Dr. Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain gave a paper "Managing the Affairs of the Heart: Loving Practices and State Regulation of Mixed Couples and Their Children in Ireland" at the "New Research Challenges on Interracial Marriage and Mixedness in Europe and Beyond" at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, on Friday 13 November, before the tragic events of that evening occurred.
This paper examines the identities of mixed couples and their children in Ireland through the theoretical conceptual lens of tranconnective transnationalism (King-O’Riain 2015).[1]
Intermarriage is changing who we love, what we mean by love and how we love - as emotions change upon intimate contact with those from different cultures, as digital technology maintains a more mobile and sometimes distant social populace, and as states struggle to maintain control as global mobilities challenge their ability to determine who can love whom.
I argue there are three linked sets of practices that together constitute a globalization of love: translation practices - how conceptions of love are learned, perceived, shaped and changed within mixed inter/transnational couples/families; transconnective practices - how mixed conceptions of love are mediated through use of webcam technology such as Skype; and transportability practices - how nation states regulate the portability of international love networks by deciding who can love whom via marriage/civil partnership, immigration and citizenship laws.
[1] The data in this paper come from an ethnographic narrative interview study of 36 interviewees who self-identified as being in a mixed couple. The interviews were conducted through English from 2010-2012 with same sex and heterosexual couples and families (ages 26-60), where one partner was Irish and the other was from Algeria, France, Canada, US, UK, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Poland, Zimbabwe, and China. Interviewees were from: Cork, Kildare, Galway, Tipperary, Dublin and the surrounds.
For more on the event see here.