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I was wrong! But emigrants will get voting rights…eventually 26 Feb 2016 10:54 AM (9 years ago)

I fess up: I’m a lousy prognosticator. In 2011, I predicted that this would be the last general election that emigrants wouldn’t be voting in. It sounds so naively optimistic now, I realise. But we were in the mood for reform back in those post-crash days! I got caught up with the heady excitement of it all.

In the interest of transparency, I am copying my 2011 article in full below. I won’t make any predictions regarding the timing again, but I am certain that Ireland will eventually take its place among the nations of the world in allowing its nonresident citizens to vote. In the meantime, I’ve joined in with a few others to start work on a new venture toward ensuring that it happens – we’re just at the start of it, but you can join us over at VotingRights.ie and follow us on on our shiny new Twitter feed at @VotingRightsIE.

7 reasons this will be the last election Irish emigrants won’t be voting in

I’ve been writing about emigrant voting since about 2006. When I started, it seemed that any victory in the battle for the emigrant vote was a long way off. I don’t believe that anymore. In fact, I believe we’ll see emigrant voting by the next general election. Here’s why.

1. We see them everywhere, still. Emigrants may have left, but they’re still up there on our Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Skype contacts, and even our TV screens.  They’re joining the chat about Fianna Fail, Lucinda Creighton, rugby, The Rubberbandits, you name it. Some people still try to make the argument that Irish people abroad aren’t staying informed, but it’s a fairly obvious denial of reality: expats have the same access to most of the same media that any of us in Ireland do. They’re going to keep consuming this media, and they’re going to keep appearing in it. It’s going to be harder and harder to pretend that their voices are ill-informed or irrelevant.
2. The truth is out: emigrant voting isn’t the preserve of a few countries. In reading the Dáil debates of the past, one of the most striking features is how little actual knowledge there was about how many countries allowed their emigrants to vote. People referred to countries like France, the UK, and the US as if these were anomalies, and emigrant voting were some kind of peculiar national quirk, undertaken by these few radically democratic nations. Now, however, we know that emigrant voting is a global democratic norm: thanks to a 2007 study by IDEA called “Voting from Abroad, the International IDEA Handbook, it’s fairly common knowledge that more than 115 countries and territories allow their expats to vote. This includes nearly all developed nations, and nearly every other EU country. [2016 note: since 2011, the trend has only accelerated.]
3. Our current situation is irrational. Our policy-makers want to be global leaders in diaspora relations, and, in truth, Ireland is pretty close. The global Irish community is loyal, active, in touch, and engaged. We value their economic contribution: the 21st-century version of remittances includes such activities as business networking, opening new markets to Irish companies, and directing FDI. Our global networks supporting Irish sports, heritage and culture are vibrant. Yet when it comes to the emigrant vote, we’re seriously out of step with the rest of the world. We section off politics as the only realm of Irish life that’s off-limits to our overseas citizens, while most nations treat political engagement with their diasporas as a basic tool of these relationships.
4. It’s only fair to give them a say. Occasionally, Irish residents will argue that emigrants should not have the vote because they don’t want non-resident citizens making decisions that affect people living in Ireland – yet they don’t consider that the government is also making decisions that affect overseas citizens.What are those issues that concern emigrants? Many are the same issues that might concern any other Irish citizen, but there are a few that are of particular interest to the Irish abroad. Some Irish people pay taxes while abroad; some who inherited family homes, for example, have had to pay the tax on non-primary residences introduced in recent years. Some of our most vulnerable emigrants (many of whom are from the 1950s and 1960s generation, who saved little for themselves while sending millions back home) depend on programmes paid for out of the emigrant support services budget. Others receive Irish pensions based on contributions they made while working in Ireland. Any expat at any time may find themselves in need of consular protection, as the troubling events this week in New Zealand and Libya showed.
   If you’re Irish and you want to come home, an economy that will enable you to return home to a job will be of paramount concern. Some of those coming home have had to seek social welfare assistance, yet thousands of returning emigrants have been denied this under the habitual residence condition – despite assurances on the introduction of this legislation that returning emigrants would not be affected. Civil partnership and spousal immigration legislation will affect whether an emigrant can return home with his or her partner.Who in Ireland is speaking up for the interests of our overseas citizens in these issues? Emigrants need their own voices heard.
5. The 1998 changes in the constitution deterritorialised the Irish nation – and firmly positioned our overseas citizens within it. The new Article 2 says it is “the entitlement and birthright” of every Irish citizen “to be part of the Irish Nation”. As Article 1 tells us, it’s the Irish nation that has the “inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions”.  How can one segment of the Irish nation take away the inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign rights of another? The question needs further exploration.
6. The bogeyman of The North is dead. For the last few decades, the debate over emigrant voting rights was overshadowed by the fear in some circles that there was a radicalised overseas electorate lurking within the heart of Irish-America, ready to launch gunmen into office. If this were ever true, it’s certainly not now, however many fears may linger in the minds of those Irish residents who cling on to their outdated, stereotypical notions of the Irish in America. Brian Cowen acknowledged it: The Northern Irish peace process united Irish opinion with the diaspora. The Irish in America played an enormous role in facilitating that peace process, and it’s time to get over the idea that an irrational fear of our own citizens is a reason to disenfranchise them.
7. European institutions are starting to take an interest. While the EU has always regarded expat voting as an issue of national competency, there have been several international bodies that have taken steps toward emigrant voting rights recently. The European Court of Human Rights, for example, recently ruled that Greece needed to implement the emigrant voting provisions it had introduced into its constitution some decades back; while the decision was primarily based on the Greek constitution, it also took into consideration that out 29 of 33 Council of Europe countries had implemented procedures to allow voting by overseas citizens. The court is currently dealing with the case of an elderly English man living in Italy who is challenging the UK’s 15-year time limit on expat voting. [2016 note: Harry Shindler lost his case, but the Conservative government has promised to eliminate the time limit – though not before the Brexit referendum.] These kinds of cases aren’t going to go away, and it’s likely that these types of challenges will increase.
   Meanwhile, the 2010 European Commission report on citizenship has indicated that the EU will take a look at this issue in the future.  The report pledges that the Commission “will launch a discussion to identify political options to prevent EU citizens from losing their political rights as a consequence of exercising their right to free movement”. With the increasing international trends toward engaging overseas citizens, European institutions will be more likely to be active in these issues in the future. [2016 note: The Commission has issued that guidance, which criticized Ireland for being among the few European nations that don’t offer emigrant voting rights.]

With the mood for reform sweeping Ireland, I’m confident that the many proposals that have been made aimed at giving emigrants a voice will result in real change – and if the new government doesn’t implement these kinds of changes, we’ll just fall further out of step with the rest of the world, and with the legitimate desires of our own citizens for a say in the government of their own nation. We need our emigrants. We can’t expect the same level of loyalty from our our overseas citizens as we did in the past if we continue to refuse them the basic right that nearly every other developed nation in the world would give them.

Generation Emigration surveys emigrants on voting, politics 23 Feb 2016 7:09 PM (9 years ago)

The Generation Emigration blog of the Irish Times is currently running a survey aimed at exploring the political views of the Irish abroad. It’s just a few questions inquiring about time away from Ireland, attitudes about emigrant voting, and favoured political party. The survey will be up until noon on Thursday. Answer it on the Generation Emigration website.

Sign the #NoHome2Vote petition! 22 Feb 2016 9:56 AM (9 years ago)

Uplift has started a petition and social media campaign to support emigrant voting rights ahead of Friday’s general election. Sign it on their website, Uplift.ie.

Noting that 1 in 6 Irish voters won’t be able to cast their vote because they’re living overseas, they say “#Uplift has teamed up with organisations fighting for the rights of Irish emigrants across the world to make sure that the next government promises this will be last election so many Irish people are barred from voting.”

They note the excitement over emigrant participation in last year’s referendum on equal marriage, and yet Ireland remains one of three countries in the EU that denies citizens abroad the right to vote:

Together we can use this election to force voting rights for emigrants onto the agenda of a new government and turn promises into real action.

The first step is to gather as many voices as possible over the coming week and to make sure both voters and candidates feel the strength of our voice the day before the election. This is the day political parties and candidates are not allowed on the airwaves so it’s a perfect moment for us to flood social media with a message from Irish emigrants living in every corner of the world. We have a great chance of making sure voting rights for emigrants gets on the table when the new government sits down to plan the next few years.

IrishCentral.com announces “Digital Influencers Top 40” 23 Sep 2015 9:51 AM (10 years ago)

IrishCentral.com has announced their “Digital Influencers Top 40” list. The list celebrates “40 of the most innovative, talented and hard-working Irish-born and Irish-American individuals leading the way in advertising, media, marketing, tech, e-commerce and a range of other entrepreneurial ventures and services”.

You can see the entire list here – I’m happy to say I’m included on it.

OECD weighs in: emigrant vote would benefit Ireland, citizens abroad 23 Sep 2015 7:19 AM (10 years ago)

The OECD is the latest international body to weigh in on Ireland’s disenfranchisement of its expats. In their latest economic survey, the organisation says that Ireland is out of step with the rest of Europe, and both citizens and the nation are missing out:

One aspect with significant room for improvement concerns emigrant’s political representation and right to vote in Irish elections. Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe not to offer some form of suffrage to its citizens who live abroad (Honohan, 2011). The vast majority of countries have electoral systems allowing emigrants to participate in some ways in elections. Voting can allow states to build and retain highly productive  connections with diaspora groups (Collier and Vathi, 2007). Political participation is positively associated with well-being (Frey et al., 2008 and Blais and Gelineau, 2007). Thus, civil and political engagement is one of the building blocks of the OECD’s Better Life index. Allowing for the participating of Irish emigrants in domestic electoral process would reinforce their attachment to Ireland, would bolster the linkages that Ireland has been successfully building over the years and would make a positive contribution to emigrant’s well-being.

Calling former emigrants to Australia – complete a ten-minute survey! 30 Jun 2015 8:19 PM (10 years ago)

A researcher in Adelaide, Australia writes of her eagerness to reach anyone born in Ireland or Northern Ireland who has lived in Australia and since departed. She would be grateful for responses to a short survey investigating aspects of the immigrant experience in Australia as outlined below:

This study is being undertaken to gather data from persons who have travelled from Ireland/Northern Ireland to Australia on a long-term temporary or permanent visa and departed from Australia again. The data will be used to investigate the impact of immigration policy and social media and technology on the migration experience. Impact is measured in terms of return visits to Ireland, migrants’ perceptions of connectedness to ‘home’ and the settling in process with regard to family, social networks and working life. Pre-migration sources of information about Australia and measuring expectations against the reality of migration are also covered.

It takes around 10 minutes to complete and you have the option of participating in a personal interview conducted by phone or in person. If you can help in this regard, please leave your details in the space provided.

To complete the survey, visit the survey website.

The survey has Human Research Ethics Approval (HREC Approval No: H-2014-234).

Classic work of emigrant oral history relaunched for 25th anniversary 30 Jun 2015 1:53 PM (10 years ago)

A classic work about emigration has been revised and reissued in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. “Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America”, by Dr Íde B. O’Carroll, will be launched by UCD Professor Margaret Kelleher on Wednesday, 15 July 2015 at 6 pm at in the Long Room Hub at Trinity College in Dublin. The event will be hosted by Dr Catherine Lawless of the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at TCD; the Minister for Diaspora Affairs,  Jimmy Deenihan, will make opening remarks.

The publishers’ website describes the book:

Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America is a unique collection of Irish women’s oral histories spanning three waves of twentieth-century emigration to America in the 1920s, 1950s, 1980s. The author provides a critical gender analysis of Irish society during the three migration waves to illustrate conditions for women prior to departure. The oral histories detail how each woman created an independent life for herself in America, often in the face of multiple challenges there. As active agents, often supporting one another to leave, these Irish women are role models because they inspire us to have the courage to act. The women’s voices also speak to and against the regulated silences surrounding both emigration and the reality of Irish women’s lives. Finally, they provide a rich multigenerational tapestry of experience into which women leaving Ireland today, often for places other than America, can weave their stories.

•This book used an oral history approach to documenting Irish emigration history – an approach considered “ground-breaking” at the time

• This revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition comes at a time of renewed global Irish migration

•The Models’ project materials formed the basis of the first holding on Irish women at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, the premier repository on the History of Women in America – the O’Carroll Collection.

Author Dr Íde B. O’Carroll is an Irish-born social researcher and writer who divides her time between Amherst, MA and Lismore, Waterford; she is also a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House. 

To RSVP for the launch, contact Cork University Press Tel: 00 353 (0)21 4902980 or email corkuniversitypress@ucc.ie. To order the book, visit the Cork University Press website.

Global Irish Civic Forum to take place this week in Dublin 2 Jun 2015 4:06 PM (10 years ago)

The first-ever Global Irish Civic Forum will take place in Dublin Castle this week, with over 175 delegates from 17 countries and representing more than 140 organisations in attendance. Those attending include representatives of more than 140 organisation assisting vulnerable emigrants, supporting Irish culture abroad, networking Irish business people, and campaigning on issues affecting emigrants.

One issue that will be sure to be on the minds of many participants will be that of voting rights for emigrants. Following last month’s phenomenal “#hometovote” movement, which saw a large and unprecedented number of emigrants returning home to vote, it is likely that many of the delegates will be eager to talk about new ways of engagement in an Ireland to which many are likely to return.

Panel discussions will focus on such issues as identity and heritage, assistance on returning to Ireland, challenges facing new emigrants, supporting the mental well-being of emigrants, and more. The Forum will no doubt be well-covered on social media, and the suggested hashtag on Twitter is #diaspora15.

Ahead of the event, Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said,

“I am very much looking forward to engaging with the participants attending the Global Irish Civic Forum. The event is particularly timely as we are starting to see the tide of emigration turning in response to steady economic recovery. Our focus is now shifting to facilitating those emigrants abroad who wish to return.
“The forum is also a unique opportunity to thank the many organisations working throughout the world to support our emigrants in making new lives far from home.”

Minister for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan stated:

“I look forward to lively and engaging discussions with representatives of groups working with our emigrants abroad over the course of the Global Irish Civic Forum. Many of the groups represented are recipients of funding under the Emigrant Support Programme which has demonstrated the Government’s support and commitment to global Irish communities since 2004.”

Here is the programme outline:

Wednesday 3 June

• Welcome Address by Minister for Diaspora Affairs Jimmy Deenihan T.D.
• Panel Discussion on challenges facing new Irish emigrants
• Panel Discussion on Irish Identity and Heritage
• Panel Discussion on reaching out to Irish citizens abroad
• Panel Discussion on supporting the mental wellbeing of Irish emigrants
• Reception hosted by President & Mrs. Higgins

Thursday 4 June

• Address by Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade, Charles Flanagan T.D.
• Panel Discussion on assisting emigrants returning to Ireland
• ‘Diaspora Engagement – Past, Present and Future – How and Why Diaspora
• Matters’, Kingsley Aikins
• Presentation by John Concannon, Director of the Ireland 2016 Project Team
• Afternoon Workshops for Irish community organisations: fundraising,
• communication and governance
• Closing Remarks by Minister for Diaspora Affairs Jimmy Deenihan T.D.

See the full programme on the UCD Clinton Institute website.

Watch recorded proceedings on the Department of Foreign Affairs website.

“My heart leaped up with so much joy:” Happy St Patrick’s Day! 16 Mar 2015 6:57 PM (10 years ago)

Every St Patrick’s Day, I am reminded of my favourite book, The Hard Road to Klondike, and Micheál MacGowan’s poignant story of St Patrick’s Day in All Gold Creek in the Yukon. In case you’re not familiar with the book, it’s the translation from Irish of the oral memoir of Donegal native Micheál MacGowan’s adventures in Montana and the Alaskan Gold Rush. It’s wonderful.

I love the story of this impromptu St Patrick’s Day parade (probably Alaska’s first!), not least because it’s true. MacGowan’s tale captures the camaraderie, fun and poignancy of a good St Patrick’s Day celebration far from home. The story opens early on St Patrick’s morning with our hero, high in the hills, five miles from the nearest village, gathering a can of snow to melt for water for his breakfast.

As I stood there, suddenly I thought I heard pipe-music in the distance. At first I thought it was a dream but in a short while I heard it again. I straightened up then so as to hear it better but as luck had it, didn’t the piper stop playing as soon as I was in a position to listen properly. It was some time before he started up again but when he did he seemed to be closer and the music was clearer; and wasn’t the tune he was playing ‘St. Patrick’s Day’! I’d say that by then the piper was three or four miles away up in the hills behind us; there, then, was I, three thousand miles from home but, in the time it would take you to clap your hands, I fancied I was back again among my own people in Cloghaneely. My heart leaped up with so much joy that I was sure it was going to jump out of my breast altogether.

I ran back into the cabin and told my friends what was happening. They came out and when they heard the music, they were so overjoyed that one of them rushed around with the news to all the Irishmen in the neighbouring cabins. They too got up and when they also heard the pipe-music coming towards them they nearly went out of their minds. They went roaring and shouting around the place so much that you could hear the echoes coming back out of the mountains and valleys surrounding us. Everyone waited there until we felt the piper was coming near to us and then we all went out to meet him. Nobody was fully clothed and half of us hadn’t eaten at all but our blood was hot and despite the frost none of us felt the cold a bit! When we met him, we carried him shoulder-high for a good part of the way back. He was brought into our cabin and neither food nor drink was spared on him. And it was still early in the day.

When everyone was ready, he tuned his pipes and off we went four abreast after him like soldiers in full marching order. There wasn’t an Irish tune that we had ever heard that he didn’t play on the way down the valley. Crowds of people from other countries were working away on the side of the hill and they didn’t know from Adam what on earth was up with us marching off like that behind the piper. They thought we were off our heads altogether but we made it known to them that it was our very own day—the blessed feast-day of St. Patrick. On we marched until we came to the hotels and we went into the first big one that we met. Without exaggeration, I’d say that there were up to six hundred men there before us—men from all parts of the world. We were thirsty after the march and, though we hadn’t a bit of shamrock between us, we thought it no harm to keep up the old custom and to wet it as well as we were able.

We had a couple of drinks each and, as we relaxed, I stood up and asked the piper to tune up his pipes and play us ‘St. Patrick’s Day’ from one end of the house to the other. The word was hardly out of my mouth before he was on his feet…

The men drown the shamrock exuberantly at the town’s hotels, their day only briefly disrupted by the violent dispatch of an Orangeman who didn’t appreciate the celebrations. (We’ll skip that bit.)

As night fell, we all gathered ourselves together again and set off up the hill along the way we had come until we reached our own cabins again. We were tired out and it wasn’t hard to make our beds that night. The piper spent the night with us and next morning he bade us farewell and went off to the back of the mountain where himself and two friends of his were working.

A loyal good-natured Irishman, like thousands of others of his race, he left his bones stretched under frost and snow, far from his people, out in the backwoods, where none of his own kith would ever come to say a prayer for his soul. We heard that he had been killed in one of the shafts shortly after he had come to us to keep the Feast of St. Patrick with his music in All Gold Creek.

A bit of a sad ending there, but MacGowan himself had a much happier one. He went home to Donegal in 1901, travelling first class with the fortunes he brought from the Gold Rush. “I had seen enough of modern times in America; and it was like a healing balm to find myself under the old rafters again.” He decided to stay in Donegal, fell in love, married, and raised a family – and MacGowan, one of Ireland’s greatest emigrant adventurers, declared he would rather see one of his eleven children “gathering rags” than heading for America.

Happy St Patrick’s Day – I hope you’re parading where ever you are!

• You can read a full book review I wrote several years ago over at the Emigrant.ie website.
• I also wrote the entry on Michael MacGowan in Ireland and the Americas.
• You should probably buy the book.

Uplift.ie begins emigrant voting rights petition campaign 16 Mar 2015 4:28 AM (10 years ago)

The activist website Uplift.ie has begun a new petition campaign calling on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to end his refusal to hold a referendum on the rights of Irish citizens living overseas to vote in presidential elections.

Uplift.ie says

More than 120 countries have provisions for their citizens abroad to cast a ballot. Ireland does not. Engagement with Irish citizens abroad has long been of enormous importance for Ireland. It has been a distinctive feature of efforts to bring a lasting peace to the island. It has built economic links resulting in trade, investment and tourism and the achievements of our citizens have enhanced Ireland’s profile and reputation internationally.

The issue of voting rights for citizens outside the State has huge popular support and was also recommended by the Convention on the Constitution. The Government recently considered their response to the recommendation of the constitutional convention but have now decided not to go ahead with the referendum needed to allow Irish citizens living abroad to vote in Presidential elections.

In their Twitter campaign promoting the campaign, Uplift.ie quoted yours truly in an infographic.

In a nutshell @NoreenBowden captures why the #Right2Vote is an NB democratic issue. Act now https://t.co/SjXnYxneh4 pic.twitter.com/Infs4WflSx

— Uplift (@UpliftIRL) March 16, 2015

The petition has 727 signatures as of this writing. Add your name at Uplift.ie.