Affiliation:
1. Centre for Health and Social Practice, Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand
2. Education and Quality Services, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC 3122, Australia
Abstract
In a 2023 article in this journal, Esther and Michael Fitzpatrick wrote that “complicated are those diaspora people who yearn to claim ‘Irishness’ in their places as something distinct from colonial settlers”. An Irish identity seems to offer something unique in these contexts, having been embraced by Joe Biden, for example, as a keystone of his political identity. In this article, I utilise census data from the four primary Anglo-settler polities of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States to demonstrate the comparatively greater extent that Irish ethnic antecedents are remembered by local-born Whites. While acknowledging that drivers of ethnic affiliation are personal and multifaceted, and not directly discernible from answers on a questionnaire, I consider the nature of Irishness as a political identity in settler-colonial contexts.
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