If we think about the classes according to their mobility, we see the working class far more ‘on the move’ to find work and a place to live. Whereas with the middle classes, mobility is more one of professional development. Essentially, one driver of mobility is necessity/ survival, whilst the other is much more positive, with higher status, wages, etc.. 

We have addressed this issue before on Proletarian Poetry, for example most poignantly with Micheal Gallagher’s ‘Paraic and Jack and John from 2016, 

Goodbyes to
the mothers, always the mothers,
the father-mother-farmer mothers,
the savers of hay,
the spreaders of turf;
brought into heat once, maybe twice,
a year, migrant’s return, marital duties,
children’s allowances, God’s word –
stuff like that.

In Cathy Galvin’s brilliant debut collection Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara published by Bloodaxe Books, she portrays the impact of migrancy, both inward and outward. From Coventry like myself, her Irish roots are in the far west of Ireland in Connemara. In my own area of Coventry, a large Irish community settled in Coundon from the 1950s – so many that it became dubbed County Coundon; though there are a number of other areas where Irish families settled in the city. I have friends whose parents came from Donegal, Cork, Mayo, Galway. They came to rebuild Coventry from the Blitz but also to work in the car factories. 

But things have changed a lot in the last twenty six years. Helped by its own success then boosted by the UK leaving the EU, Ireland is now a place people migrate to, or return to. More people have returned to Ireland now than left, with the population rising from 4 million in 2000 to 5.4 million in 2025

Cathy has written a beautiful paean to her Irish roots in Connemara and Coventry. She notes this change of inward migration in the featured poem ‘An Ghaeltacht’ which refers to recognised regions of Ireland where Irish is the predominant language. Cathy is a poet, journalist and literary entrepreneur being Founder and Director of The Word Factory,

You can buy a copy of Ethnology here

An Ghaeltacht

Paul – Pól – bought himself a boat
and a house. Took land on the island,
drove through mountains on a motorbike.
But these people with the same name as him,
the same DNA, drinking in the same bar,
kept themselves to themselves.
Gave him no work. And in Galway –
Well you might as well be back in Croydon, he said
All those East Europeans, no one speaking English.
He keeps his curtains drawn, gate padlocked.
I’m told he’s packing his bags. Taking
his estuary English over to Durham
where houses are also cheap. In time, it’s possible
they tell me, he might even pick up the language.