REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE CENTRE FOR MIGRATION STUDIES, ULSTER AMERICAN FOLK PARK
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE CENTRE FOR MIGRATION STUDIES, ULSTER AMERICAN FOLK PARK, OMAGH, 6TH DECEMBER, 2001
Thank you for your very warm welcome to me, I am delighted to be back here today to meet with you all and to see for myself how the Centre for Migration Studies has developed since my last visit. My thanks to Brian Lambkin for inviting me.
I am also glad to be in Omagh, an area which has special reason to understand the need to respect memory, to create space for the stories of those who are gone and to hold the past up to scrutiny. It is worth reminding ourselves this Christmastide of the many lonely people whose enjoyment of life was so cruelly overwhelmed by violence and for whom memory of happier times and hope for better days to come is their only comfort.
This Centre is a place which values the story of the individual, the man, woman or child, whose name never made news headlines but whose lives layered up the landscape we inherited. One of the defining stories of this island’s history is the story of emigrations and it is that story which your Centre so eloquently documents and helps us to access. It is not of course one unified story but rather a series of responses to the demands and the impulses of their times. The tradition of emigration is found in both the Irish and Ulster Scots strands of life on this island and so, regardless of which claims us, there is an opportunity to draw on the deep and collective memory of emigration, to share our understanding of the forces which made people leave and to share our admiration for the fortitude, ingenuity and courage of our ancestors.
They left for many reasons but for the majority those reasons were simple - poverty, hunger and social and political exclusion had closed down their life’s chances on this island, had wasted their talents and made little of their lives. Emigration was their only hope. For others the impulse was driven by religious or political oppression. There were the adventurers too who embraced the opportunities a wider horizon offered and there were the missionaries motivated by the desire to evangelise, who brought health care and education to the poor of other cultures and continents.
We have tended to see emigration as a tragedy, as a mark of failure and of course that is what it was, particularly in the wake of the Great Famine. But the leaving of so many did not cut the ties with Ireland. The emigrants brought the face and hands and hearts and minds of Ireland to many places around the world. They themselves were the face of Ireland to people who had never and would never visit this island. They brought their music, dance, literature, language, religion, customs and with these and other tools, they changed the experiential landscape of their new homes. They kept in touch with home, sending back their hard-earned cents and dollars, opening up the vista of their small island home, to a much greater world beyond it. They created structures to make the experience of emigration less harrowing for the next generation.
Today Ireland knows the strength of a global family which has turned the tragedy of emigration into a huge success story. So many lives were vindicated once their talents met opportunity. And so they moved the story on from hardship to hope. I have been privileged in my work as President of Ireland to travel to many parts of the world where those emigrants of all traditions on this island have created a new history. This Centre, through its work, is itself a vital link to our global community and a crucial resource for those who want access to credible, scholarly information about their heritage. Many of the visitors who come here do so to search out and affirm their heritage of descent and to reinforce their unique sense of identity - an identity which time and distance never seem to obliterate.
If you were not here what a huge impoverishment there would be for the individual and for all of us who share these islands. I congratulate you for what you do to conserve our rich heritage and also for how you have created new networks of friendship and solidarity in the contemporary Irish and Scottish-Irish diasporas.
In the painstaking construction of the Peace Process it was very heartening to see the ready support which came from that global family all around the world. They willed us on with their prayers and with their funding to make the shift from a culture of conflict to a culture of consensus. Many of them live in multi-cultural, multiethnic societies. Their experiences of living comfortably with diversity challenged us to do the same. They take pride in the fact that Ireland has for the first time in centuries reversed the tide of emigration as a result of phenomenal economic success. Suddenly we find ourselves experiencing net inward migration. People who left are returning to build their lives anew here bringing with them skills, expertise and a new self-confidence. And for the first time we see people of many different nationalities coming here to live and work or seek refuge because they see this island now as a land of opportunity.
With these winds of change come fresh challenges for us to come to grips with.
As we adjust to the new realities, as we make space for new ethnic groups we have a collective memory of emigration to draw on. We know what it is to be strangers, to be excluded, to be lonely for home, to feel lost. We know what it is to be the butt of racism and sectarianism. We also know because we have the evidence from our own people’s experience across the world, that generously and humanely addressed inward migration brings the chance to create a culturally richer and more dynamic society in the years ahead.
We can all learn lessons from the successful co-operative ventures pursued in this Centre, which operates in a network of partnerships at community, academic, national and international level. That openness has brought to the Centre great success in developing new fields of study and excellent academic standards in partnership with other peer institutions in Ireland, Britain and America. A few years ago I was privileged to be drawn into that open embrace and to have a hand in the development of the Masters program in Migration Studies. I know some of the students, past and present, are here today and I’m really looking forward to meeting them. I congratulate all those associated with the Folk Park and Queen’s University whose vision led to founding of the Centre for Migration Studies and whose hopes for it have been repaid many times over in the short few years of its existence. May it long continue to do so.
Once again, my thanks for your warm welcome to me today. I have greatly enjoyed renewing old acquaintances, old friendships.
Thank You.