Irish Emigrant Women and Dundee's Textile Industry c.1830-1950

The Irish were Britain's largest immigrant group prior to the 1970s, travelling in hundreds of thousands across the Irish Sea in search of a better life. Scotland became a second home to many, and, while Irish migration is primarily associated with Glasgow, Dundee was also a major destination. In 1851, its Irish population was 18.9% of the city, only lower than Liverpool in the rest of Britain.

While Dundee is historically renowned for its large Irish population, what is less studied city is this community's high proportion of women migrants, making it distinctive from other cities with significant Irish populations.
Surprisingly, little academic research has been undertaken in this area. Consequently, a variety of questions regarding the impact of gender on migrant communities and the shaping of cities have been left largely unanswered. Despite a growing historiography concerning gender and women in the Irish diaspora, Dundee remains overlooked, despite its unique demographic.

The existing literature on this topic has considered migration, gender and the industrial city of Dundee in isolation from each other. Jim Tomlinson's 2014 publication offers a fascinating imperial history of Dundee but does not address Irish immigration. Brenda Collins's 1982 article on Irishwomen's migration to Dundee treats the pre-famine period, while articles by William Walker (1972) and Richard B. McCready (1998) examine Irish Catholicism and Nationalism in the period before 1922, but do not address gender dynamics in the Irish community. Consequently, there are considerable gaps in our knowledge of Irishwomen's experiences and how their sense of ethnic identity in migrant communities is different to that of men's.

To address these gaps, this study will investigate Irish women's social, cultural and political experiences in Dundee among first and later generation immigrants. It aims to be the first major study of female Irish migrants to Dundee which situates their history in transnational and comparative perspectives, analysing their employment in the textile mills (where the majority of Irishwomen worked), their lives in the city, their reception by the local community and their portrayal in the media and literary culture. This study will be situated in the wider global context of the Irish diaspora and incorporates a comparative perspective that looks at parallels between Dundee and Irish migration to textile cities in the United States.

Another important area I wish to analyse is Dundee Irishwomen's connections to the Irish Revolution 1912-1923. How did Dundee Irishwomen respond to events? What were their connections to transnational networks of Irish nationalism, which linked multiple centres of Irish settlement and mobilised emigrant support? Did they support moderate Home Rule nationalism or revolutionary republicanism? How these allegiances shifted from 1912-1923? This will be answered by investigating fundraising events, political prisoner protests, and subscriptions to nationalist funds (detailed in Irish newspapers). In doing so the project raises questions about the responses of Irish women migrants to the revolution, a neglected aspect in the scholarship. Utilising the networks of the CDA partner, I will also conduct oral interviews to investigate understandings of Irishwomen's roles in Dundee's history, and the extent to which this has shaped present day perceptions of the city.