The silencing of the experiences of women and the lasting impact of the Citizenship Referendum on children's lives and identities: A conversation with Dr. Jennifer Okeke

Introduction

Dr Jennifer Okeke is the Anti-Trafficking Coordinator with the Immigrant Council of Ireland and Chairperson of the National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI). A community activist and former chairperson of an Irish migrant women's organisation, she is a board member of the European Network of Migrant Women (ENoMW) and has extensive knowledge and expertise on issues of gender-based violence, anti-trafficking, human rights and migration (refugees, asylum seekers, direct provision).

In the following conversation, she returns to her closing remarks made during the October 2024 Symposium in Trinity College Dublin, on the impact of the 2004 Citizenship Referendum. Her focus is an examination of the long-lasting power of the referendum and its influence on family life and public understanding. Dr Okeke discusses the discourse that surrounded citizenship and national identity during the referendum and in the period that followed. Her personal account and the stories of those she worked with demonstrate the effects of state-led systemic racism on Black mothers and children, especially in relation to identity formation and belonging within the state. These experiences show how racialisation shapes family life and everyday interactions. She challenges the audience to consider the role of society and the responsibility of citizens in maintaining a racialised conception of Irishness as part of a reflection on collective consciousness and the ongoing impact of the referendum on the identity and wellbeing of racialised women and their families.

Note: This interview was conducted via Zoom on 29^th April 2025 and has been edited for length and clarity.

Sorcha Mellon (SM): You spoke very powerfully at the symposium about the silencing of those most directly affected by the referendum. I wonder if you could speak further about what that moment meant, not just in terms of public discourse, but in your own experience working with women and families and living through it yourself.

Jennifer Okeke (JO): One of the main things I remember from that time is fear. It was everywhere. I had a small baby myself then, but often I wouldn’t go out with him. The referendum brought a lot of media attention. It was being discussed across every part of society. Migrant communities, people in direct provision centres, families like mine. And the people who were going to be most affected by it were already scared. Not just because of the legal implications, but because of what was being said in the media. The stories that were being told about us.

There was this idea being pushed by so many public figures that migrants, especially asylum seekers and refugees, were coming here to take something, to exploit the country. That kind of language created real danger. People became more hostile. Judgement was everywhere. You could feel it. I remember feeling more confident walking outside when I wasn’t with my child, because I knew how people looked at women like me. At that time, a pregnant migrant woman or a migrant woman with a small baby on the street would be seen in a certain way. People assumed she was here to take advantage of the system. That was the assumption. No one stopped to ask questions as to why we were here.

Many women who had small children chose to leave them at home if they could. The negative reaction was so strong. It was written on people's faces, in their tone, in how they passed you in the street. This was the image created and repeated across every media platform, that women who looked like me were the problem, and it became part of everyday life. We were turned into symbols representing something we were not.

When a migrant woman went out during that time, she had to watch for her safety. She worried about the people she passed, the person walking behind her, the person beside her in the shop queue. You started asking yourself silently, all the time, is this someone who doesn’t like people like me? As unpleasant as it is to say, that was the reality. That was how people like me were forced to live with the many negative stories being shared about migrants. The worst part was that we migrants were not being given any opportunity to speak. People could not share their own truths. The system of direct provision made it worse. It separated people. It made sure that Irish citizens and migrants did not get to know each other properly. And when you don’t have the chance to really meet someone, it's much easier to believe the worst, especially if it serves someone's purpose to say the worst about us.

The stories about migrants were put about by people who had never spoken to any of us. The truth is, people migrate for many reasons. To work. To find safety. To create a better life for their children. But that truth didn’t get any space in the discourse at the time. The referendum allowed people to ignore our common humanity and needs and instead divide communities that should never have been set against one another.

SM: How have the dynamics you described during the referendum shifted in the years since, particularly in the context of your continued work with women and families?

JO: There was a time when the fear became less immediate, but it never truly disappeared. The atmosphere changed slightly, and for a while it felt less intense than during the referendum itself. But that fear has returned. What I see now in 2025 is something deeper, more embedded, and more widespread, especially within the current political climate.

When you are a Black parent or a parent of colour, you worry more. You worry constantly. You worry when your child leaves the house. You teach them things that other parents never have to think about. How to be cautious. How to behave if someone insults them. How to respond if they are accused of something. How to survive. These are not lessons that most Irish parents, especially white Irish parents, usually have to give their children. But this is the reality for parents from marginalised communities.

What makes it harder is that the children born during or after the referendum know nothing else. Ireland is their home. They were not brought here. They were born here. They were raised here. They go to Irish schools, they speak with Irish accents, and they play on Irish football teams. So, when someone turns to them and says, “Go back to where you came from,” the violence of that sentence hits differently. They do not understand what it means, and they should not have to. They look around and see their classmates, their teachers and their neighbours, and amidst all that there are people telling them that they do not belong. That they are outsiders. That they are taking up space that does not belong to them. And the impact of those kinds of comments is not some abstract feeling. They are not just offensive. They create real confusion in children's minds. When they hear phrases like “get them out” or “send them home,” they begin to ask questions. They ask, “Who are they talking about?” They look to the adults around them. They try to make sense of something that has no logic in their lived experience.

They do not always get answers. Or they get answers that hurt them even more. Because when they realise that they are the ones being referred to as “them,” the ones that people want out, they begin to see themselves differently. Even if no one explains it to them directly, they feel it. And they carry it with them in their daily experiences of being Irish, living Irish lives.

SM: You have spoken about how these narratives and exclusions affect children's sense of self. Could you say more about what you have seen in terms of identity formation, particularly for those growing up in families where citizenship status differs between siblings?

JO: Any form of marginalisation or discrimination will have an impact, and when it happens at a structural level, that impact is not just psychological but is also material. In many of the families I know, those effects hit hard. You now have families where two or three children have Irish passports, and one does not though all of them were born here. All of them are living under the same roof but only some of them are treated as Irish. That difference creates confusion. Of course it does. It affects how a child understands their place in the world. It makes them ask questions that no child should have to ask. Why does my sister have a passport and I do not? Why am I treated differently? What is wrong with me?

It does not stop at questions. It shows up in everyday life. One child can travel while another cannot. One qualifies for reduced university fees while another sibling does not. That is not just a bureaucratic issue, it fractures something inside the family. It introduces a kind of internal inequality that parents struggle to explain.

This is not an abstract debate for me. It is my reality. I have been an Irish citizen since 2012. Two of my children have Irish passports. When I applied for my youngest son's passport, I was told he does not qualify. None of the explanations [offered by the Immigration Service Delivery, Department of Justice ¹ ] made sense. His older siblings have passports. He was born here. We live here. Still, I was told he is not entitled. He is thirteen now. I have not explained everything to him yet, but the time is coming when I will have to. That will be a difficult conversation. He has never left Ireland. He has never known any other home. But if I needed to travel, I would have to find a family to leave him with. That is the reality we are living with.

And I know other children who are even older, who are now in their twenties, and they still do not have passports. They cannot join their peers on trips abroad. They cannot take part in sports competitions outside the country. They cannot access the same educational opportunities. They are being penalised for something they had no control over. The inevitable question they ask is “Why me?” And their parents cannot give them an answer that makes sense, as there is no sensible answer. There is no justifiable reason why one child in a family is treated as a citizen and another is not, when both were born in the same place, at the same time, and under the same roof.

These are not isolated stories. This situation is very common in migrant communities. It is widespread. And it is painful.

SM: I am familiar with your work with women over the years. Could you speak more directly to the gendered character of the referendum and how it shaped the lives of women in particular?

JO: One of the things that becomes very clear when you look back at the newspapers from that time, or at what was circulating on social media, is just how gendered the whole debate was. Of course, it was not framed that way officially, but if you paid attention to the images, the articles, the kinds of stories that were repeated, you could see just how gendered it all was. The women being targeted were not abstract figures; they were visible—pregnant women, women with buggies, women walking with young children, women who looked like me, women of colour, Black women in particular—and they were being watched and judged. The referendum may have been about citizenship on paper, but in practice it focused on controlling women's bodies. On deciding who had the right to carry a child in public, and who did not. The figure of the pregnant migrant woman became a kind of threat in the public imagination. That is not an exaggeration. It was there in how people looked at women like me. It was there in what they said out loud, and in what they whispered when they thought you could not hear.

At that time, many women changed how they moved. They changed their routines. You would see women walking in groups instead of walking alone, especially if they had young children with them. There was a sense that being with others might offer some kind of protection. Being alone made you more vulnerable. You could feel it on your skin. In the silence around you when you entered a space. The way people stared. The way they moved away from you or moved too close, depending on what they wanted to express. It was not just discomfort. It was surveillance.

The media played a role in that, and they have never really taken responsibility for it. The stories they chose to publish, the images they chose to use, the language they used to describe migrant women, especially Black women—none of that was neutral. It had an impact and its effect was to create fear. And when you create fear on that level, when you reproduce it over and over in headlines, radio debates, political speeches, it settles into the everyday. It becomes something people do not even question. It becomes a fact in their minds. That migrant women are a problem. That they are here to trick the system. That they should be monitored. That kind of narrative has a long afterlife.

SM: Since the time of the referendum, do you feel that the experiences of those women have been researched, recorded, or even meaningfully acknowledged?

JO: No, not at all. And that is a huge part of the problem. There has never been any formal research, not that I am aware of, that has gone back and asked the women what they went through. What it did to them. What it did to their families. The focus was on the political campaign. The legal change. The public debate. But the women themselves, the ones most affected, were never asked.

And those children who were born around that time, they are young adults now. Teenagers. Some are in college. Some are already trying to navigate the job market. But no one has really asked them what it has meant to grow up with this history. What it has meant to be born into a country that does not fully recognise them.

I remember what it was like just before the referendum deadline. There was so much fear. You could see it in people's faces. You could hear it in the conversations in waiting rooms and corridors. Pregnant women were scared. They did not know what would happen if they gave birth after the deadline. They were worried about deportation. About losing their child. About being separated. The fear was not just emotional. It was physical. It got into the body.

I know that some women took serious risks. Some tried to induce themselves, using methods they had heard about from others. Some of those methods were dangerous. Some were untested. Some came from desperation. It was about trying to get the baby out before the deadline. That is how serious it was. We do not know what impact that had on those children, medically or otherwise. There has been no study. No follow-up. No acknowledgement. But what we do know is that the fear and anxiety were real. They were present in every clinic, every shared kitchen, and every room where women were counting down the days and wondering what would happen.

And it did not end there. That fear changed how women thought about having children. It changed how they approached family planning. It made people delay pregnancies. It made some give up on the idea of more children altogether. The pressure forced people into making decisions that they might not otherwise have made. So when people talk about the referendum as a moment in political history, I think, no. It was more than that. It was something that entered people's lives. Their bodies. Their homes. It did not just change the Constitution. It changed people's futures.

SM: You have already touched on what it means for children to be treated unequally within the same family. Could you say more about how that plays out at a practical level, especially when one child has access to citizenship and the other does not?

JO: It creates serious problems. Inside the family. Between siblings. Between parents and children. You are trying to make sense of something that is not explainable. That is the hardest part. How do you tell one child, “Your sister has a passport, but you do not”? How do you explain that both of them were born in Ireland, both in the same hospital, both raised in the same house, but only one of them qualifies? Children do not understand that. Why would they? And as a parent, you do not know how to explain it either. You try, but there is no logic to fall back on. What are you supposed to say? That one was lucky and the other was not? That one was born just in time and the other missed some invisible deadline?

I mentioned my son earlier and the dilemma I as a parent face–how do you explain that to a thirteen-year-old boy who has only ever known Ireland as home? That is what people do not understand. These are not rare cases. This happens daily in family after family. The effects of the 2004 Referendum are still here. But you hardly ever hear anything about the referendum anymore. It is like the country passed the amendment and then moved on. The conversation ended. The legal change was made, and everything else was forgotten. But the people affected by it have not forgotten. They are still living with it. Their lives are shaped by it every day. And no one has gone back to ask what that means. What was lost? What was taken away? What was changed forever?

As a society, we must be able to reflect. We need to be able to look at what we have done and ask whether it was right. Whether it helped anyone. Whether it caused harm. And if it did, then what do we do now? How do we fix it? Because if you take away a person's identity, if you deny them citizenship in the only country they have ever known, if you strip away their sense of belonging, then what is left? What are you asking them to become? What kind of future are you offering them? These are the questions we should be asking. And we are not.