Emerald City? The case for situational capital in advancing our understanding of Irish immigrants’ attachment to New York City as place

MAYE-BANBURY, Angela (2022). Emerald City? The case for situational capital in advancing our understanding of Irish immigrants’ attachment to New York City as place. Irish Journal of Sociology.

[img]
Preview
PDF
Maye-Banbury-EmeraldCity(VoR).pdf - Published Version
Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

Download (804kB) | Preview
Official URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0791...
Open Access URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/07916... (Published version)
Link to published version:: https://doi.org/10.1177/07916035221082548

Abstract

This paper explores the relevance of social capital in shaping Irish immigrants’ reconstructions of their attachment to New York City (NYC) as place. Using extracts from Irish immigrants’ previously unpublished oral histories, I make the case for situational capital, a multi-faceted and dynamic place-based resource which connects people in situ by virtue of their literal and metaphorical positionality. The coalescence of individual and collective memories, including childhood memories, underpinned the network of social relationships which fuelled interviewees’ quest to recreate and reimagine a sense of ‘home’ both in NYC and Ireland. The resultant situational capital created by these relationships fostered a reflexive and sustained attachment to place which served to advance the cumulative economic, cultural, political and social prosperity of Irish men and women individually and collectively over time and space. Situational capital was also instrumental in advancing opportunities for Irish men and women and altering the physical characteristics of neighbourhoods. It shaped the genius loci of NYC as reconstructed by those interviewed pivoting around the fluid and ambiguous notion of real and imagined ‘home.’

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: 1608 Sociology
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1177/07916035221082548
SWORD Depositor: Symplectic Elements
Depositing User: Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited: 22 Mar 2022 11:26
Last Modified: 23 Mar 2022 09:54
URI: https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29973

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics