Good morning pals! I hope you're all keeping well. Today I thought we'd discuss displaced identities. Obviously, my research population are the 2nd generation Irish in Britain (more specifically the London area) so they're negotiating some level of a hybridised national identity.

As I touched on yesterday, this is not always an easy negotiation. In many ways Irishness is less compatible as a hybridised identity with Britishness (specifically Englishness) and a significant amount of my participants reflected on having to express an 'or' not 'and' identity.

There are a plethora of reasons for this, but I think it comes down to the history between Ireland and Britain. Obviously, this history is extensive but the most continuous feature is 'othering' + unequal power relations that are so indicative of colonial relationships.

Although obviously the Republic of Ireland is now an independent nation state, I would argue that in some ways this historical relationship is sustained through everyday colonial interactions, ignorance about Irish history + geography.

This manifests in British society and facilitates UK government officials saying things like "You can buy a pint with GBP in Dublin" (*aggressive eye roll*). Despite rife British exceptionalism it is far less common for these sorts of things to be said about, for example, Berlin.

As is noted in the video I shared yesterday, Irishness as we know it today was developed largely in resistance to British imperialism and Britishness as an identity. This makes being both pretty problematic. In many ways, and for many people, they are not compatible.

This results in individual's identities being displaced. More than 90% of my participants said that in Britain they felt more Irish and were more comfortable with expressing their Irish identity whilst when in Ireland (or around Irish people) they felt more British.

Because of the difficulty in expressing both Irishness and Englishness, their identities become relative, depending on who they're with and where they are.

For some, this is a really difficult experience - being told that you're not something that you feel you are. Many participants had stories of being excluded from something because they were visibly 'British' but in Britain feeling very much Irish.

A participant once described this to me as feeling as though he was on the Isle of Man - a pretty visual representation of this displacement that is echoed by a lot of other people in the second generation (I've written more about this here: https://fournationshistory.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/sitting-on-the-isle-of-man/)