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The Government of Ireland has published its plan to reorder the infrastructure it uses to accommodate and support migrants seeking International Protection (IP) in Ireland. This policy document - entitled The White Paper to End Direct Provision and Establish a New International Support Service - was published on 26th February, 2021. The White Paper proposes to replace Ireland's current but discredited system with a new IP accommodation and support process – to be entitled Ireland's International Protection Support Service. This new system is intended to "treat all applicants to the process with dignity and respect" (Government of Ireland, 2021: 7). Dissonances exist, however. The discursive framing of the IPSS and the spatialities inherent in the proposals suggest a potential rearticulation of state control rather that a diminution of same. I turn to the work of scholars inspired by Giorgio Agamben to help situate the spatialities of this shift, and suggest that the current 'white paper' should simply be seen as a mechanism deployed the Government of Ireland to ensure that its bio-political command and control processes can migrate from the spatially-defined set of control environments currently in effect to a diffuse construction of a spatially networked series of deterritorialised indistinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the thick description of one recent experience – the closure of the Common Room Club at University College Dublin – to highlight the gap that exists between rhetoric and reality at institutions of higher education in Ireland and beyond. I argue that common rooms have always been part and parcel of the 'invisible university'. They provide the infrastructure to support what has been called the 'lifeworld', sustaining both the communicative experiences of their members and providing vital venues for visitors who are through them more readily drawn into the communicative life of colleagues. As unique spaces within much larger institutions, common rooms form both a protected shield and also a porous social community against the encroachment of the university system's instrumental action and reasoning. However, recent changes in higher education have accelerated the pace of change and the quest for top-down modernisation. As a reaction, and almost by default, the common room has taken on a new function for faculty, staff and visitors and turned into a place of encounter between people and ideas critical and often opposed to managerialism, bureaucratisation and the mindless emulation of higher education's fads and foibles. At University College Dublin, this new role did not remain unnoticed by the University management and triggered an extreme reaction – enforced closure. My paper closes by dwelling on an important question that points into an uncertain future: is it possible for any institution that purports to be a centre of higher learning to either quell or attempt to 'manage' lifeworld experiences and sceptical voices for any length of time? In other words, can a university still fulfil its very function and expect loyalty without allowing 'voice' (A. O. Hirschman) to be heard? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key aim of this paper is to consider how young professionals, who left Ireland since the economic recession, define their migration project -- not just individually but also as a shared experience across their generation. Using narrative analysis and the concept of 'speech acts', I explore how these young people working in England talk about and make sense of recent Irish migration. In particular, the paper explores the extent to which the participants construct a sense of 'cohorts' to articulate their shared experiences and expectations as a 'group', 'wave' or 'generation' of recent migrants and, in so doing, contrast themselves with previous waves of migrants from Ireland. I highlight their emphasis on 'choice', 'opportunities' and 'mobility' in contrast to their image of the older Irish migrants as 'forced', disadvantaged and 'stuck'. I suggest that this is not just an over-simplification of the past, but more importantly represents a device for making sense of the present. The paper also adopts a reflexive approach and situates myself as a researcher and an Irish migrant in the research process. In this way, I consider how my questions and comments may have influenced how narratives were constructed and shared as well as how I may have approached the analysis of the data through a specific socio-temporal mind set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper, 'The Playing a Blinder Myth and why we must not forget shortcomings in unprecedented times', it was argued that acting Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar's response to the pandemic was one of opportunism rather than one of competency. By adopting a similar method to the previous article, this piece will provide an updated discussion and commentary, based on newspaper articles covering the newly formed Irish (Republic of Ireland) government's response to the pandemic to date. This paper discusses the governance of the coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and The Green Party to examine whether the context of the pandemic deflected the Irish public's attention from what was simply a continuation of the Government's normal approach to welfare, housing and healthcare. Therefore, this paper will focus on the coalition's decision to screen and tax recipients of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment, the enactment of housing strategies that have not met the existing issues within the housing market and how previous measures have not provided adequate protection for the healthcare system during the pandemic. In this short article, the Republic of Ireland's government response to the pandemic is revisited after a year of living with coronavirus within the context of welfare, housing and healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2019, in Wuhan in China an outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) was reported. In late February 2020, the first cases of the virus were recorded in Ireland. By 11th March, the World Health Organisation had declared the outbreak a pandemic and on 12th March, An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar announced that all schools would close with effect from 6pm that day. The schools remained closed until September. This paper considers the impact of the closure of primary schools on both principals' and teachers' wellbeing. A mixed-methods, longitudinal research methodology was undertaken. There were two phases to the research. Phase one was undertaken in June and July 2020 when teachers and principals participated in a semi-structured interview and completed two questionnaires: the Emotional Regulation questionnaire and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory. Phase 2 of data collection was completed in December/January 2021/2021 when the teachers participated in a further interview and completed the questionnaires again. The overall aim of the study was to provide an opportunity for principals and teachers to reflect on how the pandemic impacted on their wellbeing and by inference, the impact of the increased emotional labour of teaching during COVID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how young people (aged 18–24 years) in Ireland attribute young men's sexual harassment and violence against women both to the situational demands of what we call 'heteromasculine homosociality' and young men's negotiation of role taking with women. Interpreting young people's explanations for sexual violence, the paper argues that through different forms of sexual harassment and violence, women are (ab)used to cement the heterosexual bonds between men. The argument is explored by drawing on young people's explanations of three forms of sexual harassment and violence: verbal violence, unwanted sexual touching and assault and image-based sexual abuse. The data comes from 28 interviews with young people as part of a European-funded research study that aims to explore both the discourses that young people use in their understandings of gender and violence against women and how young men may be supported in combatting violence against women. Among other implications, we suggest that as well as deconstructing attitudes towards women, prevention work and interventions with men must also focus on men's beliefs about the normative basis for masculine status and belonging between men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquisition and enhancement of social capital is a continuous process of negotiation and interaction between self and social context. While the concept of social capital has been dealt with extensively in international research, relatively few studies have explored social capital among young people, particularly in the school context. This paper considers access of first-year students (age twelve to thirteen years) to school-based social capital in secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on several theories dealing with social capital, the paper describes factors that are likely to have an impact on the acquisition process. It is argued in the paper that access to teacher- and peer-based social capital may provide valuable resources that ease the transition process for students as they move from primary schools to secondary level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to shed much needed light on lived experience in the context of worklessness coupled with welfare receipt in Ireland. In doing so, the work ethic is presented as an objective social force that can be imposed externally and in a number of social and administrative contexts. Coupled with this, receiving welfare is argued as being a 'problematic' and potentially shameful social position. On this basis, it will be shown how worklessness and welfare receipt can coalesce to form a 'toxic symbiosis', something which can deeply and negatively affect those who experience it. The claims made in this paper are based on original research conducted in Ireland, in which 22 people were interviewed about their general experiences of being welfare recipients and their interactions with the Irish welfare state. Drawing on rich qualitative data, epistemic integrity is offered through depth of understanding meaning that what is presented here sheds lights on the social implications of the continuous denigration of welfare recipiency coupled with the continuous valorisation of work. In a practical sense, this suggests that, on the one hand, a new, less corrosive societal relationship with work is both desirable and necessary in respect to the well-being of persons, while on the other, a more holistic approach to the administration of welfare, in which a return to work is only one part of an overall approach, is both needed and ultimately more humane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a series of walks undertaken on the Dingle Peninsula (Chorca Dhuibhne), South-West Ireland, in March 2020 as part of the ' Walking Conversations' symposium, a collaboration between Chorca Dhuibhne Creativity and Innovation Hub, Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne and the Department of Sociology & Criminology at UCC, this paper explores walking as a non-conventional method and way of knowing and understanding in both social research and research led teaching; specifically in relation to transitions to sustainability. We argue that walking is an organic approach to research that engages the performative and sensing body; that values the importance of innovative ways of connecting and collaborating in co-productive ways; and offers embodied, relational, sensory, multi-modal ways to reimagine socio-ecological sustainability in current times. Moreover, as we demonstrate, walking, as research on the move, enables us to: access/say the unsayable and open a space for the role of imagination, and creativity that can facilitate a radical democratic imaginary. Indeed, based upon our experiences with co-walkers in Corca Dhuibhne, research-led walking methods offer a radical democratic transdisciplinary pedagogy, that underpins the Connected Curriculum at UCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of walking and mobile interviews in the context of research with disabled people whose diverse corporealities and cognitions challenge assumptions about walking as a normative bodily act associated with free, autonomous, mobility. While it has been suggested that mobile methods hold out the potential to open up dialogic and participative spaces of inquiry that capture embodied, affectual, and sensory knowledges in place, there has been less discussion of how social and bodily difference shapes the politics and practices of methods on the move. Drawing on research exploring disabled people's socio-spatial knowledges and experiences of urban un/safety in Ireland, we address this lacuna by reflecting on our use of 'go-along' interviews with people with diverse impairments and mobilities. Recognising the barriers that mediate disabled people's use of urban space, we interrogate both what go-along interviews can contribute to our understanding of disabled people's embodied encounters with urban un/safety, but also the limits, challenges and politics of mobile interviews as a form of methodological practice. We suggest there is a need to advance interdisciplinary social science scholarship which troubles ambulant research, and writes social and bodily difference into mobility studies and mobile methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores service providers' views on the barriers that prevent women in the sex work industry in Ireland from accessing co-ordinated health services. A purposive sample of eight service providers in the field of women's health and social care in the West of Ireland were selected and interviewed for this study. The service providers were asked about their perception of the barriers of sex workers accessing health and social care services. Using thematic analysis, three key themes were identified: (1) lack of knowledge of women's involvement in sex work; (2) identified barriers to health services; and (3) legislative and policy barriers to providing supportive services. While the service providers acknowledged that they do not knowingly provide services for sex workers, they all recognise that some of their service users are at risk of, and potentially are, involved in sex work. Yet, they were able to identify some of the barriers sex workers face when accessing their services. All these barriers were the result to the services' limited capacity to support women engaging in sex work. At the time of data collection, the legislative context meant that selling sex under certain conditions was outside the law. This study highlights the consequences that criminalisation can have on the health of sex workers and the need for a paradigm shift in existing health and social care services. In this paper, we propose that a social justice rather than a criminal justice approach has the potential to address sex workers' right to access appropriate health care. This paper gives due recognition to marginalised women, and advocates for better provision of services for women in the sex industry, while considering the new legislation of 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to gain a greater understanding of how decision-makers practice discretion in the context of the Habitual Residence Condition, an additional criterion for eligibility to social assistance payments in the Republic of Ireland. The paper identifies two approaches to using discretion: nomocratic and telocratic, with both largely emerging as a result of specific structural and cultural conditions that exist within the organisations concerned, and directly impacting the decision-making practices of public servants. Some decision-makers are found to be happy to make discretionary decisions, while others struggle, resist and protest against the deployment of discretion in the provision of social assistance, instead arguing for rigid rules that can be applied to all welfare applicants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores why African immigrants have poor labour market outcomes in Ireland, with very low employment and exceptionally high unemployment rates. The analysis draws on the 2011 Census to examine outcomes for different groups of immigrants. Controlling for individual characteristics suggests that the labour market disadvantages suffered by Africans cannot be attributed to compositional differences: Africans in Ireland are a relatively well-educated group concentrated in the prime working-age groups. The paper investigates an alternative explanation that suggests that the African disadvantage may be due to the policy of excluding asylum seekers from the labour market. I create a novel measure of the risk of exposure to the Irish asylum system by expressing the number of asylum seekers in years prior to the 2011 Census as a proportion of the Irish-resident population from each country. This asylum risk variable is found to influence labour market outcomes, reducing employment and increasing unemployment chances. Moreover, its inclusion in the models also reduces the effects of African group membership. Even controlling for individual characteristics and risk of exposure to the asylum system, there remains a substantial residual African disadvantage in both employment and unemployment, which may be due to discriminatory practices by employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a study of the masculinising practices of a single-sex primary teacher training college in Ireland 1928-38, this paper argues that the body served as the primary means of classification and differentiation in the social construction and regulation of masculinities. Following Connell's body reflexive practice theory that bodies are both agents and objects of practice and that `masculinity refers to male bodies but is not determined by male biology', and Bourdieu's conceptualisation of the body as a form of physical capital as a bearer of symbolic value, produced presented and managed to acquire status and distinction across social fields, this paper demonstrates how the body was used as an object and, to a lesser extent, agent in the masculinisation process at this institution, especially while students practised teaching in Practising Schools under the supervision of college staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a dearth of sociologically informed literature on Irish journalists. In her seminal paper. Kelly (1983) laid out the factors influencing the production of news in a general context, acknowledging in her analysis the limited range of research on the Irish media. She highlighted the ideological and personal preferences of journalists on the one hand, and their professional values and practices on the other as key determinants of the news agenda. However, to date no systematic study of Irish journalists has addressed these twin concerns. Drawing on data obtained from a national survey of daily news journalists in the Republic of Ireland conducted in the late 1990s, this paper offers some insight into the class position, political orientation and value system of a key group of ‘meaning producers’ in Irish society. In particular, the article seeks to provide insight into the professional culture of Irish journalists and their views on the relationship between the messenger, the message and the audience. This focus is apposite, given the central role played by Irish news journalists in bringing to public attention the variety of political, financial and religious scandals that engulfed Irish society in recent years. The paper concludes that Irish journalists are in the main more liberal in their views than either the professional organisations they work for or the audiences they serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The return of high levels of emigration has become one of the most debated and sensitive social topics in Ireland in recent years. But Irish emigration continues to be discussed in the singular rather than the plural. This paper compares Irish emigration to other Eurozone states that also encountered serious economic difficulties following the onset of the global financial crisis to highlight international trends and specify national differences. All of the 'PIIGS' experienced increased emigration after the crisis. Yet Irish citizens left in much greater numbers per capita than their Eurozone counterparts, with only Portugal bearing any similarities. This was because Irish emigrants possessed valuable transnational human, cultural and social capital that enabled them to access liberal labour markets outside the Eurozone. They possessed skills desired by attractive destination states; they spoke the same language and shared similar cultural traits as their hosts; and they were able to call upon recently renewed Irish networks to further facilitate their move abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that 'Irishness' has not been sufficiently problematised in relation to gender and ethnicity in discussions of Irish national identity, nor has the term 'Irish women' been ethnically problematised. Sociological and feminist analyses of the access by women to citizenship of the Republic of Ireland have been similarly unproblematised. This paper interrogates some discourses of Irish national identity, including the 1937 Constitution, in which difference is constructed in religious, not ethnic terms, and in which women are constructed as 'naturally' domestic. Ireland's bourgeois nationalism privileged property owning and denigrated nomadism, thus excluding Irish Travellers from definitions of 'Irishness'. The paper then seeks to problematise T. H. Marshall's definition of citizenship as 'membership in a community 'from a gender and ethnicity viewpoint and argues that sociological and feminist studies of the gendered nature of citizenship in Ireland do not address access to citizenship by Traveller and other racialized women which this paper examines in brief. It does so in the context of the intersection between racism and nationalism, and argues that the racism implied in the narrow definition of 'Irishness' is a central factor in the limited access by minority Irish women to aspects of citizenship. It also argues that racism not only interfaces with other forms of exclusion such as class and gender, but also broadens our understanding of the very nature of Irish national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a constructionist model of nation-ness, this paper argues that given the changes in the balance of class forces in the contemporary Irish Republic, Ireland has been re-imagined as a normal, modern, metropolitan nation-state. These discursive constructions require their backward and 'traditional' other; the GAA is regularly invoked as a signifier of such traditionalism. In the representational struggle between tradition and modernity, cultural nationalism is seriously misread and scapegoated. In order to facilitate a re-reading, the paper advocates a theoretical intervention involving a critical postmodernism which can deconstruct, and ultimately move beyond, the disabling binary oppositionalism which permeates these contestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has three central components. One, it examines the basic tenets of feminist research methodologies -- the commitment to making visible women's lived experiences, to gender and gender relations as socially constructed and historicially specific, to reflexivity and the inclusion of the researcher and the research process as researchable topics, and to the emancipation of women -- and argues that they constitute feminist research methodologies as a separate paradigm. Two, by describing the methodological choices made for my study of Israeli daughters of Holocaust survivors, it examines the discontents of feminist research methodologies and how we can address them. Three, asking why so few published studies by Irish feminist sociologists and Women's Studies scholars have adhered to feminist research methodologies, it hopes to launch a debate about feminist research methodologies in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a count of households by structural type in Ireland in the early twentieth century. In doing so it addresses some of the issues which have been raised in the debate on the structure of Irish households at that time. The question of the classification of households by structural type is also addressed and attempts made to clarify some of the more ambiguous definitions. Some commonly accepted and some madified definitions are then applied to a national sample of 2,495 households drawn from the 1911 Census of Ireland. The paper concludes that the nuclear or simple household was the dominant from of household in Ireland at that time and that while the extended and multiple household certainly existed, its prevalence has largely been overstated in previous writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most commonly accepted view internationally is that addiction is an individualised brain-based disease or disorder. This view is buttressed by neuroscientific evidence, which is interpreted as demonstrating that the addicted brain undergoes long-term structural and functional changes as a result of substance use. Proponents of this model argue that such evidence is conclusive and that we have finally, over many decades, arrived at an enlightened, evidence-based, scientific understanding of addiction and dispensed with outdated 'moral models'. However, critical scholars have argued that what we mean by addiction very much depends on the political–economic and socio-culture structure of a particular society at a particular temporal juncture. This paper seeks to build on this critical scholarship by examining shifting addiction understandings across time in Ireland. (This refers to the 26 counties of the southern Irish state.) This has involved analysing various documents, archives, and journal articles relating to the main 'claim-making' groups in Irish society (Catholic Church, medical profession, government, and media). It is argued that understandings of addiction through time in Ireland have tracked the country's political–economic and socio-cultural development and have not developed according to 'objective evidenced-based Science'. Furthermore, the portrayal of addiction across time has directed attention inwards to the diseased or disordered individual and away from macro-level processes. This has also led to the neglect of potentially vital areas of inquiry in relation to addiction scholarship in Ireland. To this end, the present research paper intends to highlight some of these macro-level processes in order to suggest fruitful avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiracial family and the existence of mixed race children have come to be a regular feature of Irish familial life. Yet, nation-building discourses have promulgated notions of ethnic and religious homogeneity with Irish identity being racialised exclusively as white. Moreover, to date, there has been a dearth of academic scholarship related to racial mixedness in the Irish context. Through in-depth interviews, this paper sets out, therefore, to provide empirical insight into the lives of fifteen black (African) – white (Irish) mixed race young people (aged 4 to 18) with a particular focus on their experiences of racialised exclusion. Indeed, findings suggest that, as in other majority white national contexts, the black-white mixed race young people are racialised as black in the Irish public domain and as such, are positioned as 'racialised outsiders'. In fact, their narrative accounts shed light on everyday encounters saturated by 'us-them' racial constructs based on phenotype. Thus, these young people, who are not fully recognised as mixed race Irish citizens, are effectively deprived of a space in which to articulate their belonging within the existing statist (i.e. inside/outside) framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights a significant gender disparity within Ireland’s illicit drug landscape, which is predominantly composed of men. Irish men’s historical gender invisibility contributed to their predominance as drug users being overlooked. Thus, this paper focuses a masculinities lens on Irish men’s recreational use of illicit drugs, making their drug taking visible as a gendered activity. The study utilised a qualitative methodology, with masculinities theory forming the primary theoretical and analytical lens. Nine focus groups were conducted with Irish men exploring their views on illicit drugs. Twenty in-depth interviews were completed with men who identified as illicit recreational drug users, exploring their drug-taking histories and experiences. Findings demonstrate how the use of illicit drugs can symbolically communicate messages about the drug taker. The study reveals masculinities are an interpretative lens employed by men when trying to understand their own or other men’s drug taking. It is argued that men’s drug taking and masculinities intersect. In homosocial contexts, men’s recreational use of illicit drugs can contribute to them demonstrating masculinities to other drug-taking men; however, outside of these contexts, the same behaviours can be viewed by non-drug takers as emasculating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational disadvantage has been a long-standing issue in Ireland, and since the 2006/07 academic year, schools recognised as serving disadvantaged areas receive DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) status and subsequent additional funding, resources, and staffing allocations. Studies on DEIS schools usually report the traditional challenges associated with the lower classes when identifying problems schools face: unemployment in the community, a lack of parental interest, involvement and support, absenteeism, behavioural and emotional difficulties, dysfunction among students’ families, etc. while the theme of sociolinguistics and the linguistic repertoire of working class students receives little to no attention. Drawing on Basil Bernstein’s theory of code, this paper outlines the discontinuities that exist between the language of working-class children and the language of the school as a formal institution, which is a salient issue in the context of the Irish education system as it is particularly focused around strong linguistic skills at the expense of other forms of intelligence. This paper therefore highlights the role sociolinguistics play in hindering the academic attainment of working-class students in Irish schools, and explains why this theme has not traditionally surfaced as a detrimental factor in Irish education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to advance scholarship on the governance of religious difference and its relationship to social reproduction, inclusion and exclusion, with specific reference to parenting, schooling and childhood. Rather ask 'how does the state and religion govern religious pursuits?', the focus of this paper is 'how might parents' and children's religious expressions be already implicated, or caught up in, the ordering and coordination of complex social systems?' Drawing on Foucault's concept of governmentality, it analyses how the political rationalities of freedom of choice and diversity are deployed through media discourse. The paper traces an iterative process of producing a symbolically 'new' national space, which re-legitimises state (and more 'discerning' school patron) power in a marketised, global age. It argues that 'Irish' parents are evaluated in this imagined space in terms of their capacity to combine consumption and religious practices responsibly and authentically. In its implicit citation and elision of generational, classed and racialised hierarchies, the mediated, moral governance of responsible religious and ethical subjects, expressions and practices becomes clear. The paper concludes by noting the potential contribution of governmentality thinking to contemporary debates on religious and secular governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the Quality of Life (QoL) in Ireland using a sample of 3,500 respondents to the Irish Health Service Executive's Survey of Consumers' Experience of the Health Services in Ireland (HSE Survey) carried out between November 2006 and March 2007. Using an ordered logit model, we show that the likelihood of being satisfied with one's QoL is enhanced by social class, income, employment and, above all, by health. The methodology's ability to identify persons who might be 'at risk' from a low QoL allows one to speculate on the QoL in Ireland today, in the winter of its discontent, compared to that in 2006-07 when it basked in the summer of the Celtic Tiger. In present circumstances, one would expect that joblessness would play a much more important role in determining QoL: prior to 2008, unemployment meant a short wait till a suitable job turned up; now it is more likely to involve either a protracted search at home or emigration. Furthermore, since unemployment often leads to bad health outcomes, one can be reasonably certain that the QoL associated with a 14 percent unemployment rate will be considerably worse than those witnessed during the halcyon days of the economic boom. This raises the question of how this additional, recession-induced demand for health services will be met at a time when public expenditure on health in Ireland is to be cut by €1.4 billion over the next four years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine a significant area of interest in Irish political sociology: the emergence of a social movement into politics and eventually government. The focus of the article will be on the transitions of the Irish environmental movement and Green Party. It will examine the background to this transformative process from the establishment of Comhaontas Glas from the Ecology Party in 1986 through to the moment when this process culminated in the Green Party taking its place as a junior partner in the Coalition Government in 2007. This process will be shown to represent a success for the politically pragmatic `relos' over the socially emotive 'fundis' of the Greens at a time when the wider environmental movement has moved in the opposite direction. One of the key areas of analysis for the paper will be an application of Foucault's concept of political power to the processes which transformed the activist-based green movement into a viable coalition partner within a neoliberal government. The paper will also examine the consequences of this transition in the context of Foucault's understanding of power as something fluid which emerges from the identity framing of 'discursive formations', rather than emanating out of the imposition of institutional hegemony. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of the Green Party's participation in government for its leadership and members, in the wake of contentious issues such as the two Lisbon Treaty referendums, and the coalition's bailout of the neo-liberal banking system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although secularisation theory offers grand analytical possibilities for monitoring changing religious tendencies on political, social and cultural levels, it is greatly disadvantageous in accounting for particularities of small-scale variations in specific socio-geographic areas. Therefore, this paper argues that the neo-secularisation concept offers a greater sociological potential in this regard. Through the analysis of the macro, mezzo and micro levels of Irish social landscape, the paper provides an in-depth understanding of a changing religious field. The central arguments of the paper are tested against a variety of data including quantitative and qualitative studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines insider/outsider distinctions in a rural community in Connemara and argues that they are rooted in locality and are based upon conflicting knowledge cultures. Such distinctions are both contextual and fluid as they encompass a range of cultural factors and find expression through particular conventions on language use and everyday behavioural strategies. The insider/outsider nexus is continually negotiated in this community, and individuals are recognised as possessing degrees of insider and/or outsider status depending upon which particular modes of behaviour or linguistic practices may be seen as acceptable by the wider community in particular social situations. Qualitative data presented in this paper reveals that while some incomers to the region are viewed as 'outsiders' by more established members of the community, the degree to which this is the case frequently depends on whether they are perceived as sharing local people's 'habitus' prior to their entering the community. Instead of drawing strict lines of distinction between locals and incomers, both groups engage in regular 'boundary-making' by perpetuating locally-based practices and discourse structures, a process which verifies their sense of belonging and continually (re)deftnes and (re)constitutes the structures of discourse and action entered into in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends to the year 2002 that section of an earlier paper (Breathnach 2002b) which considered whether the pattern of occupational change occurring in Ireland during the period 1991-1996 indicated the operation of processes of social polarisation. The occupational categories contained in the Census of Population were recast in order to create a set of broad groups which facilitated analysis from a social polarisation perspective. This analysis demonstrated strong growth, on the one hand, in the numbers of employers & managers and professional & technical workers and, on the other, in certain unskilled occupational groups (personal services and retail sales) - the latter following the allocation to these groups of the bulk of the greatly-expanded number of workers who failed to state their occupation in the 2002 census. Meanwhile, key middle-income groups, including blue-collar industrial, clerical and public service workers experienced contraction in their overall share of employment. These findings provide considerable support for the social polarisation hypothesis, albeit in the context of overall professionalisation of the occupational structure. Female workers have been to the fore in driving these processes of change, in that there has been above-average growth of female employment in those occupational categories at both ends of the occupational spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of the Irish economy in the 1990s has provided substantial scope and possibilities for radical change. During this period the Irish economy has experienced high growth rates, expanding employment and low levels of unemployment. This paper evaluates the trend in welfare provision and social outcomes for this period. Although the Irish social welfare system has become more generous in the areas of health, education and direct social welfare benefits, it remains closer to a residual than a universal system. We conclude that there is little evidence in the Irish case yet to support any substantive trend toward a more socially equitable system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the competing pressures at work in the lives of a particular group of Irish men, that is, young male farmers working in different types of farming regions in Ireland. As the economic and social landscape of farming is undergoing transformation, reducing the attractiveness and viability of farming as an occupation, there is, simultaneously, a strong association between constructions of farming masculinity and staying on the land. The paper explores some of these tensions. Farming masculinities are bound up with a sense of cultural and familial responsibility, which is attached to maintaining the family farm, but it is increasingly difficult to fulfil these responsibilities in the current environment. This can lead to stress and anxiety on the part of young farmers. it is argued that the construction and negotiation of farming masculinity is spatially contingent, reflecting local and regional geographies of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an exploratory study conducted with non-resident fathers, to elucidate the key issues affecting the development and maintenance of a fathering role after a relationship has ended. In particular, the paper focuses on the contingent nature of fatherhood for young marginalised men in Dublin. The extent to which fathers identify with a fathering role is explored and comparisons are drawn between the experiences of estranged, committed and activist fathers. Key factors that militate against fathers maintaining an active role in their children's lives are identified. The paper concludes that while the experiences of fatherhood vary across different categories of fathers, the majority of them aspire toward and value their fathering role. However, their capacity to adopt a positive fathering role is affected by a range of institutional, economic and social barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies and interprets sexual attitudes among a sample of university, students in Galway. Drawing on theoretical models developed by May and Inglis, the paper places the survey findings in the context of socio-cultural changes in Ireland. The author argues that the survey results reflect the division between religious conservatism and increasing secularisation. Although it seems initially that a majority of the Galway students subscribe to a liberal view of sexuality analysis reveals a more complex picture. Factor analysis shows that attitudes range front religious traditionalism, monogamism, conservatism and patriarchal machismo to liberal hedonism, sex as pleasure and egalitarian open-mindedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the personal narratives of four gay men coming of age during the 1970s, this paper questions the relevance of the modernist ‘coming-out’ story in Ireland. This story, so prevalent in British and North American studies documenting the history of the gay and lesbian movement there has remained largely untold in Ireland. This paper reveals a uniquely Irish ‘coming-out’ experience shaped by tire schools, families and communities in which tire men lived and whose stories cannot be adequately explained within a modernisation perspective so frequently used to explain social change in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets the phenomenon of road traffic accidents in contemporary Irish society as a symptom of crisis arising from processes of social transformation. Empirical data from the National Roads Authority, from Local Authority Engineers, and from the Gardaí, showing the typical traffic accident pattern, is used to develop a more general hypothesis of the uneasy coexistence of traditional and modern forms of life in contemporary Ireland. This theme is developed by a discussion of ambiguity and ambivalence arising from the hazardous experiences of accelerated modernization coexisting with vestigial and reinstitutionalised forms of traditional culture. The paper concludes by considering the driving practices of Irish motorists in terms of improvisation in conditions of uncertainty as the artful reformation of habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications and difficulties of a system of sex offender registration for the two jurisdictions of Ireland. From the orthodox perspective, registration appears justified. Sexual offending has increase and this is used by the media to generate a ‘moral panic’. However, in terms of Blumer's (1971) developmental perspective, sexual offenders in the community have been socially constructed in Ireland, as a problem requiring specific action. This perspective most adequately explains the formulation of legislation. Arguments expounded in favour of registration include the supposedly high recidivism among sex offenders, the inadequacy of supervision provisions and the resulting need to ‘track’ the offender for public protection. Yet a plethora of obstacles which were not considered at the time the legislation was being formulated, such as cost and inadequate policing resources, may impede its effectiveness in aiding law enforcement and reduce it to symbolic significance only. Given these difficulties, I argue that registration is not an appropriate response to the problem of released sexual offenders in Ireland. Rather, from the social constructionist perspective, I suggest that it is better to ‘treat’ the sex offender through less formal and stringent means in the community, away from the criminal justice process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon lay knowledge and sustainability concepts that shape and reflect environmental policy implementation and public reactions to environmental participatory forums in Connemara, Ireland. Drawing on in-depth qualitative fieldwork from a mixed-method study of knowledge in Connemara, the paper argues that local understandings of sustainability which prioritise lay knowledge for future generations both helps and hinders successful environmental participation. These definitions of sustainability are central to how community actors define what constitutes effective environmental participation. Many established locals draw upon these sustainability ideals to justify the deliberate exclusion of recent settlers to the area from environmental participatory forums. Insights revealed here on how local cultural conventions pertaining to language use, 'defensive localism' and insider-outsider distinctions affect participation in rural Ireland are highly significant for understanding barriers to effective environmental governance and the complexity of local perceptions of participation, sustainability and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an Irish qualitative study of postgraduate, female, international students. It focuses on their narrations of internationalisation, in respect of events leading them to become international students, and their reflections on their academic, interpersonal and societal experiences in Ireland. International students are generally understudied and marginalised as metaphorical 'others' within global education policies, often being reduced to mere recruitment and financial targets and units of analysis. However, this study shows that international students transcend widespread but static assumptions about them being in academic and social deficit when transitioning to life in another country and negotiating new educational contexts. Significantly, our interviewees discursively positioned themselves in multifarious ways in relation to Irish higher education curricula, drawing on various discourses to define their internationalisation journeys. Although the sample size is small and confined to female postgraduates, our data suggests that university policies in Ireland and internationally largely overlook the multidimensionality of international doctoral students' experiences. In our conclusion, we tentatively suggest ways in which international students' academic and intercultural experiences could in the future be enriched, and how international students themselves could more fruitfully contribute to Irish higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part-time work has often been championed as a mechanism for facilitating women's entry into the labour force. Research based on large scale surveys has theorised that employers and women employees can both benefit from part time work. Ethnographic research, on the other hand, has often focused more on the difficult working conditions for part time workers. This paper combines data from a quantitative survey carried out at national level and a locally based qualitative study to examine these issues. It shows that in the retail sector part time work does not just contribute to bringing women into the labour force. It also serves to marginalise them within the labour force. It also shows that forms of part time work being adopted are those most suitable to employers rather than those which might be of use to both employers and female employees. Finally, while women have often chosen to work part time, the conditions of part time workers studied are deteriorating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological analysis of Irish sexuality has been notable for its absence. This paper examines the contribution which Foucault's theory, of sexuality as a discourse of truth and apparatus of power makes toward elucidating key issues in the history and contemporary field of Irish sexuality. Although Foucault provides good insights into the constitution of a hermeneutics of the self within different ethical regimes, his analysis of sexuality is inadequate when it comes to explaining how sexuality operates in everyday life and the individual struggle to attain power and position in social life. In this respect, the paper turns to the work of Bourdieu and examines the field of Irish sexuality, in relation to his concepts of habitus, practice and capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of farming occupies a special place in sociology. While it is an occupation, it is not studied as part of occupational sociology. Rather it falls into the sub-discipline of rural sociology or the sociology of agriculture. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most central is the means of entry to the occupation. In order to farm, it is necessary to have access to land. Property is essential to farming. However, property is not a commodity equally accessible to all. The majority of the people who farm have not acquired their land through the market, but rather through inheritance. There is a closed system of intergenerational transfer of land within families, whereby the land is passed on intact to one heir. The transfer of land in Ireland is a complex inter-personal process. This paper examines how patters of inheritance are shaped and negotiated by culturally accepted social norms, economic factors and the legal framework. Economic considerations prompt impartible inheritance, that is, the passing on the farm intact to one heir.

This paper examines consumerism in public health policy and focuses on a specific strategy to make Irish hospital services more consumer-oriented, namely, patients' charters. The first part of the paper examines different conceptualisations of the ‘new consumerism’ in the social policy literature and locates its emergence within the broader context of the ‘marketisation’ of the welfare state. A brief review of the literature on the merits and limitations of public sector consumerism is then presented. The second part of the paper concentrates on the emergence of the new consumerism in Irish public health policy, and the results of a study that examined the implementation of the Charter of Rights for Hospital Patients are presented. A key finding of the study was that none of the hospitals in the study area had fully implemented the provisions of the Charter. Furthermore, only 26 per cent of a sample of one hundred hospital patients had heard of the Charter and only 10 per cent could recall any of the rights that it conferred on patients. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Charter of Rights for Hospital Patients is less concerned with empowering patients than it is with other agendas, such as creating a semblance of closeness to the users of health services and counterbalancing medical authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, marriage settlement records from a north Galaxy legal practice are utilised to provide additional insights into the socio-legal aspects of the marriage practices of west of Ireland farmers. The significant new findings include: the complexity and variety of forms of property transfer; the wide range of actors and interests involved in the settlements; and the far from universal presence of the dowry. While the empirical base of the paper is limited, the findings are such as to question some of the taken-for-granted elements of farmer's marriage patterns as they are described in previous accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a concept of the household economy which incorporates housework as a productive activity, and on the basis of that concept re-examines the thesis that the household economy declines during economic development. It looks in particular at Irish evidence for the period 1926-86, as well as at secondary evidence for international trends. The analysis suggests that, although certain segments of the household economy have declined, the services production element identified with modern housework remains a major user of labour and source of output and shows surprising durability as an economic form in the midst of major changes in the surrounding economic environment. The paper concludes with some general observations on the relationship between economic growth and changes in the pattern of productive activity in the household in Ireland in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines emigration patterns among Irish accountants in the context of the growth of an international labour market in highly skilled, professional work. It uses documentary sources and interviews with a sample of young Irish accountants to illustrate how changes in the international nature of accountancy has affected the profession in Ireland and have given rise to a particular kind of career-oriented emigration among accountants. These developments in turn are related to broader changes in the producer services sector of the economy in Ireland and in the way this sector is integrated into the international capitalist economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Sassen's model of informalization in advanced urban economies, and in particular, its application to the construction industry in New York City. The validity of the model is assessed in light of the ethnographic accounts of Irish construction workers, which deal with both the formal and informal economies within the construction sector. While the findings are generally compatible with Sassen' s model, the paper concludes that greater attention needs to be paid to the role of ethnicity as an independent variable operating in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004 Wright et al. issued a challenge to sociologists, to examine 'the effect of the structure of the academy on teaching and learning outcomes' (2004: 155). In this paper I take up this challenge, beginning with a short overview of the changing Irish higher education context, highlighting three macro level changes that currently impact on teaching sociology in Ireland. I argue that such a structural lens is essential to our understanding of the meso (institutional and disciplinary) levels of teaching sociology. I argue a nascent 'teaching and learning movement' in Irish sociology may be emerging. A number of factors that have facilitated this are identified. However even a quick glance at Irish higher education also reveals contradictions and conflicts which threaten this movement before it is even established, including worsening staff-student ratios, increased casualisation of teaching and the neo-liberal turn. The paper concludes with a call for more sociologically informed work both on teaching and learning in Irish higher education, and on teaching sociology. This would enable more informed involvement in critical debates around teaching excellence at the national and institutional levels. It would also make public pedagogies currently in use for teaching sociology in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political and economic disjunctures associated with the 2008 financial crisis and the policy responses to it have coincided with the deepening of professional journalism's cultural crisis of authority and legitimacy, associated with declining public confidence in the hegemonic norms underpinning journalism practice. This paper presents the findings of research undertaken in the newsroom of Ireland's main public service media organisation aimed at exploring the durability of key tenets of journalistic professionalism as its practitioners negotiated the crisis. In demonstrating evidence from interview testimony of limited editorial responses to crisis, enduring support for dominant professional norms and prevailing practices of representation, inclusion and participation, the findings are suggestive of a broad normative resilience in the face of crisis. Such stability, it is argued, reflects the ideological enmeshment of public service media and journalistic professionalism within the political and cultural systems of their host states but offers few resources for extricating public service journalism from deepening professional and institutional cultural crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As youth civic engagement is widely considered important for social cohesion and democracy, concerns have been expressed regarding a perceived decline in civic and political engagement among young people throughout the western world. While research has shown that the social environment is influential in terms of the development of civic values, knowledge and behaviours among youth, limited research has been conducted on these issues in an Irish context. Drawing on survey research conducted with 167 young people aged 12–15 years in Irish secondary schools, this paper examines young people's civic attitudes and behaviours and how they are linked to their social contexts. Findings indicate that youth report high levels of social responsibility values but low engagement in both online and offline civic engagement. Furthermore, while parent, peer, school and/or community contexts were found to have a significant influence on youths' social responsibility values and offline civic behaviours, youth's online civic behaviours were not connected to these social environments. This study provides insights into the socialisation of civic values and behaviours among young people in Ireland and highlights the importance of investigating the link between the social context and different forms of youth civic involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]