This article explores the experiences of second generation Irish young men living in Britain. Drawing upon theories of globalization, diaspora and subjectivity, it considers how ethnic invisibility (in Britain) and national exclusion (in Ireland) are shaping young people's specific experience of cultural peripheries. At the same time, such a position provides an insight into the centrality of the black/white dualism on a lived-out level, while also highlighting the continuing salience of the racial dualism as a dominant explanatory framework. More specifically, it examines young people's reclamation and rearticulation of being and belonging, the cultural politics of Irishness and the visibility of Irish ethnicity. It concludes by bringing together some of the empirical, theoretical and methodological complexities involved in working in this area.
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