Ireland Belongs to Europe: The Creation of the Euro-Irish National Narrative
Language
English (en)
Date of Award
5-1-2021
Author's Department
International and Area Studies
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)
Restricted/Unrestricted
Restricted
Abstract
Irish support for the EU has remained high (~70%) since the 1990s even as Ireland rejected EU treaties and underwent social, political, and economic ‘transformation’ (Simpson 2019). This paper investigates nationalism’s role in engendering support for the EU beginning in the mid-1990s. As Katy Hayward (2009) maintains, Ireland’s conceptualization of the EU is inseparable from the Irish elite’s production of nationalism. Building upon Hayward, this paper uses discourse analysis and imagined communities to analyze the elite’s discourse on integration and nationalism. This paper finds that the Irish elite produced a Euro-Irish nationalism that lauded integration as the cause of Ireland’s ‘transformation;’ supporting integration became a nationalist act. As Brexit intensifies our need to understand Irish nationalism and Ireland’s role in the EU, this research deepens our understanding of both.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/3kj3-8a44
Mentor
Amy Heath-Carpentier
Recommended Citation
Jarvis, Nicholas, "Ireland Belongs to Europe: The Creation of the Euro-Irish National Narrative" (2021). Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses. 228.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/3kj3-8a44
Comments
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