Christina Pamment (b. 1929) from Croom, county Limerick, left Ireland in 1946 just after her seventeenth birthday. She travelled to near Egham in Surrey where she started work as a domestic in a local hospital after replying to a newspaper advertisement. On turning eighteen years of age, she was accepted for nurse training at a hospital in Shooter's Hill, south-east London. A short time later, she met another Irish migrant who was employed as a labourer and they became engaged to be married. In 1948 she broke off this engagement to marry a much older English widower. Notwithstanding considerable opposition from her family, she married this man in October of the same year. She settled down to life in Britain and had two children. After more than forty years in Britain, when interviewed in 1989, Christina still hoped to return to her native Limerick. It is unclear if she ever realised this aspiration.

The story of Christina Pamment contains many elements of the principal themes of this chapter. All too often migration is viewed solely as a movement of population which is subject to rigorous quantitative analysis. But the process of migration involves real people with real stories. A sense of displacement, a desire to return home and the sometimes painful adaptation to the norms of the new society feature prominently in the oral testimony of all migrants. Christina was one of the thousands of young people who left Ireland during the immediate postwar period.