UCD School of Sociology

Laundries. We engage in archival and educational work, with the aim of recording and raising public awareness of the experiences of women held in Magdalene Laundries. The members of JFM Research also continue to assist survivors of Magdalene Laundries in our personal capacities.

Crocknahattina Bailieborough because of which the Council has pledged to be 'mindful and respectful when making decisionson behalf of Dublin's ever diversifying community in order to advance the city according to the views of all its people. We will respect equality and human rights for all citizens as part of this value'.

For those of us who have been involved in adoption activism over the past two decades, it often feels as though the Government is engaged in a war of attrition against adopted people, writes Claire McGettrick.

Every day is like Groundhog Day; time and again we submit witness testimony and documentary evidence, as well as comprehensive analyses and legal arguments pointing out the flaws in the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016, but it seems to matter not a whit.

Instead, the Government is determinedly clinging to a paradigm which insists that adopted people and their natural mothers are on opposing sides: the needy adopted person versus the natural mother who is petrified of an adult child turning up on her doorstep unannounced.

If the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016 is passed as it stands, it will reinforce the existing system, and it will penalise and further stigmatise a group of people who have already been deeply hurt by Ireland’s closed, secret, forced adoption system, write Claire McGettrick and Susan Lohan.

Last year, thanks to the tireless work of Catherine Corless, the world was made aware of the 796 babies that lay forgotten in Tuam. Those of us who have campaigned on these issues were on the one hand relieved that the world was finally taking notice, but on the other, we thought: 'they don't know the half of it'.

ON St Patrick’s Day in 1943, then taoiseach Éamon de Valera made an address in which he shared his dream of an ideal Ireland.

His vision for women and children described “happy maidens” and “the romping of sturdy children”.

In truth, Ireland at that same time could not have been more different, at least not in places such as the Sacred Heart Mother and Baby Home in Bessborough, where the infant mortality rate was a staggering 68% as revealed in today’s Irish Examiner.

I don’t know a single natural mother who willingly gave up her baby, writes Claire McGettrick.

THOSE who speak of natural mothers wishing to forever ‘keep their secrets’ clearly have no grasp of adoption and its profound impact on those directly affected.

Ireland’s closed, secret, forced adoption system involved a complete separation of mother and child, where the break was permanent and neither would have knowledge of the other’s whereabouts. It offered no alternative to mothers but to relinquish their children.

One thing that would help rectify the failings of the McAleese Report into mother-and-baby home inquiry, writes Claire McGettrick The InterDepartmental Committee (IDC) on the Magdalene Laundries v contention of extensive state involvement with these institutions. However, the IDC also went well beyond its mandate and produced a re experiences of those who were incarcerated against their will.

On 6th June 2018, a formal ‘Listening Exercise’ took place in the Round Room
of the Mansion House as part of Dublin Honours Magdalenes (DHM), an historic
two-day event in Dublin from June 5th-6th. The event fulfilled two key aspects
of the Irish State’s Magdalen Restorative Justice Ex-Gratia Scheme: to bring
together those women seeking to meet others who also spent time in the
Magdalene Laundries, and to provide an opportunity for a listening exercise to
gather views from survivors on how the Magdalene Laundries should be
remembered by future generations.

I argue in this article that holocaust memory discourse in Serbia is currently being promoted by the state as part of its efforts to conceal any political space where an encounter between the state and the civil society may be able to occur and redirect public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s. Thus, instead of dealing with their roles and responsibilities, Serbian governments are engaged in reframing and obscuring the contested elements of their national past. In Serbia holocaust memory is brought up to the fore as a platform for articulating national interests and thus is activated as a screen-memory. I will show here how holocaust discourse has served the domestic political elite in the course of the last decade so that Serbian victims continue to be equated with Holocaust victims and the righteous nature of the wars of the 1990s is established. Furthermore, I will show that holocaust memory discourse is instrumentalized to better Serbia’ s image on the international stage.

All post socialist Western Balkan states are engaged in the process of impression management, through state sponsored projects, whereas most of the work is done in a subtle and less visible and intrusive way, with the intention of imitating spontaneous, natural and authentic processes. The basic argument outlined in this paper is that Serbia has managed its contested past through covering and cultural reframing rather than public acknowledgement. I show here that the state sponsored practices in Serbia are part of impression management strategies which serve multiple functions and meanings: on the one hand they tend to present Serbia as a democratic and progressive state, but on the other hand, they reveal Serbia`s problematic relationships with other nations. Through the content analysis of the highly important official state document "State Program for Commemorating the Anniversary of the Historic Events of the Serbian Liberation Wars", I show that the new Serbian calendar is made both to meet European expectations and further Serbia's interests to join the EU, while also expressing feelings of animosity, injustice and frustration as a means of settling historical accounts. This protocol reveals new re-constructed master commemorative narrative which presents Serbia as nation state with deeply democratic foundations through the eternal struggle for freedom, antifascism and anti-Semitism. I also emphasize here that the creation of the Serbian cosmology of otherness, as portrayed in this newly constructed Serbian calendar, discloses inner tensions and fractures, as well as contentious relationships with "significant Others", in this case of Europe, Croatia and Kosovo Albanians. 1