Broadside: Ireland’s famed welcome faces a stern test

It began the night the lights went out. I was working a late shift in the Irish Times newsroom in March last year when I discovered a series of online aerial shots of a land mass shrouded in darkness with a smattering of tiny white lights interspersed across it. The images were of Syria and featured a comparison of what a night-time shot taken in 2011 looked like beside photos taken in 2015. Syria was four years into a civil war that had left the nation in almost complete darkness.

A few weeks later the reports began rolling in of multiple deaths in the Mediterranean and migrants and refugees “swarming” towards Europe. While European politicians dawdled, seeking a solution to the increasing flow of humans making this perilous journey, the chorus of anti-immigrant rhetoric intensified.

The New to the Parish series did not begin because of the refugee crisis. The idea stemmed from the increasing diversity of Irish society that has developed over the past decade. However, when the series was launched one year ago, it coincided with daily reports of the largest wave of mass migration since the second World War, thus providing an insight into the motivations of the migrant, be it a student seeking education, a skilled worker seeking new opportunities or a mother and child fleeing civil war.

New to the Parish gave people the chance to explain why they chose to begin a new life abroad. For the series I have interviewed more than 50 individuals, couples and families who have moved to Ireland in the past decade. Some settled into their new lives straight away, embracing the Irish welcome and curiosity of strangers. Melanie Leamy from Germany fell in love with the “beautiful, smoky smell hanging over Dublin . . . as if people were burning coal or turf”. Silvia Bernal from Bolivia felt safe as a woman for the first time in her life and chose to stay because of the “peace and security” Ireland offered her in place of the danger she once faced on the streets of La Paz. Daniel Ramamoorthy found “incredible growth” in Ireland, a place he called “the land of opportunities”.

Forming friendships
Others struggled to find their place in Ireland. Zeenie Summers felt her black skin stood out in Galway and realised she had never felt "limited" before leaving Nigeria for Ireland. Luminitia Miron tried forming friendships with mothers at her son's school but found they were uninterested in meeting a young Romanian woman. Esther Camara from Guinea spent six years in direct provision, praying each day for the envelope to arrive in the post granting her refugee status. Michael Chanda from Zambia struggled to find work as a theatre practitioner in a country that boasts few black actors.

Fear of the unknown is a big factor for those starting a new life in a foreign country. Yet, as many of those featured in New to the Parish have found, it can also be deeply fulfilling experience.

“Migration” is a term that has become veiled with negativity. But behind each of these migrants is a personal story of love, fear, hardship and determination.

Last week a report published by the UN Refugee Agency revealed that 24 people were forced to flee their homes every minute in 2015. The number of globally displaced people reached 65.3 million, and more than one million arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean. It is important that we are aware of these statistics but it is also vital to look beyond the numbers at the humanity of these refugees and migrants.

Parallel lives
I recently received an email from a woman who came here as a migrant in the mid 1990s. Shampa Lahiri has been in Ireland too long to feature in the series but wanted to share her thoughts on the transformation she had witnessed over the past two decades. Life as a migrant is always a struggle, she wrote.

“We migrants have no family response unit to resuscitate us with tea and sympathy when things go wrong. We live parallel lives: the reality of the lives we are trying to lead versus the lives we should have led had we stayed and not broken our parents’ hearts.”

Lahiri’s dark Indian skin and Australian accent immediately made her stand out on the white streets of 1990s Dublin, but she felt drawn to what she describes as a deep understanding in Ireland of what it means to be a migrant.

“Virtually every family here has felt the wretched effects of exodus,” she wrote in her letter. “Everyone misses a son or daughter, sister or brother or family member who has made the same decision we made to leave. People are kind to me here because maybe they hope that someone will be kind to their child living the migrant experience somewhere else.”

Every person in Ireland has a family member who has travelled overseas in search of greater opportunities. In 1948 my Czech grandfather made the journey to Ireland as a political refugee, seeking sanctuary from that country’s communist regime in my grandmother’s home in Co Antrim. We are migratory creatures.

In Ireland we claim to be the home of a hundred thousand welcomes. Now, more than ever, is the time to fulfil that commitment of compassion and empathy for others.

• One year of New to the Parish: on Wednesday, June 29th, Sorcha Pollak catches up with stars of the series