The chapter focuses on HE engagement with communities. It provides some historical examples of this kind of engagement from minority and majority world contexts and targeted at different types of learners. It also outlines a number of steps that can be taken to render this engagement democratic, symbiotic and a catalyst for change within the communities and HE institutions involved. Due attention is reserved for different meanings attached to the term ‘community’. The importance of embracing subaltern epistemologies is underlined. A Freirean approach is adopted throughout.

Culturally speaking, in the context of Euro-American societies, being related as kin is perceived as a self-evident, given and ‘fixed’ relationship. Reproduction lies at the heart of making such relationships; the birth of a biological child is conceptualized as the beginning of the next generation in a long line of generations going back through time. However, ‘making kin’ might be harder for some than for others. Based on original empirical data (cross-generational interviews), this chapter investigates how kin relationship comes into being in relationships between lesbian daughters and their parents in the context of childbirth through donor insemination. It looks specifically at the role of genes, biology and pregnancy in shaping and making kinship affinities in such family contexts. The chapter highlights that the making of the next generation might, for some, be a precarious and uncertain pursuit, rather than a given, self-evident process.

There is a growing interest as well as urgency to understand diversity, cultural differences and transformation on the island of Ireland. With the UK’s Brexit decision in summer 2016 the notion of the border, border crossing and what European Union membership entails for different groups in society have become even more opaque. This chapter examines the everyday life experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Their experiences are differently fashioned through two distinct immigration systems, as well as two distinct national, historical and socio-economic contexts. This chapter considers how asylum seekers’ and refugees’ experiences of integration are shaped by issues such as racism and sectarianism in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. It explores how local environments, spatial segregation and being a black immigrant in a largely white society condition feelings of belonging as well as future aspirations. The authors draw particular attention to the complex intersections of poor asylum processes, racism and exclusion.

Immigrants as Outsiders in the Two Irelands offers contributions which speak to the full range of factors shaping new and available pathways to integration, from the context into which immigrants arrive, the characteristics of immigrant groups affecting their emigration and immigration, the biases and structural barriers they encounter in the host society, and the multiple ways in which they seek to adapt to and change the institutions which facilitate integration. Using the theory of segmented assimilation to frame these contributions, we establish a framework through which we invite our readers to view the successes and adaptations of the migrants represented here as well as the structural powerlessness with which many of them, but not all, are faced. We note the limited choices that attend ‘outsider’ status, and the impact of these economically, politically and culturally, and the ways in which combinations of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ positions affect integration, the ability of migrants (and children of migrants) to thrive, and their future orientations to the opportunities available on the island of Ireland.

This chapter explores the use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) by queer and transgender people and how they have to perform particular bodily and intimate selves in the processes of seeking ART (Armuand et al., 2017; Mamo 2007, 2013). The bioprecarity of queer and transgender people is produced by the enactment of certain kinds of categorical framing (Foucault, 1977, 1990; Somerville, 1995) in the laws regulating ART. Prohibitive laws in some states are often circumvented by going abroad. This chapter therefore argues that queer and trans people’s bioprecarity also results from the intimate labour queer and transgender people have to undertake to overcome prohibitive laws and hetero- and cisnormative medical institutions as shown e.g. in studies about trans people’s experiences with ART (Armuand et al., 2017; James-Abra et al., 2015).

This chapter provides a concrete example of a university community engagement project deriving from an annual series of commemorative events that capture the imagination of specific communities in certain countries. The project centres on the Semana Santa (Holy Week) in a Southern European context. It juxtaposes a left-wing reading of the narrative and commemorative events involved in this example of political education against right wing renderings as manifest in Spain during the Franco era. Challenges to the latter manifestations of franquismo are also underlined.

Less than 40 per cent of adult African nationals in Ireland are employed – far less than the average for Irish natives or for other immigrant groups. They also suffer much higher rates of unemployment than the national average. The pattern is similar in other European labour markets. This chapter explores the underlying reasons for African disadvantage in the Irish labour market. Previous research on immigrants in the Irish labour market suggests that the black African national–ethnic group suffers particular labour market disadvantages and is much more likely than either Irish natives or other immigrant groups to have experienced discrimination while looking for work. Discrimination may provide part of the explanation for the high unemployment rates among Africans participating in the labour force. Previous research also suggests that the severe disadvantages suffered by black Africans may be due in part to the fact that many black Africans in Ireland are refugees and would have spent an extended period of time excluded from the labour market as asylum seekers in the Direct Provision system, leading to a scarring effect on their future employment prospects. However, it is also necessary to consider the low labour force participation rates among Africans and to examine their characteristics (including gender, education and household structure), and barriers to labour force participation associated with those characteristics.

Chapter 6 centres clinical psychologists’ perspectives on and responses to ‘did not attend’ (DNA) policies. Patient non-attendance at clinical appointments has long been regarded as a key issue of concern within healthcare, and particularly so in light of pressures and targets to see more patients and more quickly. DNA policies are also an object of often latent concern by professionals and patients in relation to how they ostensibly improve access for some people through the potentially strategic exclusion of others. I analyse how clinical psychologists account for and navigate such policies, exploring how (in)formal rules around attendance can prompt the involuntary discharge of patients. DNA policies often provide space for clinical discretion, and are even sometimes elided by practitioners. Their negotiations can involve highly moralised configurations of both patient and professional subjectivities. These contribute to legitimising exclusion from services, as well as the expertise leveraged to do so.

Looking at genetic deafness research from the latenineteenth into the early twenty-first century, in away, we have come full circle. After a century ofprofessionals urging deaf people to be aware oftheir genetic make-up, Deaf activists and scholarsindeed do so – and have replaced the notion ofdefective genes with the more inclusive message ofbiodiversity. Linguists, social scientists,historians, architects, biologists, and educatorshave made the case for Deaf gain, the idea thatdeafness is not a deficit, but a positive trait thathas enabled its bearers to make valuablecontributions to culture and art, linguistics andarchitecture. Genetics and theories of evolutionplay an important role in these claims, and Deafidentity has come to be defined as an ethnoculturalidentity based also on shared genes. Comparinggenetic deafness research to othermedical-technological ‘solutions’ for deafness (e.g.cochlear implants), the conclusion offers ananalysis of current debates over diversity and anexplanation of why some people see the potentialeradication of deafness as medical progress andothers see it as a threat to their culture,language, and community.

The free movement of EU citizens and the absence of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have facilitated easy movement across the island for many migrants. People born in EU countries, and those who have attained EU citizenship, are equally able to live and work on both sides of the border, and a growing number have family, community and employment connections in both jurisdictions. This chapter examines the emerging implications of the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (Brexit) for the lives of migrants on both sides of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, reduced rights of residency and access to employment will directly affect EU migrants, while non-EU migrants are also affected by a shifting labour market heavily reliant on migrant workers. In the Republic, internal and external border controls agreed to facilitate EU protections and an ongoing relationship with the UK will have an impact on all migrants in their ability to move with ease, while the labour market also experiences significant shifts.

Deaf people have long been the objects of religioussalvation, of philanthropy, and educational reform.By the early twentieth century, science and medicineclaimed to turn deaf people into productive,rational citizens. Eugenics, too, was part of theseprogressive reforms. Schools became the centreswhere these scientific, moral, and educationalclaims about normalizing deaf people came together,and no school embodied these ideals better than theClarke School for the Deaf in Northampton,Massachusetts. Founded in 1867 as the firstpermanent oralist school in the US, it established,in 1928, a research department with divisions forpsychological, audiological, and heredity research,all working towards the scientific management ofdeafness. Yet collaborating with scientists fromother institutions, the school also had to engagewith approaches to deafness that did not align withits own.