http://hdl.handle.net/10468/867 2017-10-18T20:57:18Z 2017-10-18T20:57:18Z Ó Gráda, Aifric Ní Laoire, Caitríona Linehan, Carol Boylan, Geraldine B. Connolly, Linda http://hdl.handle.net/10468/4854 2017-10-11T09:24:48Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Naming the parts: a case-study of a gender equality initiative with academic women Ó Gráda, Aifric; Ní Laoire, Caitríona; Linehan, Carol; Boylan, Geraldine B.; Connolly, Linda Purpose: This paper aims to seek to contribute to current debates about the effectiveness of different types of gender equality interventions in the academic context. This paper presents an argument for the need to move beyond an individual-structural dichotomy in how such interventions are perceived. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on an action-research case-study, the Through the Glass Ceiling project, to challenge the idea that “individual”/single-actor interventions serve only to reinforce underlying inequalities by attempting to “fix the women”. Findings: It is suggested that actions that support women in their careers have the potential to achieve a degree of transformation at individual, cultural and structural levels when such actions are designed with an understanding of how individuals embody the gendered and gendering social structures and values that are constantly being produced and reproduced within society and academia. The case study highlights the benefits of supporting individuals as gendered actors in gendering institutions and of facilitating the development of critical gender awareness, suggesting that such interventions are most effective when undertaken as part of an integrated institutional equality agenda. Originality/value: By calling attention to the ongoing mutual construction of actors and practices in organizations, this paper seeks to make both a conceptual contribution to how we understand the (re)production and potential transformation of gender relations in academia and to influence wider policy dialogues on diversity at work.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Ní Laoire, Caitríona http://hdl.handle.net/10468/1562 2014-05-22T08:13:40Z 2011-10-01T00:00:00Z

'Girls just like to be friends with people: gendered experiences of migration among children and young people in returning Irish families Ní Laoire, Caitríona The gendered nature of children and young people's experiences of migration are explored in this paper, drawing on research with children in Irish return migrant families. The paper focuses on the ways in which gender dynamics both reinforce and complicate the children's complex social positionings in Irish society. It explores the gendered nature of the children's and young people's everyday lives, relationships with peers and negotiations of identity, through a specific focus on the role of sport, friendship and local gender norms in their lives. I suggest that gender articulates with other axes of sameness/difference in complex ways, shaping the opportunities for social participation and cultural belonging in different ways for migrant boys and girls.

2011-10-01T00:00:00Z Ní Laoire, Caitríona http://hdl.handle.net/10468/939 2017-09-06T11:29:30Z 2008-07-01T00:00:00Z

'Settling back'? A biographical and life-course perspective on Ireland's recent return migration Ní Laoire, Caitríona This paper uses a biographical and life-course perspective to explore some of the key narratives of return among return migrants to Ireland, focusing in particular on the themes of family, child-rearing, relationship breakdown and ‘settling down’. The ways in which return migrants use the concept of life-course transitions in order to make sense of and narrate their migration stories is explored. I argue that their narratives reflect a normative association of life stage with place, and that return migration reflects the ways in which key events in the individual life course transitions and family life cycles of 1980s emigrants have intersected with processes of economic and social transformation in Ireland. This occurs within the context of heteronormative and kinship-based ideals of Irish culture and of powerful myths of return. The data used in the paper is taken from the Narratives of Migration and Return research project, a north south cross-border project which assembled an oral archive of 92 return migrant life narratives. In the paper, I draw on 33 of the interviews conducted in the south, which focused on the cohort of return migrants who had emigrated in the 1980s.

2008-07-01T00:00:00Z Ní Laoire, Caitríona http://hdl.handle.net/10468/866 2017-09-06T11:29:30Z 2007-07-01T00:00:00Z

The 'green green grass of home'? Return migration to rural Ireland Ní Laoire, Caitríona There have been calls recently to challenge some of the orthodoxies of counterurbanisation. This paper contributes to this by highlighting the complexity of rural in-migration processes, through a focus on rural return migration. There has been a significant increase in return migration to the Republic of Ireland (ROI) since 1996. The paper is based on the life narratives of some of the 1980s generation of emigrants who have recently returned to live in Ireland. It focuses on those Irish return migrants who spent a substantial part of their lives in the large urban centres of Britain and the US, and are currently living in rural Ireland. Their narratives of return are explored in terms of discourses of rurality, in particular through notions of a rural idyll and belonging/not belonging. It is argued that return migrants draw on classic counterurbanisation discourses in their narratives of return, but that these are interwoven with notions of family/kinship. Furthermore, the idyllisation of rural life is complicated by aspects of the specificity of the position of the return migrant. It is suggested that rural return migrants are positioned somewhere between locals and incomers, reflecting the complexity of Irish rural repopulation processes, and that the phenomenon of rural return complicates accepted understandings of counterurbanisation.

2007-07-01T00:00:00Z