Second Journey — In the Diaspora: Among Mobile Europeans

Abstract

Northern Ireland is one of several ethnic frontiers in Europe where past migrations have created contemporary culture conflict. In the context of European integration, migration among EU member states tends to be no longer regarded as emigration but merely as ‘mobility’ within the common cultural space of ‘Europe’. Implicit in this view is the idea that differences between nation states in this ‘Europe’ merely constitute regional variants of the same (‘European’) culture. In the first part of this chapter, I want to reflect on this liberal interpretation of intra-European migration, drawing mainly on ethnographic fieldwork among European migrants in urban centres of Great Britain and Ireland.