This project examines the impact of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland on refugees and asylum-seeking women living in Ireland. Passed by referendum in June of 2004 with a noteworthy 79 percent of voters in favor (DEHLG 2005), Ireland became one of just a few European nations to abolish birthright citizenship (jus soli). As a result, Irish citizenship is no longer acquired by virtue of birth in Ireland, but is now restricted to blood-right (jus sanguinis) or naturalization. Refugee and asylum-seeking women emerged at the center of the debates over the Amendment when the state accused them of coming to Ireland in the late stages of pregnancy to avail themselves of Irish welfare and an EU passport. Given these events, the project employs ethnographic and archival methods to understand the consequences of social and legal stuggles over the boundaries of Irish citizenship for the everyday life experience and possibilities of refugee and asylum-seeking women living in Ireland.The main objectives are 1) to understand the impact of the amendment in the daily lives of the women and their families, 2) to identify the discursive constructs about the women that gave currency to the Amendment, and 3) to discern the ways in which these meanings are being contested and negotiated by the women. Ireland's abolition of jus soli may mark a major rethinking of traditional notions of liberal democratic citizenship among modern nation-states as they grapple with the human effects of globalization. In light of this, the study illuminates the ways in which issues of race, kinship, and gender are all implicated in how societies re-evaluate what constitutes membership, how these boundaries are negotiated, policed, or contested, and how these struggles over meaning are experienced in the everyday lives of subjects of socio-legal discourse.
