Gendered Irishness in Britain: changing construction

The paradox of Irishness in Britain is that it is simultaneously outside and inside the national fold. On the one hand, the Irish have been constructed as ‘other’ for centuries, the longest-standing representation of what British people are not. On the other hand, the taken-for-granted inclusion of the Irish is central to recognition of ‘the British Isles’ upon which narratives of heroic independence are based, and from which more recent ‘others’ can be excluded.