Ethnic Identity and Assimilation: A Seven Generation Irish-Canadian Lineage

The socio-economic evolution of Irish Canadians from landless rural subjects to New World peasants to urban proletarians to entrepreneurs and professionals is examined as having been shaped by the opportunity structure afforded by westward immigration of the past 140 years. That process and its attendant erosion of ethnic identity are chronicled in the context of the political economy of pre-famine Ireland, of early Canada, and of recession-prone Great Lakes border communities of the United States and Canada. Fully assimilated in mainstream North American culture, ethnic identity persists yet within the lineage on a situational basis.