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Mission

The Irish Centre for Migration Studies promotes the study of historical and contemporary migration, to and from Ireland, within a comparative international framework, using new information and communication technologies

It aims to be the primary resource centre for migration studies in Ireland.

Objectives

  • The Centre will investigate worldwide Irish migrant experiences and conditions in the late twentieth century; the implications of the growing rate of immigration into Ireland for Irish identity, culture and society; and the policy implications of these various developments.
  • The Centre will engage, in cooperation with other centres, in the detailed historical reconstruction of the diversity of Irish migration experiences
  • The Centre will develop databases in various aspects of Irish migration studies and will use new technologies to facilitate access to such databases by a world-wide community of scholars, the interested public and other relevant bodies inside and outside Ireland.
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    Methods

    • The Centre will foster public and academic awareness of migration issues in Ireland, within the Irish diaspora and within new immigrant communities and with those working with them in Ireland, through publications, conferences, the provision of online resources and partnerships with outside organisations and agencies.
    • The Centre will seek to influence the policy process at local, regional and national level through new baseline research and policy analysis. 
    • The Centre will undertake research to explore the links between immigration into Ireland, social exclusion and poverty, as well as new community/host community relations, integration and social citizenship.  It will seek to develop partnership-based action research projects in collaboration with appropriate local, national and international statutory, voluntary and academic bodies.
    • The Centre will promote, in cooperation with its international partners, longitudional studies linking research into countries of origin, migration flows and host countries. 
    • The Centre will develop a wide range of teaching and research resources, from a multidisciplinary perspective, in the field of migration studies, within an Irish and comparative international perspective. The aim will be to encourage new research and to develop multidisciplinary courses within the framework of undergraduate programmes, postgraduate programmes (including the development of a specialist postgraduate degree in migration studies) and summer schools, with a view to attracting a broad range of students at all levels.
    • The Centre will address current social, political and cultural issues relevant to Irish migrants and will build closer links between Irish communities world-wide, for whom it is hoped the Centre will become an important resource, and will offer a focus to people within the Irish Diaspora by means of a varied programme of events.
    • The Centre will research the representation and impact of experiences of migration, dispossession and nomadism on the island of Ireland and in the light of the specificities of experience in each of the two jurisdictions.
    • The Centre will develop a collaborative Internet database using the technology of the World Wide Web, featuring material (literary, social, historical, geographical, demographic and political) dealing with all aspects of the Irish Diaspora.

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