'DWELLING IN DISPLACEMENT' Meanings of 'community' and sense of community for two generations of Irish people living in North-West London

This paper is a successor to an earlier one (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195-213, 2001) which described the development of a 'community saved' among first-generation Irish immigrants in North-West London, UK. A distinct and healthenhancing 'sense' of community founded on mutual helping networks, a belief in family ties, the importance of paid work and the Roman Catholic Church was identified within this Irish immigrant group. For the second generation or London Irish, upon whom this paper focuses, 'community' and 'sense' of community have meanings which differ significantly from those of their first-generation forebears. The London Irish describe the anonymity they experience within their contemporary urban 'home' and yearn, instead, for an idyllic but mythical 'homeland'-the rural Ireland of long ago. Disparities between the two groups yield insights into those elements which truly shape experience of 'community' and 'sense' of community and which can only be understood within the conceptual, geographical and intellectual boundaries of what has been called the 'diasporic space'.