Citizenship and the Biopolitics of Post‐nationalist Ireland
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | John A. Harrington |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2005.00331.x |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 32, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2005
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 424±49
Citizenship and the Biopolitics of Post-nationalist Ireland
John A. Harrington*
In June 2004 voters in the Republic of Ireland endorsed a
constitutional amendment to deprive children born on the island of
Ireland of their previously automatic right to Irish citizenship. This
change came amid increasing i mmigration and so-called `ba by
tourism', whereby non-national mothers were alleged to be coming
to Ireland to give birth for the sole purpose of bestowing Irish
citizenship on their children. This article sets the referendum in its
historical and contemporary context. Along with recent jurisprudence
of the Irish Supreme Court, the amendment betokens a distinctive
biopolitics orchestrated according to neo-liberal themes consonant
with Ireland's membership of the European Union and its foreign
direct investment strategy. As such, the amendment confirms the shift
in Irish constitutional history from autarkic nationalism to
cosmopolitan post-nationalism embodied in the Belfast Agreement of
1998.
INTRODUCTION
It was common until recently to condemn the Irish constitution of 1937 as a
catalogue of claims and injunctions by turns sectarian, misogynistic, and
irredentist. The constitution certainly imposed a set of distinctive biopolitical
tasks upon the independent Irish state, aimed at cultivating and developing the
nation through the bodies of its population. Women were to be confined to the
home; the Roman Catholic church dominated education and culture; the
424
ßCardiff University Law School 2005, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Liverpool Law School, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZS,
England
john.harrington@liverpool.ac.uk
Iamgrateful to Ruth Fletcher and Ambreena Manji for their comments on earlier drafts
and to Greta Harrington for invaluable help with materials. The helpful suggestions of the
readers are also acknowledged. This paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the
Socio-Legal Studies Association held at the University of Liverpool, March 2005. All
responsibility for errors and infelicities is mine alone.
inhabitants of Northern Ireland were arrogated to the nation in spite of
partition; Irish was to be revived as the official language of the state. As such
the constitution expressed the high point of nationalist hegemony in indepen-
dent Ireland. The last decade has seen the dissolution of this hegemonic
formation. In a series of referenda, voters have abandoned irredentism,
embraced secularism, and liberalized the social code. The revival of Irish is
increasingly left to initiatives within civil society. The last decade has also
been one of unprecedented economic growth, known to the world as the
`Celtic Tiger'. Attitude surveys indicate a declining attachment to the ideals
of the state's founders and a corresponding prevalence of consumerist
individualism, especially among young respondents.
1
These trends are taken
to indicate a transition from nationalist to post-nationalist Ireland. Perhaps the
the emblematic moment arrived in 1999 when Ann Summers, the British sex
shop chain, opened a branch just opposite the General Post Office in Dublin,
scene of the state's beginnings in the rising of 1916.
This essay is concerned to illuminate the new ideological formation which
has succeeded that of the founders. It seeks to reveal the controls and
exclusions which characterize the exercise of Irish state power after the end
of history and the arrival of Ann Summers. These shifts have registered most
clearly in the recent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and in a referendum
of June 2004 to amend the constitution, removing the automatic right of
children born on the island of Ireland to citizenship of the republic. This
paper considers the leading case of Lobe v. Minister for Justice, Equality and
Law Reform
2
and the referendum against a backdrop of quotidian racism and
political entrepreneurship around asylum and immigration. The new
biopolitics of post-nationalist Ireland is showcased in both.
UNDERSTANDING CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Three main concepts need to be clarified before proceeding. They are `post-
nationalism', `development', and `biopolitics'. Together they offer a
framework for understanding constitutional change since the foundation of
the Irish state. This groundwork done, we proceed to sketch the develop-
mental biopolitics of nationalist Ireland, the old dispensation. The issues at
stake in Lobe and in the citizenship referendum are then examined. On the
basis of this review, we then offer a guide to the biopolitics of the post-
nationalist dispensation, in which the developmental tasks of the Irish state
have been radically redefined.
425
1M.O'Connell, Changed Utterly. Ireland and the New Irish Psyche (2001) ch. 9.
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