From Emigrant to Migrant Nation: Reckoning with Irish Historical Duty

This chapter surveys the Republic of Ireland’s post-1990s transition from a nation primarily associated with emigration to one re-shaped by significant inward-migration from within the European Union and beyond—a state of play initially embraced as a hopeful and utopic new interculturalism by the Irish government and arts policy. The chapter presents two recent case studies: Oonagh Murphy and Maeve Stone’s The Mouth of a Shark (2018) and Brokentalkers’ This Beach (2016). Both were created in the immediate aftermath of the 2015 intensification of the ongoing global refugee crisis which also prompted the European Union to draft new policy documents and reports about the role of the arts as a site of intercultural dialogue in these conditions. These productions both re-play and critique contemporary Irish theatre’s representational patterns regarding migration and migrant experiences in Ireland since the mid-1990s.