Ireland's dual tradition is a catalyst for debate on cultural diversity in both language and literary production. For more than a century Ireland's relationship to its diasporic populations has been important in the formation of a body of literature that exceeds the territory of Ireland itself and facilitates new relationships between the Irish tradition and writing in other languages and from other cultures. From the 1990s until the onset of recession in 2008, the direction of this movement was reversed, so that Ireland became home to a significant immigrant community, enriching its cultural and linguistic life. In an era of global mobility, geographical movement becomes an important part of artistic formation, as well as a human experience shared by many; recent critical perspectives reflect the significance and connective potential of this phenomenon. This mobility can vary in expression from writers who choose to live and work abroad for months or years, to those who, for economic or political reasons, need to leave their place of origin. Irish writers have a long history of emigration, and for the most famous exemplars – James Joyce and Samuel Beckett – both exposure to new cultural environments and distance from Ireland provided a fruitful perspective for innovative creative work. In recent decades migrants coming to Ireland have also challenged traditional representations and offered collaborative potential to resident writers.

Migration has often been linked to marginality, as both the cause and the effect of the journey away from a place of origin. This dynamic calls attention to the subjectivity of the individual migrant, and to their particular relationship to place: for this reason the migrant's ‘departure’ from their home may precede the actual journey, marking a detachment from that society which is later articulated in geographical movement. For contemporary Irish poets who have chosen to live abroad, the decision to leave is often framed by careful reflection – a process exemplified by Thomas Kinsella's long poem ‘Phoenix Park’ that immediately preceded his departure for the USA. For women poets there may be less textual deliberation, though attentiveness to the journey itself and to the early days in a new country can yield significant poems as Mairéad Byrne and Vona Groarke have shown in their writing of America.