The mixed race Irish family and everyday negotiations of citizenship

Abstract

In recent years, the mixed race family constellation has emerged as a persistent feature of Irish societal life. An increase in interracial partnering invariably leads to the presence of white women who are parenting children who are ascribed to another race. Yet, nationalist discourses and the incorporation of jus sanguinis principles in constitutional law have constructed a version of Irishness that ‘others’ and excludes the mixed race person. This paper focuses on the white Irish mother and her mixed race (i.e. black African/white Irish) child (ren), as the majority of mixed race families in the State. In fact, this article sets out to provide a novel perspective vis-à-vis the location of the mixed race family in the context of the exclusionary politics of Irish citizenship and how, through their mothering practices, these white women negotiate and challenge dominant ideologies of belonging on behalf of their children. More specifically, this paper examines the mothers’ attempts to establish their children as equal claimants of rights in the Irish public sphere. By drawing on in-depth interviews with twelve white Irish mothers, this paper reveals that the women’s efforts to publicly articulate their mixed race children as legitimate Irish citizens have been largely denied or even, de-politicized. Rather, at the level of citizenship, the racialized insider-outsider dynamic gets reproduced as the political autonomy of such citizens is constrained by notions of phenotype (and bloodline criteria). I further draw attention to the governmental production of these mixed race subjects as ‘failed’ citizens, who must live out their difference silently in the interstitial spaces of the national framework.

Keywords

Mixed race Irish Ireland mixed race family white mother citizenship rightful presence act of citizenship national abject racialized belonging.

Introduction

In recent years, Ireland has experienced extensive migratory change (Central Statistics Office (CSO), 2019). In fact, April 2019 figures reveal that non-Irish nationals comprise 12.7% (or 622,700 persons) of the total population within the Republic (CSO, 2019). Similar to other western societies (Song, 2009), migration has also shaped the familial landscape with the mixed race family emerging as a persistent feature of Irish society (CSO, 2019).

However, this demographic transformation has occurred against the backdrop of Irish nation-building discourses which continue to promulgate an exclusivist Irish identity with a normative whiteness at the core (Fanning, 2012). Moreover, the Citizenship Referendum 2004, by enshrining jus sanguinis principles of belonging, continues to frame emergent conversations around who is allowed to be Irish (Garner, 2004). As such, in the context of everyday encounters, the mixed race Irish citizen can be positioned as ‘other’ and as manifesting incompatibility with an authentic Irish identity (Morrison, 2004).

However, it is the lived experiences of the white Irish mother and her mixed race (i.e. black African/white Irish) child(ren), as the majority of mixed race families in the State (CSO, 2016), which are the focus of this paper. Although both occupying the official status of Irish citizen, the white mother and her mixed race child are subject to differential processes of racialization. This paper, therefore, aims to provide a novel perspective vis-a-vis the location of the mixed race family in the context of the exclusionary politics of Irish citizenship and how, through their mothering practices, these white women negotiate and challenge dominant ideologies of belonging on behalf of their children. More specifically, this paper examines the mothers’ attempts to establish their children as equal claimants of rights in the Irish public sphere. Whilst the relationship between race and citizenship has been examined at the public policy level, this paper brings the focus to the dynamics of citizenship as lived in the privatized world of the mixed race family. In fact, the growth of multiracial families challenges the public/private dichotomy which has been a defining feature of social and political theories of citizenship to date (Turner, 2008).

This paper is structured as follows. The first section discusses the significant moments and features that have shaped the Irish national landscape of racialized belonging. Secondly, I develop a theoretical umbrella framework which draws upon both critical citizenship scholarship (Isin, 2008; Squire and Darling, 2013) and literature related to the positioning of the white mother in the interracial family formation (Twine, 2004, 2010). Next, I outline the research methods. This paper, then, examines the themes arising from the mothers’ empirical narratives of lived experience before concluding with a discussion of the findings.

Ireland’s shifting national imaginary

Since the formation of the Irish state, the national imagined community has been founded upon an exclusionary racial/cultural particularism or indeed, what Fanning (2012: 30) describes as a ‘Catholic, Irish-Ireland nationalist hegemony’. Over the course of the 19th century, several shifts occurred within the context of Irish nationalism which shaped ideological aspirations for a gaelic-catholic Ireland (Fanning, 2012). During this period, the concept of cultural nationalism was being bolstered by several prominent sporting and cultural associations – for example, the Gaelic League¹ which led the reclamation of the Gaelic language and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA)² as the site where a catholic–gaelic republicanism was espoused (Fanning, 2012). The GAA, as ‘a privileged depository of Irishness’ (Garner, 2004: 153) was constituted as a key site of nationalist ideology. In fact, Maurice Davin (Founder of the GAA) referred to gaelic games as ‘the characteristic sports and past-times of the gaelic ‘“race”’ (Cronin, 1999: 103).

The experience of emigration and involvement in British colonial endeavours has exposed Irish people to racist doctrine, both as recipients and perpetrators of processes of racialization (Garner, 2004; McVeigh, 1996; Rolston and Shannon, 2002). In fact, Garner has suggested that ‘the Irish have “appropriated” racism as a postcolonial instrument of domination’ (2004: 26) – a racism which is now targeted towards minority groups (or, more specifically, visible minorities) who, as ‘racialised outsiders’ (McVeigh, 1992) must bear culpability for the phenomenon of racism in Ireland (Lentin and McVeigh, 2002).

The contemporary migration flow and the associated notions of cultural (and racial) difference are now calling into question the dominant ideology of homogeneity which prevails in Ireland (Fanning, 2012). In fact, it is minority groups that deviate most sharply from an imagined Irish norm (i.e. racialized as non-white) that directly challenge existing frameworks of Irish identity (King-O’Riain, 2007). Moreover, the phenomenon of the racialization of migration in the Irish context means that asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants are all racialized as ‘black’ in migration discourses (Fanning, 2012; Lentin and McVeigh, 2002).

In fact, the re-calibration of Ireland’s citizenship regime (in 2004) can be viewed as an official state response to the levels of fear and hostility being targeted at immigrants and asylum-seekers who are discursively constructed as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘bogus refugees’ and ‘failed asylum seekers’ (Lentin, 2007: 617). In the June 2004 Referendum, the Irish public voted, in a 4-to-1 majority, against allowing the Irish-born children of non-Irish nationals to acquire a constitutional right to citizenship (Lentin, 2007). At this time, pregnant immigrant women, (or, more specifically, African women) were portrayed by both the government and the media as arriving in Ireland during the latter stages of pregnancy in order to ensure that their babies could be born on Irish soil (Luibhéid, 2013) thereby availing themselves of jus soli citizenship rights.

By imposing bloodline criteria for citizenship, the Citizenship Referendum sought to establish a political membership based on ancestry and lineage (Luibhéid, 2013). However, during the Referendum debates, it was actually African-Irish children who became the locus of national anxieties around the cultural dilution of Irish identity and in fact, came to represent ‘a sort of malignancy in the body politic’ (Shandy, 2008: 806). This resonates with Tormey’s (2007: 83) assertion that the Referendum served to create and reinforce a racialized divide between the ‘second generation subject’ and the ‘white Irish’ person – ‘black bodies are not yet politic bodies and so black children born in Ireland are not perceived as rightful (or rights-bearing) citizens. They may be in, but they are not of, their Irish communities’. It is fair to say, therefore, that the Citizenship Referendum has served to reproduce the racialized insider/outsider lines of membership which continue to define terms of belonging in Ireland (Ní Laoire et al., 2011).

By its re-inscription of the dominant black–white paradigm, the construction of the Census 2016 has also severely limited the mixed race (i.e. black African/white Irish) citizen who was forced to choose between the racial category of ‘white’ or ‘black or black Irish’. The only other available option was to select ‘other, including mixed background’³ (and to further provide a written description of one’s mixed origins) which has the effect of rendering such citizens as ‘other’ to the category of Irishness (Michael, 2015).

Theoretical influences

Isin’s (2008) act of citizenship framework brings to the fore notions of irregular belonging. In this model, citizenship does not just signify formal status, but further encompasses the practices (i.e. political, cultural and social) of staking political claims (Isin, 2008). The analytical focus is, therefore, directed towards the act (or ‘the moment of insurrection’) which may potentially cause a rupture in the existing citizenship regime (Erel, 2013) whereby ‘regardless of status or substance, subjects constitute themselves as citizens or better still, as those to whom the right to have rights is due’ (Isin, 2008: 18).

But, in Turner’s (2016) view, there exists a tendency to minimise the transformative capacity of acts of citizenship in subsequent analysis. Rather, the ‘moments of insurrection’, by challenging the notion that ‘inclusion back into normalised modes of belonging and equitable rights is the objective of all struggles’ (2016: 144), move us beyond a focus on the insider/outsider dualistic framework which frames terms of belonging.

In alignment with the above body of work that examines the ‘illegitimate’ claiming of rights by those located outside political narratives, this paper further draws on the analytical frame of rightful presence (RP) as developed by Squire and Darling (2013). The notion of RP sets out to de-stabilise the asymmetry of power at the core of the hospitality host/guest framing of belonging. Whilst the host/guest configuration highlights a deferred sense of justice (a ‘justice to come’ approach), the analytics of RP is concerned with political claims-making in the here and now. RP further emphasises the significance of the micro-politics of citizenship – that is, the ‘minor acts’ which disturb the categories of host and guest. However, it is important to be mindful of the fact that RP, although seeking to exceed statist framings, may ultimately be constrained by host guest insider–outsider dualisms of political rights and belonging.

This paper further introduces the concept of the ‘national abject’ as advanced by Tyler (2013) who has utilised the Kristeva (1982) theory of abjection to shed light on the phenomenon whereby states position certain minority groups outside dominant modes of belonging (as a way of legitimising neoliberal governance). Concomitantly, these ‘failed citizens’ are denied the rights which flow from national citizenship and exist, instead, as a dislocated presence ‘within the polis as its interiorized other’ (Butler and Spivak, 2007: 16).

In recent years, there has also been a proliferation of research which has examined the specific racialized positioning of the white mother of the mixed race family constellation (Caballero et al., 2008; Harman, 2010; McKenzie, 2013; Twine, 2004, 2010). Based on a longitudinal ethnography, Twine has developed the concept of ‘racial literacy’ which explains how these women, who are deemed to be ‘insider-outsiders’ (2010: 93) on the basis of their intimate association with blackness, have acquired a critical racial frame which facilitates socio-political insights regarding the routine manifestations of racism. Most significantly for our purposes here, these mothers also tend to develop a critically reflexive relationship to their own sense of whiteness which has come to be lived as a marked and racialized category of identity (Twine, 2010). Twine (2010) further highlights the mixed race family formation as ‘a micro-level political project’ where racialized identities are shaped, negotiated and/or contested.

Methods

This paper draws on interviews that I conducted (between 2016 and 2018) as part of a wider study which examined the racialized dynamics of belonging as negotiated by mixed race family members who are differentially positioned vis-a-vis legitimate Irish citizenship. The population under study was white Irish mothers and their mixed race (i.e. black African/white Irish) children (aged 4–18). This specific cohort was of particular interest for several reasons. Firstly, this study was oriented towards efforts to build on the body of existing literature of white mothers of the multiracial family formation. Secondly, the cumulative effects of the exclusionary impact of Irish identity as white, jus sanguinis principles of belonging and the continuity of the discourses which vilified African people during the run-up to the Referendum in 2004 means that the mixed race (black African/white Irish) child citizen is denied a rightful claim to Irish identity based on parentage (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). These women are, therefore, bringing up children of African descent in a context of white supremacy (Ifekwunigwe, 1999).

Due to the dispersed and invisible nature of the population under study, I used a non-random strategy for participant recruitment (purposive sampling). Several recruitment strategies were employed throughout the research study – the snowball approach (Grbich, 2007; Hennink et al., 2011), public advertisement and formal and informal networking. I did not approach any potential participant directly but, instead, the snowball approach helped me to reach the personal networks of my participants. I was also mindful that a risk associated with the snowballing approach is that it may attract participants who harbour similar value systems, opinions and attitudes (Hennink et al., 2011).

It is worth noting that all mothers agreed to take part in the study at the point of invitation. My status as a white Irish mother of mixed race children definitely worked as an advantage in terms of facilitating access to this hard-to-reach group particularly as advance notification of my similar status seemed to serve as reassurance (Ryan-Flood and Gill, 2010). In terms of accessing participants, there were some ethical and political dilemmas to be negotiated, however. Potential participants needed to self-identify as white Irish mothers of mixed race (black African/white Irish) children. The inclusion of the term ‘white’ in a study framed by race seemed to raise a taboo issue almost immediately (Frankenberg, 1993). In addition, the white mothers needed to identify their children as mixed race and I think it is fair to say that, to a greater or lesser degree, there was prevarication in relation to racial meanings.

Throughout the research process, I complied with ethical protocol in relation to such provisions as informed consent, voluntary participation and principles of anonymity and confidentiality. Potential interviewees were provided with an information sheet which explained that the interview would be recorded, their right to withdraw participation at any point and the entitlement to full confidentiality in terms of participation and personal details. Immediately prior to the interview, participants were asked to sign a consent form confirming that they had been fully briefed on the nature of the study and their role in it. Pseudonyms were used throughout in order to safeguard the anonymity of participants.

This research was, in fact, comprised of several interweaving research strands. In this paper, however, I report on the interviews that were conducted solely with the 12 mothers who agreed to participate, in order to ascertain, from the mother’s perspective, the complex positionality of the mixed race family within the parameters of Irish citizenship. In alignment with feminist principles, qualitative in-depth interviews constituted the main part of the study which facilitated an open and collaborative research encounter (Doucet and Mauthner, 2006). The interviews mostly started with some general opening questions related to the family circumstances (e.g. names and ages of children) along with a broad discussion about preferred racial terminology before progressing to open-ended questioning (e.g. ‘what is it like to mother a mixed race child in contemporary Ireland?’). Although the moments of recognition between myself and the interviewees were helpful in terms of maximising empathy and rapport during the interview itself, I was also aware that my insider status did not provide privileged access to knowledge as this category is mediated by several aspects of experience and identity (Ryan-Flood and Gill, 2010).

Following Riessman (2008), data analysis was loosely based on the principles of thematic narrative analysis. The interview data were, therefore, subject to inductive analyses as themes were developed from the data itself (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Research software was not utilized in data analysis but instead, the analytical design was influenced by Mazzei and Jackson's (2012) notion of creating ‘multivocal texts’ ⁴ which sets out to collect and represent complex layers of voice. A systematic process therefore began whereby the reading and collation of data occurred simultaneously with the development, re-evaluation and entrenchment of themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Based on the themes unearthed from the data (‘interruption of dominant modes of belonging’; ‘everyday narratives’ and ‘a citizenship denied’), this article sets out to develop an empirically based understanding of the enactment of citizenship through mothering practices.

In this paper, I focus on the politics of reproduction and mothering as acts of citizenship. By acknowledging that critical questions about the nature of Irish belonging emerge in the context of everyday lived experience, I examine the potential for mothering practices to bring into being new political subjects.

The mixed race family: Interrupting dominant modes of belonging

In this section, I document the mother's awareness of the differential positioning between her and her child(ren) (and black African partner, if applicable) as regards legitimate claims-making. In this regard, Nessa, mother of Colum (12), Rian (9) and Mary (6), relates below her African husband’s discomfort in relation to accompanying her son to GAA sporting events:

He said, ‘I never felt comfortable there’ and I didn’t feel comfortable there but I think, as an Irish person, I felt I had a right to be there even though I’d stand on the sidelines – I still feel enough confidence to stand there on my own because I thought – ‘I’m ok, I’ll stand here on my own as a woman from Ireland, with a right to belong’, but he didn’t – he was going into the unknown.

In the context of everyday interaction with the GAA, which has a deeply embedded association with nationalist ideology, Nessa interrogates the grounds of racialized belonging. Whilst there is an acknowledgement that her husband’s inclusion in the public domain is, at the very least, contentious, Nessa herself embodies and experiences her own belonging in terms of ‘rights’ (‘as a woman from Ireland’). Although Nessa does allude to ‘the hierarchy of Irishness’ in Ireland which means that she does not always feel Irish herself, she is confident that she is able to perform Irishness if and when the situation demands and, more importantly, that she has the right to do so. In essence, Nessa feels strongly that she has ‘the right to have rights’ (Arendt, 1951[2017]) and it is precisely this ‘right to have rights’ that she would like to pass onto her children because it gives her confidence:

I want them [her children] to know that they are just as Irish as anyone else – they may have black skin but they are just as Irish – they have rights just like anybody else – but I’m not exactly sure how I am going to go about that.

There is almost a sense of urgency and anxiety in Nessa’s statement as she explicitly frames her family’s differential access to Irish belonging in terms of skin colour and (re)articulates her intention to position her children as rights-bearing subjects. It seems that Nessa is, in fact, narrating a moment of ‘becoming political’ (Isin, 2002) as she demonstrates an awareness that citizenship, as an institution, despite claims to universalism, remains imbued with a subtext of ethnic and racial belonging (Erel, 2013).

In fact, the mixed race family, by the very fact of its presence within national space, challenges ideas of ‘a stable national identity based on kinship’ (Stevens, 1999: 9). We can, therefore, view Nessa’s mothering practices as ‘a political intervention that challenges the notion of cultural homogeneity of the citizenry and the racialised hierarchisation of migrant and ethnic minority culture as well as the intergenerational reproduction of these’ (Erel, 2013: 971).

The activation of their children’s citizenship constitutes the political dimension of mothering work (Kershaw, 2005). In fact, the majority of the mothers that took part in the study, whether or not explicitly espoused, assume a political position regarding racism (Hill Collins, 1990). Vera, mother of Oliver (12), speaks of the all-pervasive nature of racism in society:

I think the issue is racism rather than his skin colour – I find the policing and scanning of books and movies for racism – I mean, in terms of just thinking back to his childhood – that has been the biggest challenge for me and it’s still a quandary for me – that is, if the environment is profoundly racist and I think that it is – how do you best support a child to deal with that because I think, rightly or wrongly, my tack was not to let it become normal – y’know, there needs to be some awareness of how that works so we can spot it in operation rather than just absorbing it as the way of things.

Vera demonstrates political mothering in action (and the acquisition of what Twine (2010) terms ‘racial literacy’) as she attempts to inculcate in her child a critical awareness of the structural dimensions of racism. In a similar vein, Helen, mother of George (17) and Liam (15), refers to a racist incident incurred by her son whilst playing gaelic football:

Liam was called (the n-word) on the pitch – but the GAA were very quick to act – and before Liam even got home that evening, I had the Chairperson of the Youth Board onto me to say that an incident had occurred and there was a hearing and all – but it was very interesting because during the hearing when I was asking them to write and re-iterate their policies on race to local clubs, the GAA fella says to me ‘emm, well, we don’t want to let this get out to the public domain’ – hence, the reason why they acted so fast.

Helen is a vocal opponent of racism:

I think Ireland is outrageously racist and we cannot even have that conversation. I mean the level of cowardice and ‘head in the sand’ stuff is just unbelievable – I just really feel that the government are not taking seriously the issues that are bubbling underneath the surface for these children – they are dispossessed – they are not integrated into society into any shape or form – I say to people ‘when my children bleed, their blood is red’- I don’t accept racism at any level – if I find there has been racism – I will call it – I have always called it – sometimes, I have had to fight about it – I have to keep fighting it – I know all the guards⁵ by name now – think they think I’m mad – but I say to them, I want it noted because I know they won’t do anything about it – just note it.

And, she encourages her son to do the same:

Liam doesn’t ever want to call it – he wants to ignore it – I say to him ‘Liam, you cannot let racism lie, you must call it’.

In addition to claiming citizenship on behalf of her children, Helen’s challenge to racism also constitutes an aspect of her own political citizenship (Kershaw, 2010). By modelling strategies for the negotiation of racism, Helen strives to equip her children with what Hill Collins (1990: 51) terms, ‘a powerful tool for resisting oppression’. In fact, through her initiation of ‘micro-political projects’ (Twine, 2010) related to racism in the intimate sphere, we are enabled to see how Helen’s mothering practices provide a challenge to the public/private dichotomy.

Helen’s moment of ‘becoming political’ (Isin, 2002), like Nessa and Vera earlier, is grounded in the marginal space which is occupied by her family constellation. She encourages her son to challenge racism from the standpoint of his mixed race citizenship (as an emergent political subject) – to speak back, as it were, about the place allocated to him in the space of the nation-state (Rancière, 2004). In stark terms, it seems that Helen’s emotional plea (‘when my children bleed, their blood is red’) can also be read as part of her wider struggle for a political voice (on equal terms) for her children.

Helen also references multiple levels of belonging (i.e. Irish and African) in her everyday negotiations of citizenship. Whilst attempting to assert her son’s ‘Africanness’ in the public sphere, she simultaneously seeks to substantiate his citizenship rights in the Irish state. Moreover, Liam participates in the quintessentially Irish sport of gaelic football. It seems, therefore, that Liam is (or can be), at once, both Irish and African.

However, despite Helen’s persistence regarding the pursuit of official channels of complaint (e.g. GAA Youth Board, the Guards), her son’s political claims are both privatized and diffused as he is constructed as a disempowered subject (i.e. by the Youth Board not acknowledging the racist incident in the public domain). This de-politicization of his claim means that, although subject to the prevailing order of domination, Liam is ultimately disallowed a voice.

It is also important to note, at this point, that some of the mothers interviewed did not frame their child’s racialized positioning in political terms. In fact, discourses of liberal democracy (‘we are all different but equal’ (Ali, 2003)) featured prominently in the narratives, whilst yet other mothers actively resisted discourses of racialization and drew instead, on neoliberal discourses of meritocracy and individual progress (‘anyone can get on, if they want to’). This issue is discussed at length elsewhere (O’Malley, forthcoming). The sole focus of this article is to highlight the mothers’ strivings for public sphere inclusion for their children.

Everyday narratives of claims-making

Here, I focus on the everyday encounters through which citizenship and belonging become meaningful. To this effect, Ellie relates the following discussion with the manager of her daughter’s (Maya (4)) creche:

I did say something once to the manager – I said something that I would feel happier if there was more diversity within the creche – and I did say that Maya had said that about wanting white skin – and the manager said, ‘ah, there’s no need to worry about that – I mean, she’s so pretty – everyone’s going to love her because she’s so gorgeous’ – and I thought, ‘you’ve no idea of the depth of it, it’s so much more than that’.

There is a presumption of rightful presence (Squire and Darling, 2013) at work in the above localized encounter. In her attempts to re-orient the relationship between her mixed race citizen daughter and the state, Ellie attempts to frame her daughter’s status in political terms. The creche manager, on the other hand, assumes a territorial claim over space through her conceptualisation of Maya’s racial status as potentially debilitating or as a ‘lack’ somehow – but a ‘lack’ for which her good looks may ultimately compensate. We can further see how the creche manager’s expression of hospitality and/or demonstration of willingness to tolerate Maya’s racialized difference actually works to re-inscribe the host/guest pastoral relation (Squire and Darling, 2013).

In effect, Ellie’s political claim was effectively trivialized through an appeal to her daughter’s good looks and, simultaneously, Maya was constituted as a passive subject who is prohibited from inhabiting her citizenship. This can be read as part of a wider endeavour at state level to construct mixed race citizens as ‘relentlessly responsible’ (Enright, 2011: 476) for their own sense of (non)belonging.

In Ellie’s interview, she further speaks about sourcing multiracial materials for the creche (such as black dolls/books which portray diversity) as she attempts to live out her family’s ‘diverse Irishness’ (Enright, 2011) in the public domain. We can, therefore, see how Ellie, by means of mothering practices in the private sphere, is challenging the racial particularity of the Irish citizenry. We further get a sense of the additional pressure which the white mother must bear in terms of striving for public sphere legitimacy for her mixed race Irish child. Jane, mother of Sam (8), speaks about her intervention at her son’s school:

Sam was called ‘brown-head’ in the yard – but, I don’t know if the school understands about racism and I don’t really know how to approach them – because they don’t talk about racism as such – but I did say something to the teacher and she did say that they are going to do a little bit of stuff in class now – she said they would do some lessons around it but they haven’t yet – think they are gonna do it soon.

Jane struggles to assert rightful presence (Squire and Darling, 2013) in this encounter with her child’s teacher in relation to racialized name-calling. Indeed, it seems that Jane has acquired a sense that political standing is already absent, or being denied, from the outset (as we note that she feels silenced to some degree). As such, there exists a lack of reciprocity in the relationship between Jane and the school, as a public institution. The school assumes authority and the incident is de-politicized to such an extent that Jane and her son are constructed as passive recipients of the school’s goodwill (or not) when choosing to address the issue of racism. Jane’s narrative of citizenship, therefore, attests to everyday experiences as ultimately circumscribed by the dualism of host/newcomer.

There is also a realization on Alice’s (mother of Dan (10)) part that, despite the strong sense of Irish cultural identification she has tried to inculcate in her son, his position at the sharp interface between cultural ‘insider’ and racialized ‘outsider’ fails to insulate him from the perils of racism:

Even though it [the school] had all the Irishisms and the music and the history and the culture – there was a little bit of starvation there in the sense that the school is not very multicultural – now, I mean, I did my best, I worked with the Yellow Flag Campaign⁶ – I helped out and we planned all the curriculum and everything and the buy-in from the school was grand but I don’t think actually in terms of the reality of what the Yellow Flag was supposed to represent actually happened in the end – because, in the end, I had to move him from the school because he was called the (n-word) on more than one occasion and it wasn’t dealt with properly.

As part of her attempt to make sense of the lack of citizenship rights and entitlements accorded her son, Alice poses critical questions about the nature of Irish belonging in the above quote. In this regard, Alice outlines the various ways she has fulfilled the requirements of a good citizen – she has evidenced her commitment to the nation-state by cultivating a sense of Irishness in her son and engaging with the school’s Yellow Flag programme (and even taught some modules on a voluntary basis). Yet, in the end, the promise of equal citizenship potentially offered by the powerful liberal democratic discourse of the Yellow Flag programme was cruelly withdrawn, when her son was called the n-word and the school failed to treat this incident as a legitimate concern.

Indeed, Alice articulates how her son was deprived of the protection and dignity of citizenship in the strongest possible terms (‘there was a starvation there’) – that is, almost a failure to thrive in citizenship terms. This term encapsulates her son’s process of dehumanisation as he was cast outside and constituted as a national abject. In addition, one gets a sense that this ‘starvation’ seems to manifest as a withholding of a sense of security and safety for Alice and her son. This resonates with Berlant’s (2011) notion of ‘cruel optimism’ inherent in the attempts to forge ‘a liveable life’ (Tyler, 2013), to feel anchored through a sense of home and belonging that is constitutively excluding. In fact, the host/newcomer framing of belonging invokes starkly uneven power relations as Alice and her son are constituted as disempowered subjects who must acquiesce to state authority and control. Alice elaborates below her son’s paucity of rights in this regard:

I was sat down in the office – and I mean, he [the headteacher] opened his red book, where all the incidents go into – they are all written in pen but this one was written in pencil – and he forgot himself and he said, ‘I wrote this in pencil because, you know kids, they are always changing their story’ – and I said, ‘so you mean all those stories written in pen, you mean to say they never told you a lie’ – so my son – I mean, it was written in pencil, he doesn’t have a voice, he doesn’t have a pen, he has a pencil – he has to be different – it can’t just be a pen like everybody else.

In accordance with a presumption of rightful presence (Squire and Darling, 2013), Alice attempts to constitute her son as a political actor, as a claimant of rights, by exercising the power to dissent from the majority which is the citizen’s due. Or, in more specific terms, Alice is seeking an acknowledgement in the public domain of the specificity of her son’s racist experience. Rather than seeking inclusion, therefore, Alice is posing a challenge to hegemonic citizenship narratives.

But what happens, instead, is that debates around issues of difference become localized (i.e. whether to use a pen or pencil) and thus, evacuated of all political content. By recording the racist incident in pencil, there is almost certainly a potential ‘erasure’ of events as Dan is excluded from legitimate claims-making at a very vulnerable moment (in the aftermath of a racist incident). In short, Dan must be accountable for his own difference and he must work on his alternative political subjectivities in the private domain. The outcome of this incident, therefore, is that the hierarchy of citizenship remains intact and the hospitality frame (host/guest relation) is re-affirmed – in a sense, Dan’s difference may or may not be tolerated. Alice continues by framing her demands within a wider political analysis:

They got the Yellow Flag and I mean, when I was teaching about the Yellow Flag – I did the introduction day, no teacher in there wanted to teach about diversity or racism – anything – there was a fear in them. So, I did the teaching in there because no-one else offered to do it or wanted to do it – I mean, there can’t be equality without some sort of reflection on the policies the school already has and adopting them to reflect the current status – if they need to support equalling the playing field for children of mixed race – also, how can we understand black or mixed race kids if we don’t employ black teachers – because what I have seen is the teacher blaming the black or mixed race child because these children are easy to see – both in school and in society in general – they are easy to see and identify and accuse and so, at a very young age, they are put in a position of having to defend themselves and so, they grow up with that and I think it’s very sad and very apparent in Irish culture – also, I don’t know how many teachers are doing intercultural studies in primary school – I mean, I don’t understand why we don’t have a black history month in Ireland.

We see political mothering in action as Alice, through an analytic frame of rightful presence (Squire and Darling, 2013), interrogates the positioning of the mixed race child citizen within the Irish state. Again, we can note the juxtapositioning of the celebratory aspects of the Yellow Flag programme and her political claims grounded in her son’s marginalized status. Alice highlights that there is, in fact, no formal requirement to teach principles of racism or diversity in the school (which, in this school’s case, is being taught by means of the Yellow Flag programme).

But, we further acquire a sense of how Dan, in the context of the Yellow Flag programme, is passively positioned as the ‘ethnic other’ (Arat-Koc, 2005). In a sense, he is obliged to proffer his ‘cultural diversity’ to the host community and they can choose to celebrate what is deemed to be its more palatable aspects – a kind of de-politicization (exacerbated by neoliberal political rationality) through celebration. But, Alice advances a political claim for inclusion of the mixed race child citizen in the body politic by seeking, in her own words, to ‘equal[ling] the playing field’. Her political demands are couched in discourses of rights and equality vis-a-vis mixed race citizenship as she references the hypervisibility of mixed race young people, the need for black teachers/black history month and the school policy framework. We can see that there is a disruptive dimension at work here that extends beyond and directly challenges the limits of hospitality – in fact, ‘delineates the contingency of citizenship itself’ (Turner, 2016: 143).

A citizenship denied: Implications for the future

Generally speaking, the mothers referenced an awareness of the marginalized positioning of their mixed race children which oftentimes, manifested in the expression of anxiety and fear for the capacity of their children to forge ‘a liveable life’ (Tyler, 2013: 12) in Ireland. In this vein, Ellie discusses mixed race motherhood as engendering different levels of responsibility:

I feel that I have to make up for society’s failures – because society is going to fail her – it’s definitely going to fail her – it’s failing her dad now – he can’t get a job here – he has had to go to (UK city) – I mean, am I wrong to expect that (husband) can be treated as an equal – it’s failing us as a couple because we are constantly having to prove something – so it’s going to fail her so I feel that, as her mother, I have to make up for that so I do get quite intense in my parenting.

She continues by stating:

And I think about the future a lot and I think of all the stupid questions that I have to answer now she is going to have to answer in the future.

Based on her husband’s experiences of racialized abjection, Ellie vocalises fears about intergenerational disenfranchisement and how that will affect her daughter, Maya. In fact, Ellie vividly portrays a family who lacks a secure foundation somehow or at the very least, is not allowed to flourish in neoliberal Ireland. We can see how Ellie actively refuses the abstract conception of ‘justice to come’ which is associated with a hospitality framing and instead, adopts a rightful presence perspective which exposes the workings of power to exclude (Squire and Darling, 2013).

Ellie, therefore, contests the notion that, by simply broadening the scope of citizenship, we can ‘include’ the excluded. She is aware that her negatively racialized child is not experiencing linear progression into the time and space of the nation-state but rather, sees her daughter’s positioning as suspended in a state of (non)belonging, a ‘failed’ citizen, a national abject (Tyler, 2013). Finally, Ellie’s allusion to the ‘stupid questions’ that her daughter will be forced to endure brilliantly encapsulates the lack of reciprocity between the mixed race citizen and the state – that is, the mixed race citizen as accountable for his/her own difference. Alice similarly reflects below about mixed race motherhood:

You certainly become very aware of the ‘voiceless’ in society – you feel like your children’s voices are being halved or not being heard to a certain extent – you start to understand all the voiceless people.

Alice’s awareness of her child’s marginal positioning extends to an empathic identification with other minoritized groups but also manifests in uncertainties about the future:

One of my fears when I walk down the street and I see this generation of African and mixed kids is – they have been raised here, they are born here, they are second generation Irish – but I do get scared a little – I mean, how are they going to own their citizenship in this country?

Alice references above the positioning of the mixed race child citizen in Irish national space. In fact, she seems to have acquired a sense of citizenship as an ‘abjectifying technology’ (Tyler, 2013: 53) which constructs ‘failed’ citizens who are both contained and immobilised within the state as its ‘interiorized other’ (Butler and Spivak, 2007: 16). Like Ellie earlier, Alice does not subscribe to notions of gradual linear progression from a state of exclusion to inclusion in the body politic as per dualistic notions of citizenship. Rather, by employing an analytics of rightful presence, she speaks about the possibility of the mixed race citizen ‘owning’ or claiming future citizenship which, of course, directly challenges the power relations embedded in categories of host and guest. In fact, Alice appears to suggest a re-configuration of citizenship as necessary. Jane similarly expresses concern regarding her child’s absorption into the national framework:

I think it’s very hard – I remember being in the hospital in [Irish city] and there was an African doctor – I don’t know where he was from actually – and the woman in the next bed to me refused to be treated by him and just being so shocked and thinking ‘is this what my child has to look forward to?’ – y’know, whatever about my partner.

And then:

I had a dream last year – I had a dream where Sam was being hurt by this boy – and was being really bullied by this kid – so I went to the house and the dad opened the door and I said, ‘hi, I just came to talk to you about your son’ and he said, ‘but, come on, your son isn’t worth as much as my son’ – something like that – ‘your son is not as important as my son so it doesn’t really matter that my son is being mean to him’ and I felt this moment of fury and then, I went, ‘yeah, you’re right’ – and I walked away – and I woke up just feeling so awful – I mean, is there a part of me that feels like that – that my son is less – because of his colour – is this something that I can completely disown and say that there is no part of me that feels that – or, is that dream just about my fear for him? – that dream really shook me – because I know in my heart and soul that I could not love my child more.

In this powerful rendition of her dream related to her son’s positioning, we can see how Jane’s fears and anxieties manifest at an unconscious level. Moreover, this dream represents such a deeply unsettling experience for Jane that she feels compelled to (re)assert her love for her son at the end of the narrative.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have examined how the mothers (on behalf of their children) have attempted to carve out a position as equal claimants of rights from the standpoint of mixed race Irish citizenship. In this capacity, transracial mothering can be conceptualized as a citizenship practice which directly challenges the public–private dichotomy at the core of classical political theories of citizenship. Displaced from the public sphere, these mothers instil in their children the political agency to negotiate the oppressive racialized structures of a society which (mis)recognizes them as future citizens. Their mothering work, therefore, not only constitutes a resistant political strategy but further challenges what we conventionally regard as political resistance. Moreover, through their endeavours to open up a space for the political expression of multiple and differentiated forms of belonging, these mothers are effectively re-working notions of the family both at a local level and across transnational boundaries.

The mothers’ narratives further highlight the everyday sites (i.e. school, sports clubs) and informal encounters (or ‘minor politics’ (Squire and Darling, 2013)) through which belonging is constituted and citizenship becomes meaningful. In fact, through a presumption of rightful presence, the mixed race family interrogates the asymmetrical power relations at the core of the racialized host/guest relationship. In essence, there is a re-configuration of citizenship occurring ‘from below’ as this family seeks to re-frame the relationship between the mixed race citizen and the state. As opposed to being a formal status only, therefore, citizenship actually bears the potential to create new modes of belonging (Turner, 2016).

Interestingly, through their negotiations (at both a conscious and unconscious level) of the racialization inherent in the concept of citizenship, these mothers are removed from unmarked whiteness and at some level, come to experience some of the marginality attributed to their children.

Yet, the mothers’ efforts to publicly articulate their children as legitimate Irish citizens have been largely denied which, of course, raises critical questions as to how states allocate the benefits of political membership. Rather, at the level of citizenship, the racialized insider–outsider dynamic gets reproduced as the political subjecthood of these mixed race Irish citizens is constrained by notions of phenotype (and bloodline criteria).

Rather, I have drawn attention to the governmental production of these mixed race subjects as ‘failed’ citizens, who must live out their difference silently, in a de-politicized manner, in the interstitial spaces of the national framework (Tyler, 2013). Such citizens, rendered as ‘national abjects’, as opposed to being hailed as mixed race Irish citizens, are effectively deprived of a space in which to articulate his/her political identity and belonging within the existing dualistic logic of citizenship. Finally, an acts of citizenship (Isin, 2008) lens allows us to see that the mothers’ endeavours to establish a legitimate political category for the mixed race Irish citizen are not oriented towards the attainment of normalized modes of belonging but seek, instead, to challenge existing rights regimes.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr Chamion Caballero for insightful comments upon an earlier draft of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Patti O'Malley

Notes

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