being relatively free from adult

supervision. This notion of greater freedom for the children recurs frequently among

parents, whether living in suburban or in rural areas, as evidenced by Gill:

And the minute we arrived, all the [neighbouring] children were at the door andthen we didn’t see the children that week. They only came in to be fed and wateredand then they were off out again, which is lovely . . . we actually felt a sense of, thatthey were safe, and it was just a nice feeling really.

Children mirror their parents’ narratives. They emphasise the freedom associated

with playing on the green, or simply having ‘more space’. As part of my activities with

them, some of the children took photographs or drew maps of the green or the local

park, and made comments about the novelty of being able to play outdoors

unsupervised. Nine-year-old Jade, who moved to Ireland from Africa, commented:

Sometimes on that green there, we ride up and down there. . . . It’s a bigopportunity. It’s not like [where we used to live]. [There] you wouldn’t have somany, you wouldn’t have the greens outside your house, you’d play inside.

This also relates to notions of closeness to nature*perceived to be more available in

Ireland than elsewhere. Images of natural rural landscapes recur frequently in nine-

year-old Sally’s photographs because, she says, that is what she likes about Ireland*she moved from a large urban centre in southern England. She took the photographs

on day trips with her family and or on trips to the local park with her Dad, although

her everyday environment is quite different, as she lives on a suburban housing estate.

Each participant compiled an album of his or her photographs, and Sally also

included some text which attempted to inform the reader about her life in Ireland. In

other words, she used the activity as a way to present a story of her life in Ireland,

almost as a letter ‘back home’. Her emphasis on natural landscapes could be read as a

reproduction of familiar narratives of Ireland as associated with attractive scenery

and open spaces. In this way, she was fulfilling part of the promise on which their

move to Ireland was built by showing how the dream had become reality.

One could argue that Sally, Jade, David and Cait are not simply regurgitating

parental narratives of migration to Ireland, but actually reinforcing them in ways that

make sense for them to do so. In reinforcing these positive stories of moving to

Ireland, they are justifying the family’s decision and presenting a positive image to the

external world. Their stories are not necessarily either accurate or inaccurate; they are

selective representations of their lives which have meaning in the particular context of

the research encounter (see also Adams 2009). This is an alternative to viewing

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children as passive recipients of socialisation from parents and, instead, recognises

their active roles in the dynamics of intergenerational relations and in the research

process.

However my findings also reveal narratives which contradict these notions of safety

and freedom. For example, the teenagers in my study claim they actually have less

spatial freedom in Ireland than they had in their previous home.

Oh, don’t talk about freedom! Like, it’s not even my parents’ fault, it’s not that theysay ‘You can’t go out’. It’s almost, it’s too much of a hassle to try and go out at nightbecause it’s just too far and walking up the hill in the dark, it wouldn’t be safe . . . In[where I previously lived], at 12 I was able to take the public transport and it wassafe, yeah, and it’s like really kind of a hit . . . Strange, I’d more freedom when I was12 than I have now because of the public transport systems . . . (Emma, 16, movedfrom an urban area in continental Europe to a suburb in Ireland).

Emma talks of how difficult it is for her to go out on her own because of the lack of

public transport in the suburb where she lives. This is directly related to Ireland’s car-

dependent environment and extremely poor public transport provision. It is likely

that the issues of spatial confinement which generally affect young people living in

rural areas are widespread in Ireland as a result of its dispersed settlement patterns.

This affects these young people*who had become accustomed to having more

independence and freedom*in terms of their social interactions and personal

development and may possibly contribute to isolation. In this context, Emma

constructs her own narrative, which contradicts the notion of ‘freedom and safety’

because it does not make any sense to her in the context of her experience of life in

Ireland as a teenager.

In the families who moved to rural areas, children also raise the issue of lack of

things to do. While they may have more space in which to play, there are not

necessarily any neighbours to play with and, as they get older, there is a perceived lack

of social facilities for young people. In one family, who live in a small rural village,

there was a clear contradiction between the father’s view and the children’s. The

father told me that there was more to do for the children there than in the town

where the family had previously lived in southern England. However, this is what his

12-year-old daughter, Jane, told me about where they currently live:

There’s nothing really fun like. There’s a park but that’s back by the sports field.That’s all we have around here. We don’t really have any other things that are fun todo.

Jane’s brother also told me that in England there was more to do than in Ireland*although they had not lived in England beyond infanthood, they had strong views

about life there in comparison to Ireland because they were still in regular contact

with relatives there. Further discussion with their father revealed that they have to

travel to the nearest city (a round trip of approximately 70 miles) to take part in a

sporting activity that they enjoy. These exchanges suggest that the type of lifestyle the

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family leads has different meanings for the father and for the children. Involving

children as active research participants helps to reveal the differentiated nature of

family migration experiences and the often contradictory web of narratives that are

constructed and reproduced within families in talking about migration. Children and

young people must therefore be seen as competent narrators who selectively interpret

and reproduce elements of their parents’ narratives, in ways which make sense to

them and to the realities of their everyday lives.

Innocence and Lack of Sophistication

Notions of Ireland as a safe place for children rely on a particular concept of the child

as an innocent being in need of protection. This is spatialised in the families’

narratives of return, whereby Ireland becomes constructed as a place where children

can retain their innocence and can be children for longer than elsewhere. Some

parents*here Joan*and children articulate this:

You know, I see it with my own . . . my own nieces and nephews [in Ireland] thatthey’re allowed to still remain younger; they’re not sort of forced intobecoming . . . . Now, they are, I suppose, when they get a little bit older, 15, youknow, transition year. Just in the same way. But I think in the younger . . . in theprimary system, it allows them to just enjoy childhood a little bit more than, youknow, other places do.

There is an idea that children in Ireland are less sophisticated and more innocent*also less independent*than children in the migrant-receiving societies. There are

strong parallels here with Valentine’s (1997) findings in relation to discourses of

(English) rural childhoods. She found that parents construct rural childhoods in

terms of prolonged innocence and protection from commercial and peer pressures.

This is partly reflected in this quote from a parent, Gill, who talks about children in

Ireland being more ‘pleasant’:

And then we often talked about coming to live in Ireland, bring the children. Whenwe used to visit my cousin in [another part of Ireland] to be honest, she has gotfour girls and they were just lovely and I’d say ‘Oh it’s so nice’. You know, the waythey are, the girls were lovely. I said it would be lovely to bring your children up inIreland and we often spoke about it and then it just so happened that thisopportunity . . . job. [ . . . ] I just think it seemed . . . , it’s hard to describe it really, itjust seems a more laid-back lifestyle here. They didn’t seem as . . . . they just seemedmore pleasant . . . There was a nice pleasant feel about being in Ireland withchildren and when you meet children, you know.

This idea is not articulated only by parents but also by some of the children. For

example, in this quote from Cait, she connects freedom and safety with a particular

view of childhood and spatialises this by arguing that this idealised innocent

childhood is more possible in Ireland than in England.

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I way prefer life over here, ’cos I’ve way more freedom, ’cos it’s safer [ . . . ] I didn’thave that much freedom at all [in England] and like my cousins [inEngland] . . . they’re just completely different to how me and my friends are. Imean . . . there’s still a sense of them that they’re a child, whereas I think in a lot ofchildren in England, that’s kind of gone, because I think once you go to secondaryschool, bearing in mind they’re a year younger, they’re only 11, 12 going intosecondary school, they have to, they’re suddenly grown-up . . . you only have yourchildhood once, so you might as well live it being whoever you want to be anddoing whatever you want to do, that’s what we do . . . we’re all having fun most ofthe time.

Further discussion with Cait revealed that she was referring to fashion and peer

pressure and an idea that children in England faced more pressure to conform to the

norms of peer culture than children in Ireland. This type of narrative reflects the

traditional�modern dualism associated with rural�urban comparisons in Valentine’s

(1997) research, but instead of the rural�urban oppositionality, discourses of national

difference are used.

However, of course, the everyday lived realities of return migration can challenge

these rose-tinted views of the innocent Irish childhood. The Conway family loved the

way that neighbours’ children were calling round for their offspring, who could

spend all day outdoors. However, after a short time, some issues arose involving

conflict among the children and it was alleged that the Conway children were being

picked on for being ‘English’. As a result, the children’s spatial mobility is now more

closely monitored by the parents in an attempt to protect them. Another family, the

Quinns, live on a housing estate where ‘boy-racers’ disturb the peace and threaten the

children’s safety while playing outdoors. Their economic circumstances mean that

they cannot move to a different area, even though they are not happy where they are.

One of the Quinn children*Caoimhe, age 15*who had moved from a town in

southern England to rural Ireland, also spoke of instances of bullying:

I mean I have been bullied in primary school ’cos I came from England like do youknow? [ . . . ] I wasn’t like the rest of them. I wasn’t from Cork and things like that. Imean I was just like them*I was just born in a different country. I mean I seemyself as Irish anyway so . . . It did upset me a lot, like, and do you know, I felt like Iwas . . . wasn’t right and normal like.

This is a common theme in the research. Accent and perceived nationality are

markers of difference in peer networks, and are often used to exclude return-migrant

children, sometimes featuring in instances of alleged bullying. A number of my

participants talked about feeling marked out as different in peer contexts or being

bullied because of their accents*or, more generally, for not ‘being Irish’. These

experiences directly contradict children’s and parents’ ideas of ‘innocent’ Irish

childhoods, firstly through their problematic encounters with Irish children and,

secondly, through the unexpected restrictions on children’s freedom and safety which

result from them.

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Some of the parents who returned from the US also found that Irish childhood/

youth is considerably less ‘innocent’ than they had expected based on their US

experiences. There is a certain disapproval of what is seen as a lack of discipline

towards children/youth in Ireland and an informality in relation to child/youth/

family lifestyles and behaviours, as expressed by one such parent, Barbara, who

returned from an urban area in the US:

I just think parents are more on top of their kids in the States; maybe I could betotally wrong there but I just feel that they kind of spend a bit more time withthem, and they do more with them, yeah I do, I do. I think here there’s an awful lotof they’re left to fend for themselves. Maybe it’s because they have the freedom,yeah that’s well and good, but I think you have to kind of teach them manners andrespect and not to be wandering around.

This seems to be related in part to the adults’ experiences of parenthood in the US

and also to age. Parental constructions of risk shift as children get older and parents

become more anxious about their teenagers’ growing independence and potential

encounters with alcohol and other perceived moral threats. So the space and freedom

which is highly valued by parents for their young and pre-teen children is a source of

anxiety for them when it comes to their own and others’ teenagers. In a number of

ways, then, narratives of innocent Irish childhoods conceal contradictions and

incoherences that become apparent when families experience return. The ‘freedom’ of

playing outdoors away from adult supervision is less appealing when it involves

instances of conflict or bullying among children or gives rise to other perceived risks,

and notions of childhood innocence can be challenged by real encounters with Irish

childhood/youth.

Conclusions

Return migration is frequently represented as being motivated by non-material

values, involving, as it often does, a move from economically powerful migrant-

receiving societies to more-marginal sending societies. In this context, narratives of

return migration can involve notions of return to a place apart from the ills of

modernity, drawing*in the Irish case*on particular historical representations of

Ireland. These narratives intersect with contemporary Western discourses of child-

hood, and produce narratives of innocent Irish childhoods which inform and shape

the ways in which family return migration is conceptualised. These notions not only

shape return migration by providing justifications for it which ostensibly have

children’s needs at their core, but they also influence future return migrations by

becoming part of the folklore of return among diasporic networks. Children’s and

their parents’ lived experiences of migration sometimes generate counter-narratives

but can also, surprisingly, result in the initial narratives’ reproduction and

fortification.

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Counter-narratives emerge in conversations with both children and parents. The

perceived greater spatial freedom of children’s lifestyles in Ireland, together with the

perception of innocence associated with it, are undermined by the lived realities of

lack of tolerance towards difference and restrictions on mobility. While these

experiences of return migration challenge narratives of innocent and free Irish

childhoods for both parents and children, such narratives may be adjusted and

adapted, but are still mobilised to narrate the return story, when it makes sense to

do so, by both parents and children. Children, as active agents in their own

socialisation, both reproduce and challenge these narratives, sometimes changing

their meaning, displaying their competence as skilled narrators of the family’s

return migration. The morally persuasive concept of childhood as a time of

innocence and play frequently becomes mobilised in adult discourses of migration

and staying, so that childhood becomes central to the ways in which migration

decisions and practices are understood and are given meaning. However, this is a

selective and idealised concept of childhood which does not always cohere with

migrant children’s own subjective and lived realities. Powerful discourses of (return)

migration work to marginalise children’s voices while appearing to place childhood

at their very core. It is only through recognising children’s subjectivities and

their narrative competences that this can begin to be addressed and, in the

process, idealised narratives such as that of ‘innocent Irish childhoods’ can be

problematised.

This article contributes to a growing international literature which deconstructs

the idyllisation of return migration (Christou 2006; Long and Oxfeld 2004;

Markowitz and Stefansson 2004) through a focus on its intersection with concepts

of childhood. It highlights the frequently taken-for-granted ways in which moral

and Western discourses of childhood become mobilised in narratives of migration,

return and staying. Adultist notions of childhood are often used in explanations

of family migration which place childhood at their core but, in the process,

marginalise children’s experiences and perspectives. I unpack this by exploring

how children experience return and how they construct narratives of return

which challenge, reproduce and adapt adult narratives. This points to the need

to incorporate children’s perspectives in research on family migration and to

recognise their competences as migrant subjects, narrators and research partici-

pants.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Marie Curie Excellence Grant (MEXT-014204). I

would like to thank Allen White and two anonymous JEMS reviewers for their

very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Notes

[1] The photographic activity involved giving each participant a disposable camera with which

to document their lives; the photographs were then used as a springboard for discussion,

following the principles of the photo-elicitation method (Clark-Ibanez 2004).

[2] Since the fieldwork for this paper was carried out, Ireland’s profound economic crisis*rising

unemployment, the wide gap between government spending and income, and the EU ‘bail-

out’*have been reported in great detail in the national and international media.

[3] All names have been changed to protect participants’ anonymity.

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