Integration in Ireland

The Everyday Lives of African migrants

The integration of new immigrants is one of the most important issues in Europe, yet not enough is known about the lives of migrants. This book draws on several years of ethnographic research with African migrants in Ireland, many of whom are former asylum seekers. Against the widespread assumptions that integration has been handled well in Ireland and that racism is not a major problem, this book shows that migrants are themselves shaping integration in their everyday lives in the face of enormous challenges. This book explores integration in everyday life, from racism in a neo-liberalised taxi industry to civic and political participation, and from religious beliefs and education in schools to youth identity. The authors explore these different and yet interlinked aspects of African migrants' lives by gathering together the voices of numerous research participants and several central participants whose stories are threaded through the text. From conflicts in the taxi industry to political campaigns by new immigrants and from disadvantaged schools to Pentecostal evangelism, this book marks the most important study to date of the so-called 'New Irish'. The book will appeal to scholars and students interested in migration and ethnicity and to a general reading public interested in the stories of integration in Ireland. The book is situated within current anthropological theory and makes an important contribution, both theoretically and empirically, to understandings of the everyday and a site of possibility and critique.