Food, gender and Irishness- how Irish women in Coventry
make home
Moya Kneafsey and Rosie Cox
Department of Geography, Coventry University
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the spaces and social relations of food consumption in
order to examine how Irish migrants to Coventry, a city in the English West
Midlands, form a sense of identity. On the basis of in depth interviews with first
generation migrants, it is argued that food consumption practices are linked to
Irish identity in three ways. First, migrants in Coventry were often part of
extended family networks that exchanged foods between Britain and Ireland.
Second, knowledge about foods and-cooking was gained by many of the interviewees in Ireland, making them familiar and comfortable with specific local
foods. Last, and related to this, certain foodstuffs were sought out by interviewees because they were Irish and remembered from 'home'. Specific gender
relations pervaded food consumption practices and it was found that women,
through their involvement in food purchase and preparation, were key actors in
constructing an often ambiguous sense of Irishness in Britain.
Key index words: food, consumption, gender, Irishness.
Introduction
Food is now widely recognised as an important medium through which various aspects
of self and community identities can be individually and collectively (re)constructed (Bell
and Valentine, 1997; Caplan, 1997; Palmer, 1998). Yet although research examining the
relationships between gender identities and food, and ethnicity and food exists, less has been
said about how gender interacts with ethnicity to shape food consumption practices. The aim
in this paper, therefore, is to investigate how aspects of gender and ethnicity inter-relate
through a case study of the food consumption activities of Irish-born people living in
Coventry. Food features in expressions of Irish identity, often exaggerated in popular culture
such as the caricature of Mrs Doyle and her tea and cakes, and in anti-Irish jokes, usually
making reference to potatoes. Women's food consumption behaviour can be particularly
significant as it is they who often most actively engage in creating 'homespace' for
themselves and their families. This paper begins to examine how women have selected, used
and interpreted food to (re)create gendered and ethnic visions of identity and homespace. It
is suggested that a focus on the ordinary spaces and social relations of food consumption can
provide an insight into the construction of an often ambiguous sense of Irishness in Britain.
Irish women in Britain and Coventry - an 'invisible diaspora'?
Diasporic groups are usually thought of as those who have been forced to migrate,
perhaps because of religious intolerance or economic necessity. Normally this migration has
been sustained or repeated and the group will be dispersed to many new locations rather than
remaining together. These groups have some kind of collective memory which constructs and
Irish Geography, Volume 35(1), 2002, 6-15.
Food, gender and Irishness
7_
sustains the stories and myths of their dispersal (Chaliand and Rageau, 1995). Walter (2001:
8) adds that diaspora not only indicates a 'scattering' of people from an 'original' homeland,
but can also evoke a more 'open' symbolic spatiality, "which combines the separate locations
of origin, travel and settlement into a 'third space.'" The idea of third space dislodges many
kinds of binary notion, such as migrant/settler, insider/outsider, home/away. Thus "in place
of either/or relationships conventionally associated with the resettlement process, migrants
and their descendents are connected by both/and ties to their countries of origin and
settlement" (2001: 9).
Despite the potential for hybrid identities offered by the concept of diaspora, Walter
demonstrates that the specificity of the relationship between the Irish diaspora and British
imperialism makes problematic the notion of both/and identities. She contrasts the situation
with that of Irish people in America, where Irish-American is an accepted identity. There is
no term for the Irish in Britain equivalent to either Irish-American or Black-British. Walter
believes that a hyphenated Irish-British identity does not exist "because there is no
acknowledged third space for the hyphen to represent. The identities remain oppositional and
unlinked" (2001: 9). The lack of space for a hyphenated British-Irish identity has helped to
render the Irish 'invisible.' Thus Hickman and Walter (1995: 10) describe the Irish as
"simultaneously inside and outside the British 'race'" whilst King and O'Connor describe the
Irish in Leicester as a "forgotten group", "increasingly invisible and all but ignored" (1996:
314). As Hickman (1998) argues, they have been incorporated into the myth of 'internal
homogeneity' against which black groups are constructed as a new and dangerous presence.
Even with recent moves such as the incorporation of an 'Irish' category of self-identification
in the British census, Irishness is an ethnicity which is quite literally invisible and one which
has to be actively claimed and recreated. This is despite the fact that since 1841, when census
records became available, the Irish have been the largest ethnic minority in Britain (King et
al, 1989).
Within this overall invisibility, Irish women have been marginalized by a frequent failure
to recognise that "the material experiences of being a woman or man within the Irish
community and an Irish woman or an Irish man within British society are very different"
(Walter 1995: 35). As indicated by King and O'Connor (1996: 311), "Irish women have been
largely absent from the vast literature on Irish emigration", even though they have emigrated
in larger numbers than men in most decades since records began (Walter, 2001). In the 1991
British Census, the 443,190 Irish-born women and girls outnumbered all female groups
except the 'white' category. The addition of the second-generation could bring the total to
over one million. Women also outnumbered the 393,534 Irish born men and boys (Walter,
1995: 36). King and O'Connor argue that this neglect is inappropriate because firstly, Irish
migration has been characterised by a majority of females and secondly, Irish women were
often 'pioneers' in the sense that it was often through them that migration chains were
established. Not only that, but it is likely that Irish women have played a strong role in
maintaining constructions of'Irishness' through their role in the home as nurturers, carers and
family-makers. For instance, King and O'Connor (1996: 320) observed that women took
responsibility for maintaining contact with Ireland and that 'family' was seen by men as "part
of the female domain." As Walter states, (1995: 37) "New generations of the collectivity are
born and raised largely by women, within the private sphere where cultures are powerfully
transmitted."
Nash (1993) and Walter (2001) have argued that the family is a key ideology in Irish
society, but is also associated with a patriarchal power structure. Therefore, women are
Kneafsey and Cox
8
represented as important to the Irish imaginary, but are not empowered by this centrality.
Moreover, in terms of British constructions of Irishness, Walter argues that Irish women share
exclusion with British women because a central feature of Britishness is masculinity. Unlike
the American 'Bridgets' and 'Colleens', there is no clear stereotype of Irish women in Britain
although Walter asserts that this does not shield Irish women from negative masculinised
stereotypes such as that of the 'thick Paddy' or the IRA 'men of violence.' She concludes
powerfully that constructions of Irishness, either from within or by outsiders, tend to "deny
gender differences, whilst simultaneously embedding these differences into their structures"
(p.46). Invisibility is a "particularly insidious form of exclusion" and one which Irish women
feel particularly strongly through "the profound forgetting by which nations forge their
brotherhood" (p.47).
Geographies of food and gendered ethnic identities
Geographical work on the importance of food has been broadly concerned with the interlinked spaces and social relations of food consumption. There is now a huge and growing
literature on geographies of consumption ranging across geographical scales (Bell and
Valentine, 1997). These range from discussions of the significance of food to the definition of
ethnic and gender identities. James (1998: 80) for instance, argues that "food provides a
flexible symbolic vehicle for self-identity, precisely through the invocation of sets of inflexible
cultural stereotypes which link particular foodstuffs to particular localized identities." For
migrants, "memories of home may linger, to be recreated in new localities through the medium
of food" (p.91). This observation raises a number of interesting questions. For example, given
that all developed countries have experienced a process of food 'creolization', do migrant
groups take with them a selective and idealised notion of the homeland's cuisine? What is the
significance of the social relations surrounding food consumption within migrant communities
and families? In the case of migrant groups with a distinctive national or regional cuisine, there
is evidence that foods from home — or modified versions of them — provide a basis for
entrepreneurial activity in the new country of residence, the case of Chinese, Indian or Italian
cuisines being obvious examples. But what of migrant cultures with less well-known cuisines?
Is food still an important marker of cultural identity, and if so, how? In the case of Irish
migrants, what foods - if any - are used to re-create notions of home? What is the role of food
within constructions of national and migrant identity, particularly given that the biggest ever
mass emigration in the history of the country was famine-induced? Politicised and racialised
social relations of food production-consumption have played a pivotal role in Irish history.
Not only has work begun to examine the meanings attached to globalised food
commodities (Cook and Crang, 1996), but efforts have also been made to investigate the
social relations of consumption, particularly within the context of the home. Valentine (1999:
492), for instance, focuses on the consumption of food in the home as a way of examining the
"situated daily practices of individual and household identity formation." She highlights the
work of sociologist Anne Murcott, who has documented the extent to which women usually
take responsibility for shopping for, preparing and cooking 'proper' meals for the 'proper'
family. These ideas are particularly relevant to the case of Irish migrants to Britain, who have
been noted for maintaining 'traditional' family structures (Walter, 2001). This focus on the
social relations of consumption has particular relevance for a consideration of how ethnic,
gendered identities may be constructed. As Yuval-Davis (1997: 43) argues, gender relations
are often seen as constituting the 'essence' of cultures, as ways of life to be passed from
Food, gender and Irishness
9_
generation to generation. She adds that "the construction of 'home' is of particular
importance here, including relations between adults and children in the family, ways of
cooking and eating, domestic labour, play and bedtime stories, out of which a whole world
view, ethical and aesthetic, can become naturalized." Food consumption practices are
therefore at the heart of social reproduction, and there is still much to be discovered about the
ways in which these contribute to constructions of ethnic and gendered identities.
Methodology
Coventry is a city in the West Midlands of England, about 32 km from Birmingham. It
has a population of about 300,000 of which there are currently 13,540 Irish-born people and
an estimated 33,000 second-generation. The main waves of Irish migration to Britain have
been well documented elsewhere (King and Shuttleworth, 1988; King et al, 1989; Chalian
and Ragenau, 1995) but the major emigration to Coventry occurred during the 1940s and
1950s. Workers were needed in the war industries and later, in the post-war boom industries
of vehicle manufacture, engineering and artificial fibres. Arriving at this particular period in
time, Irish migrants had to carve out their own customs in a new setting. Unlike other
locations, they did not enter pre-existing Irish settlement areas or find established food shops.
Moreover, they were not followed by a continuous flow of later migrants and as such, the city
offers a useful chance to explore aspects of hybrid identity formation in the key decades of
the 1950s and early 1960s'.
In order to begin exploring how Irish people use food to constitute their identity, this pilot
project adopted qualitative methods. Members of the first generation of a variety of ages and
from different backgrounds were sought in various ways. Both men and women were
interviewed and asked about practices surrounding foods in their families. Three informal
focus group discussions were held with a total of twelve people (three men and nine women)
aged between 55 and 80 years at an Irish based community centre in central Coventry.
Following this, in-depth interviews were held with seven people (two men and five women)
aged between 22 and 50 years. They were located through placing notices in an Irish
community newsletter and Coventry University's staff magazine. The vast majority of both
groups had migrated from the rural west coast of Ireland; more than half came from Mayo.
Some interviewees had come to England at a very young age with their parents; others had
migrated alone or with partners, or friends. In addition, informal interviews were conducted
with key informants from community groups and Irish retail outlets. The object was not to find
a large, or representative sample, but to hear in-depth about a variety of experiences, feelings
and ideas. The discussion group work was carried out in co-ordination with the existing
community groups who were given tapes and transcriptions of discussions. Participants were
asked about the foods they remembered as children, the foods they bought for themselves and
their families, what they had sent from home and what they missed. Interviewees were asked
about things they did that made them feel Irish. Very few participated in organised cultural
events outside the home, but rather identified quite simple things such as foods eaten or
attitudes to children and families that they felt differentiated them. The participants were
enthusiastic, eager to recall forgotten tastes and exchange tips and stories.
10
Kneafsey and Cox
Food, Irishness and gender in Coventry
Boxty* on the griddle,
Boxty on the pan,
If you don't eat boxty
You'll never get a man!
An old Irish saying
A dish made from grated raw potatoes, cooked mashed potatoes, flour and usually egg and milk.
Over a decade ago, King et al. (1989) noted that although they are the city's largest
foreign-born group, little attention has been paid to the Irish in Coventry. Indeed, they gained
the impression that they were in the process of being 'assimilated' into the general population
of the city. They listed four factors which they believed to be 'eroding' ethnic identity: firstly,
economic advancement which led to residential dispersal (whereas formerly the Irish lived in
close-knit neighbourhoods); secondly, the ageing of the population; thirdly outmarriage to
non-Irish partners and fourthly, the mixing between the Irish and the local population which,
ironically, was promoted by the existence of Irish social clubs in the city. This research into
food consumption and preparation suggests that Irishness does retain key significance to
people who left Ireland as long as seventy years ago. This Irishness is often constituted and
sustained through the most banal and ordinary activities, which do little to highlight the
visibility of this particular diaspora. Moreover, the use here of the term diaspora, following
Walter's conceptualisation of the term, suggests the existence of dual belongings and 'third
spaces' of attachment, rather than a linear journey from 'outside' to 'inside' which is
accompanied by an inevitable process of assimilation. These 'third spaces' do not take the
form of a hyphenated British-Irish identity, but rather, are often spaces 'between' worlds.
These worlds may consist of an idyll-ised remembering of a rural childhood juxtaposed with
an urban world experienced in parallel to the majority population. In this latter world, great
friendships and marriages were made with British people, yet exclusion, discrimination, fear
and shame were also commonly experienced. The former world has changed beyond
recognition and many of our respondents sadly recognised that it represented a place to which
they could never return.
This research suggests three specific ways that food consumption practices are linked to
Irish identity. Firstly, families in Coventry were often part of family and friendship networks
that exchanged foods between Britain, Ireland and the USA, making different foods available
to Irish people from their neighbours. As Irish people have migrated, supply chains and the
social relations surrounding food and other goods have become international in their extent
but are still attached to their Irish roots. Networks of mutual support that had been important
to families in Ireland as a means of survival were maintained even when large numbers of
family members migrated to the USA and UK. Family members sent, and still send, foods to
each other across the Atlantic and the Irish Sea. Typically a goose or large chicken would be
sent to England at Christmas, butter and cheese were sent both ways and dried foods were
sent from the USA. These networks are important both because they made different foods
available to Irish families in Coventry than English ones, something that was particularly
important during rationing, and because they enhanced links and created reciprocal
dependencies across space:
Food, gender and Irishness
11
"We were very lucky because about a week before Christmas a large package would
arrive at the house and it would be from mid-Ulster ...it would usually be a goose...
all tied up with string and we 'd know damn well what it was and that would be for
our Christmas. And that would put us ahead, well at least of the Poles and the
Ukrainians — some of the Afro-Carribeans, they had their own chickens out the
back...we had a lovely Christmas".
These networks appear to be remarkably resilient and interviewees reported their family
would send food even when they had very little to spare. It was generally women who were
responsible for maintaining these links, both for sending the foodstuffs, and for returning the
favours that these gifts of food encouraged. Women, therefore, remained in closer touch with
family and friends 'at home' than men did. The food they provided for their families was a
product of the diaspora space in which they lived; a combination of foods not available in any
one country but in the networks that linked them.
Secondly, knowledge about foods and cooking were gained by many of our interviewees
in Ireland, making them familiar and comfortable with specific foods. The women
interviewed had learned to cook in Ireland and even those who were quite young when they
migrated had been brought up knowing Irish foods and recipes. The range of foods that was
available in Ireland was limited and largely local in origin. This was particularly true for
those from the rural west coast who migrated to England in large numbers. Several
respondents who had grown up on small farms described childhood poverty but at the same
time stressed that they always had enough food and that it had a 'wholesome' quality, often
being made on the farm itself (e.g. butter). The very specific nature of the cooking that these
women grew up with meant that when they arrived in England they were faced with
unfamiliar food stuffs. They did not know many of the foods available or the English names
for foods they were familiar with. One woman told of how she had gone shopping for
scallions (spring onions) and the shop assistant asked 'Isn't that a horse?' Turnips in Ireland
are swedes in England and Irish women asking the baker for a 'sliced pan' received blank
stares. As a result most carried on cooking the foods they recognised from home and only
slowly adapted or added new recipes. Today the variety of dishes consumed is wider than it
would have been during childhood, but many of the old meals such as stew, bacon and
cabbage, liver and onions, remain central to most respondents' diets.
Thirdly, and related to this, specific foodstuffs and brands were sought out by
interviewees because they were Irish and remembered from 'home'. Food was knowingly, as
well as unconsciously, used to create a sense of Irishness. Some interviewees described
searching for particular foods from home or having specific things brought over. For example,
one woman always brings some Irish bacon back to England as "you cannot get the bacon
here." She was referring to the particular cut of the meat but she also, like several others, felt
that the food at home 'tasted' better. This was often mentioned in reference to dairy products
such as milk and butter and there may well be a sense that notions of purity, quality and some
organic connection with Irish fields and soil may be transmitted within the food itself. The
purchase of specifically Irish foods reveals a deliberate interest in maintaining an Irish
identity and using foods to express 'Irishness.' One interviewee said that her husband would
buy soda bread whenever he saw it for sale, even if it was expensive "just because it was
Irish". Often the foods that they used to do this were were very traditional, symbolizing an
idealised or romanticised version of the Ireland of their childhoods, rather than the 'Celtic
Tiger' of today. In addition to traditional types of food, it was is also notable that much
12
Kneafsey and Cox
reference was made to specifically Irish brands of everyday foods, including Galtee cheese,
Tayto crisps, Cidona, Red Lemonade, Barry's Tea and Kerrygold Butter. As the owner of the
Coventry Irish Shop which imports these brands said, "they go mad for the Kimberley cakes".
It seems, therefore, that these brands enable Irish people to signal their Irishness, given that
English and Irish food types are quite similar.
Many respondents had quite specific tastes, as one commented:
"Well, I was born in Tipperary and I always think nobody makes sausages like
Dennys of Waterford and even now I've got a friend and when he goes home he
brings me black pudding and white pudding sausages ".
Interestingly, as well as highlighting the preference for particular brands, this quote also
demonstrates the continued attachment to local and regional identities which intersect with
the broader category of Irishness. Discussions about how to cook traditional Irish recipes
such as boiled ham and cabbage soon led to differences of opinion as to how the meal should
be cooked, depending on the county or region of origin. There were also regional and local
variations in the preparation of breakfast dishes such as yellow buck or yellow wheat and
'goody', a dish of bread and milk sprinkled with sugar. As James (1998) suggests, Irish
migrants are using the links between foods and particular locations to mark out distinct
individual and cultural identities operating at both national and sub-national scales.
Specific gender relations pervaded each of these practices, with women being
overwhelmingly responsible for providing foods in all the interviewees' families. They
transmitted culture, in the shape of knowledge about foods and their preparation, to their
families in different ways from men. As they did this they also passed on particular ideas
about family life and gender roles. The women interviewed taught their children, especially
the females, to cook traditional food and thought it was important that they passed this on.
Other interviewees talked about teaching daughters-in-law, who were English, how to
cook certain dishes. One woman told of how her English daughter-in-law now boils her
sprouts in with the ham at Christmas time so that her husband will like them. Food here could
be seen as a way of either bridging or asserting cultural differences through gendered
traditions of domestic work. Knowledge of Irish food and cookery was therefore used by
interviewees to constitute actively a form of Irish identity for themselves or their families.
One respondent commented on how powerful this was with the remark "my daughter's more
Irish than me."
This form of identity encapsulates well-defined gender roles. Interviewees generally
confirmed King and O'Connor's (1996) finding that traditional gender divisions of labour
within the household are retained, with women doing most of the cleaning, cooking and
washing. They also suggest that women who are married to Irish men face a far less
egalitarian division of labour than those who have non-Irish partners. Women's responsibility
as food providers was largely unquestioned by interviewees:
"I've always put him first, he's the breadwinner ...I've gone to work but I always
think he's the backbone, you know what I mean? He's the provider and I've always
made sure him and them fie. her children] was secure ".
Giving and cooking food were seen as activities that constitute motherhood and
womanhood. Indeed, one respondent was quite disparaging about the cooking skills of
younger women today. As she said "nowadays, they're [ie. young women] too ready to use
Food, gender and Irishness
•_
13
the tin-opener - the tin-opener and the ready frozen. And take them away from the young
woman today and the poor man'11 starve."
Traditional home-making tasks dominated these women's lives, and to some extent still
do. Indeed, many of the women interviewed saw these traditional roles as part and parcel of
their Irishness and were quite proud of them. One group of women discussed how when they
first came to England in the 1960s they saw English men pushing prams and were shocked
and thought the men looked like 'sissies.' They said that they would never have wanted their
husbands to do that and people in Ireland discussed the way that English men helped their
wives. One respondent, Bernie, told a story about walking down the street with four of her
own small children and two of a friend's. A woman stared at her, obviously trying to work
out the ages of the children and Bernie shouted out "I've another five indoors!" These women
were aware that their large families and associated domestic burden differentiated them from
their English neighbours but they could use it to assert their Irishness within the context of
rather ordinary daily activities and exchanges.
Conclusions- making home
This research suggests that food consumption practices can help to reflect and constitute
Irishness. People choose particular foods both because they are Irish and they know those
foods from home, and because they want to restate that Irishness, usually within the domestic
sphere of the home. Women most often took on the role of making a home for their families
in a new place. This involved hard physical labour in adverse conditions, sometimes in one
room in a shared house or in a terrace with no heating. Irish women often raised large
families at a distance from their extended families, yet they used this work to form a sense of
identity and to forge self-respect in hostile surroundings. Women took on the duty of keeping
their families Irish in a culture that was new and different. Most of the people interviewed
consciously strived to preserve something of home in England and to pass this on to their
children. Food is one important medium through which this was achieved.
Having said this, feelings about both Ireland and Britain are ambivalent and the identity
created from uniting these two places is also ambivalent. Rural Ireland is simultaneously
romanticised and described as a place of extreme hardship, a place that is clung to and fled
from. The urban West Midlands is represented as a place of opportunity and of exclusion, a
place of jobs and money and also 'No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs'. The people spoken to
seemed to have a sense of identity which was built upon simultaneously shared experiences
with the British collectivity and yet also feelings of exclusion, invisibility and otherness. For
example, many could relate vivid accounts of their experiences during The Blitz and others
proudly related stories about relatives who had fought in the British army in the last World
War. Despite being able to describe examples of prejudice against them, respondents were
overwhelmingly positive about the English people as a whole. The deep, historical ties and
interdependencies between Britain and Ireland thus appear to create many 'thirdspaces,' often
in bizarre and contradictory forms.
This research has only touched on some of the complex ways in which food, gender and
ethnicity intersect within the context of diaspora. It raises many more questions. For example,
there is a need to pay attention to other aspects of food consumption which register cultural
difference, such as practices of food preparation and presentation, traditions of hospitality and
sizes of portions. The names for meals and sizes and styles of presentation are also deeply
14
Kneafsey and Cox
linked to class, an aspect which has not yet been examined in this research. For instance,
despite rising affluence, do certain food consumption practices that are both Irish and working
class persist in Irish families because of their specific cultural significance? There is also
much to be learned about the relationships between food, Irish identity and Catholicism. The
role of men and constructions of masculinity in relation to food are also under-researched and
in need of attention. Each of these questions in turn needs to be examined in relation to the
second and third generation Irish. To what extent do they maintain certain food consumption
practices as means of sustaining their 'Irishness?' Moreover, there is the complex issue of the
changes in cuisine in both England and Ireland that have been taking place at the same time
as Irish people in England continue to express Irishness through food. Will these changes
diminish the significance of symbolic foods such as soda bread and bacon and cabbage?
Perhaps other foods will assume the role of culture markers as in the case of one of the
youngest respondents, a Limerick woman in her early twenties who related how she missed
the local speciality of 'garlic fries.' Finally, the discussion could be broadened out to consider
other consumption practices which are used to construct cultural identity. For instance,
although considerable work has now examined the consumption of food within the home,
virtually no research has examined the consumption of domestic services such as childcare or
homehelp. Yet it is suggested that the use of such services is also important within the
construction of homespace and that a consideration of them may contribute to a more holistic
understanding of the construction of 'home' through consumption practices.
Note
1
Many thanks to one of the anonymous referees for making this point.
Acknowledgement
This paper has benefited greatly from the constructive critical reviews provided by the
two anonymous referees. We are very grateful for their many valuable suggestions as to ways
in which our discussions and research could be further developed.
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