As Ireland slipped into severe recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s, unemployment rose dramatically. By 1984, it accounted for 16.4 per cent of the workforce and one in three out of work were under the age of twenty-five. In parts of Dublin the figures were much higher, and it was here that the social consequences of unemployment were most marked, with a major drug and crime epidemic hitting the city. Mean while, in Northern Ireland, the intransigent position of the Thatcher government in relation to republican prisoners’ demands for political status led to the hunger strikes of 1981. As a consequence of these events, attitudes north of the border became increasingly polarized and the economy continued to stagnate. Against this backdrop of economic and political stasis, large numbers of young people from both parts of Ireland once again began moving to Britain, especially London, in search of work. By 1991, there were over a quarter of a million Irish-born in London and, as had been the case for most of the twentieth century, the majority were women.

This generation, however, was distinctly different from previous ones in important respects. While some migrants followed their predecessors by entering the unskilled and semi-skilled sectors of the economy, a new cohort of better educated, more self-confident and socially mobile migrants found jobs in the financial institutions of the City of London, the media and the professions. The removal of foreign exchange controls in 1979 and the deregulation of the London Stock Exchange in 1986 were key factors in the growth of financial services in the city. By the end of the twentieth century, this sector of the economy was to account for 38 per cent of the city's GDP. Although many migrants were attracted by this, most still went into jobs with which the Irish were more traditionally associated, such as construction, nursing and catering. Others found no work whatsoever and ended up joining the ranks of London's increasing numbers of young homeless. When Joseph O'Connor coined the term ‘Ryanair Generation’ he was alluding to the fact that by the 1980s Irish migrants were able to avail themselves of cut-price air travel to Britain in a way that had not been the case before.