Roy Foster: belief

Transcript context

…There seems to be pressure brought upon politics in many countries when the percentage of non-native-born individuals, say, creeps over 20 percent. Now, Ireland may be different, right? There’s less populism of a certain kind there — many other differences. I think it is, Tyler. I don’t want to sound too chauvinistic about this, but it surprises me — there is, of course, racism in Ireland, as there is racism everywhere. But it surprises me, given the (and you’ve just drawn attention to it yourself) the extent of immigration into Ireland. It surprises me how comparatively easily that has been absorbed, and how little there is of populist, as you put it, or nativist movements against the incomer. Partly because I think emigration has created among the Irish a kind of global sense which opens the mind to such things. There’s also such a thing as reverse emigration. A great many people from the boom years on — you wouldn’t say re-emigrate — returned, I suppose is the simple way of putting it, to Ireland, having emigrated earlier. And returned bringing with them, I suspect, an outward-looking and tolerant view, which perhaps they wouldn’t have if they had lived all that time in Ireland. I think given what you see in other countries — and you’re absolutely right; it’s I think unusual for it to be so — but I think there is a far lesser degree of resentment and expressed bigotry against incoming people from different cultures in Ireland, partly because those people themselves become rather quickly what is called the New Irish. As Northern Ireland becomes at least as much Catholic as Protestant, does that increase or decrease the chances for a single Ireland?…

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