Ireland's IBC/05 Administrative Scheme for Immigrant Residency, the Separation of Families and the Creation of a Transnational Familial Imaginary

This paper reports on the experiences of one particular group of immigrants to Ireland - the parents of Irish citizen children, whose residency is dependent on an ongoing, renewable form of residential status called IBC/05. This residency status was instituted in response to the constitutional changes that arose in the aftermath of Ireland's 2004 citizenship referendum. While this status category is valued in the short-term, we contend that immigrants whose residence in Ireland is dependent on this status are effectively living in-between their countries of origin and Ireland as a result of legislative specificities that separate their families and create an air of uncertainty about the continuance of the status category in the longer term. Immigrants with IBC/05 status operate across a number of transnational familial fields. Transnational economic fields are reinforced by immigrants' need to finance the lives of family members still resident in their country of origin but a range of hybridised personal and familial identity spaces are created outside this economic pattern and the experience of life in Ireland is anchored in the imaginaries that spring from such transnationalised experiences. Importantly, however, we find that this transnationalism is not operationalised "from below" in this instance but "from above" by the Irish state through the emphasis it places on this form of long-term temporary residency.