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SOCIĀLO ZINĀTŅU FAKULTĀTES RAKSTI <strong>II</strong>I Table 2. Employment Percentage Breakdown by Industrial Group and Nationality in the Republic of Ireland. Industrial Group United % EU10 EU13 + Kingdo m Irish Rest of World Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing 3.9 1.6 2.1 5.3 2.0 Mining, Quarrying and Turf 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.4 0.2 Production Manufacturing Industries 21.4 14.9 13.8 13.1 11.7 Electricity, Gas and Water Supply 0.2 0.5 0.4 0.7 0.2 Construction 20.8 4.4 11.6 11.7 8.3 Wholesale and Retail Trade 17.0 9.7 15.3 14.4 11.7 Hotels and Restaurants 16.5 14.2 6.2 4.3 17.0 Transport, Storage and 3.7 7.0 5.7 6.1 3.6 Communications Banking and Financial Services 0.9 6.4 4.6 5.0 2.8 Business Activities 9.0 24.3 12.8 9.6 12.9 Public Administration and Defense 0.2 1.5 2.4 6.3 1.4 Education 0.6 6.1 6.6 7.7 3.1 Health and Social Work 2.4 5.7 11.8 10.8 20.8 Other Community, Social and Personal Services and Activities 3.1 3.7 6.1 4.5 4.3 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 + – The “EU13” states include the pre-2004 accession EU15 Member States, minus the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland for the purpose of this categorisation. Source: Census 2006: Non-Irish Nationals Living in Ireland, Central Statistics Office, 2008, p. 20. As it can be seen from Table 2, EU10 migrant workers in the ROI are noticeably concentrated in only four industries: Manufacturing industries (21.4 percent); construction (20.8 percent); wholesale and retail trade (17.0 percent); and hotels and restaurants (16.5 percent). Research Sources and Discussion An emerging number of scholarships (for example, Boucher, 2008 and Lentin, 2007) now places a revisionist cast and re-interprets the 2004 EU10 Member State accession and the subsequent hyper-migration into the ROI, not as a historic coincidence, but as a deliberate racial policy orchestrated by then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of Fianna Fáil-led Irish Government. Under a critical examination and a closer scrutiny, it rings some degree of valid tone, and thus this paper offers some elucidations. The expansion of employment and the resultant increase in demand for labour in the Irish economy became very profound after 1987 (Messina, 2009). During this short period, the unemployment in the ROI plummeted to the lowest from the highest among all the thirteen then-European Union Member States (Messina, 2009). It again declined dramatically from approximately 16 percent in 1993 to a low of 3.7 percent by 2004 (Messina, 2009). As the Irish economy began to take off in the late 1990s, the Irish Government first advanced a rigorous campaign to attract the Irish overseas in the Diaspora to return and work in the ROI (Hayward and Howard, 2007). The simple logic was that “the members of the Irish Diaspora, no matter how far removed in terms of distance and time, will fit in better to life in (the Republic of) Ireland than those with no connection to the country” (Hayward and Howard, 2007: 53). In February 2000, employers, trade unions, the Irish Government, agricultural interests, the voluntary, and the community sectors agreed to a three-year programme (Messina, 2009). This Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) explicitly states that an 8
SOCIĀLO ZINĀTŅU FAKULTĀTES RAKSTI <strong>II</strong>I immigration policy would evolve to meet the needs of the Irish labour market (Department of the Taoiseach, 2000: 118). By then, FÁS – the Irish National Training and Employment Authority – already estimated that the Irish economy would need an additional half million migrant workers during the decade (Messina, 2009). Where would the ROI find 500,000 people for cheap labour, given its unique geo-political and historical position it found itself in? Unlike the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Potrugal, or Spain, the ROI has never had any overseas colonies from which it could extract cheap human capital without incurring major domestic political or international instability. Thus, for the first time in its history, the Irish Government took on an interventionist initiative to meet its economy’s insatiable demand for labour, in a stark contrast to its heretofore laissez-faire approach (Boucher, 2008). This is because most nation-states experience pressures that lead them to define migration policy in favour of certain groups rather than others (Jackson, 1986: 64), and these national policies are determined in response to various interest groups and intentions on the part of the national legislatures (Jackson, 1986: 64). From a Marxist point of view, the interests of capital were best advanced by keeping an increase in the labour supply in order to make use of cheap and docile labour with low expectations and aspirations, and which was segmented in such a fashion that wage rates could be set in relation to such non-market factors as gender, race, age, ethnicity, or nationality (Jackson, 1986: 19). Thus, in early 2003, the Irish Government began implementing a new immigration initiative with the Employment Permits Act (Government of the Republic of Ireland, 2003). Its intention was that “employers would be able to fill most of their vacancies after 1 May 2004 from within in the enlarged European Union” (National Economic and Social Council, 2006: 30). The Irish Government intended to see that internal European migrants from the new EU10 Member States would primarily fill the jobs that required lower education, skills, and pay (Boucher 2008). Furthermore, according to the National Economic and Social Council (2006: 164), the reason for this shift in the immigration policy was to “avoid the mistakes of other countries in operating policies to attract low-skilled workers on a (supposedly) temporary basis,” and while it is not explicitly spelled out, the fear was that these non-EU, non-white lowskilled migrant workers – and their descendants – might become socially excluded (e. g., as in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, etc.) ethnic minorities of the future if they were to become permanent residents in the ROI (Boucher, 2008). This part of the fear is to be addressed by relying on internal European Union migrants for low skill jobs, who are not only European, but mostly white and predominantly Catholic from Lithuania and Poland, or at least Christian (Boucher, 2008). The Irish Government was desperate to bring in economic and labour migrants because they were seen as “economic commodities” (Lentin, 2007: 616), which were vital to its continued economic growth. The assumption from the Irish Government was that social cohesion would be maintained in the Irish nation if this type of immigrant were to come since they were most likely to integrate (Boucher 2008). As Lentin and McVeigh (2006) and Allen and Loyal (2008) argue, the Irish Government favours these white labour migrants and racialises all other categories of migrants. Thus, the Irish Government intentionally tied its interventionist immigration policy of European Union internal migrants for low skill jobs in the ROI (Boucher, 2008), only welcoming those who serve the Irish national interest, and for those who overstay their welcome, or those who do not suit the Irish national interest, there is the ever-present denial, or “non-perception,” of discrimination through a wide range of informal and formal social exclusion from Irish society in order to compel them to leave (Boucher, 2008). These informal and formal social exclusion tactics would include inter-personal impediments such as marginalisation from social networks based on work colleagues, friends, and family members that are related to the socio-cultural limits of soi-disant “Irish friendliness” (Boucher, 1988). Other social exclusions would also include societal structural barriers such as fewer rights and entitlements when receiving welfare goods and services based on civic stratification and institutional barriers such as unequal access to goods and services based on race (Fanning, 2007: 13 and 16). Interestingly, 9
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