Free Radikal

Blog and website by Ronit Lentin, a political sociologist, writer and an antiracist activist.

  • 11 June – Remember the Citizenship Referendum?

    Remember ‘citizenship tourism’? Remember ‘pregnant on arrival’? Remember when Dublin’s maternity hospitals were allegedly packed to the brim with ‘non national’ women arriving at the last minute to have citizen children? Remember the 1990 Fajujonu Supreme Court case, giving migrant parents a legal right to remain in Ireland to provide ‘care and company‘ to their…

  • Book review: Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant, Eithe Luibheid

    Publisher: University of Minnesota Press 2013     Price: $25 ISBN 978-0-8166-8100-6 In January 2002, a Nigerian woman appealed to the Irish High Court to prevent her deportation on the ground that she was pregnant. Her lawyers argued that her deportation contravened Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution which guarantees to defend and vindicate the right to life…

  • Rest in power Christine Buckley – social reformer and fighter

    I was very saddened to hear of the death of Christine Buckley, the Irish-Nigerian woman survivor of Ireland’s gulags – the industrial school system run by religious orders. Christine has been battling with cancer and, in view of her suffering at the hand of the nuns during her childhood, her achievements are more than admirable….