Irish abroad

I may very well have ignored the call to home if I hadn’t been robbed at knifepoint in Brazil

A Cork author on the incident that spurred him to leave behind the life he loved to return with his family to Ireland

Irish in El Salvador: A ‘jaw-dropping’ adjustment

We hear from some of the last Irish lords and a jockey making waves in Australia

My mum dangles the question like a golden carrot: ‘You’ll never guess who’s died’

Calling her Irish mammy from London feels like playing a morbid round of Guess Who for this Dubliner

Things aren’t better in Australia than in Ireland, but they are easier

I don’t want to tell anyone that things are better here than they are at home, but they are easier

‘A great way of seeing a new city is to become embroiled in its bureaucracy’

I work in climate change, so preparing irrefutable evidence of the facts, expecting swift action and being constantly disappointed is my bread and butter

‘A haon, a dó, a trois’: How a tiny French village fell in love with Irish dancing

There’s a corner of Préty, in eastern rural France, that seems it will be forever Ireland as local residents gather every week for a jig or two

‘Last time I tried to park a car in Dublin, I couldn’t get over it’

Wild Geese: Progression with BNY and frequent travelling to the US led Alan Flanagan and his family to move to New Jersey in 2016

Irishwoman in El Salvador: I’m 60 and moved halfway around the world. Everything is different

Life in El Salvador: ‘I’ve climbed a volcano and used Bitcoin. I live with the roar of motorbikes and ire-filled preachers’

My mother’s blanket has travelled the world with me, along with her thoughts and dreams

She was a very good knitter, and wool was once not only a way to inflict emotional pain on the young of Ireland, but a necessity wrought by the exigencies of the times

Crafting jewellery in a country where it is considered rude to show your wealth

Wild Geese: Michael O'Dwyer, Stockholm

Ballrooms of romance: ‘I wasn’t the greatest dancer but when we danced together it was like it was meant to be’

Before dating apps, in Ireland and for the Irish diaspora in Britain, many’s the courtship that played out to the rhythm of a dance hall

If you worked in the UK there is an opportunity to boost your pension

Deadline looms on UK offer to buy back up to 17 years of national insurance contributions to qualify for or improve your UK state pension

The word ‘now’ is a weapon that Irish people wield as needed. But Australians use it differently

Like us, Australians sometimes talk in a way that is a few feet to the left or right of what they are literally saying

I’ve worked in 60 countries – here is what people have said to me about Ireland

Belgian colleagues kindly explained the basics of how modern societies work; I adhered to a rule of never engaging Americans on Irish politics

An Irish jockey in Australia: ‘The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to go home’

Wild Geese: Johnny Allen, Australia

A Kildare man in London: ‘The British view colonisation like their parents’ sex life – they know it happened, but prefer not to know details'

In the England I live in, I cling on to my Irishness more tightly than I might otherwise

Irish in Oxford: ‘I felt alienated from the very start’

We hear from an Irish man who moved to Singapore in his 50s and a Cork photographer in Copenhagen

The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it

Yet it is a crucial component of the Irish emigrant toolkit. It’s so cheering to hear my niece tell me, scandalised, that her baby brother farted in the bath

An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsider. I felt alienated from the very start

The good, the bad and the ugly parts of studying English through Irish eyes at Oxford

Irishman in Singapore: I wondered if I was foolish to emigrate in my 50s. But I feel more alive than ever

Irish professionals are highly regarded in Singapore. And I had not realised that experience, and the wisdom that comes with it, is highly valued in Asian culture

‘Rome is a fantastic city to live in, but it’s very complicated. It’s a mess of a place. Madrid is clean. Everything works’

Wild Geese: Barry Haughian works for Ukrainian telco Intellias in the Spanish capital

Somebody broke in and stole our Christmas gifts – but I felt a sense of gratitude

Even as we picked our mostly valueless property up, I marvelled at the fact that in Canberra, unlike in Dublin, you get storage as standard. Lots of it

An Irish flight attendant’s top travel tips on how to avoid stress on your next trip

New year, new adventures, same old lack of preparation? Here are my five simple yet effective tricks that can transform your travel experience from chaotic to calm

‘I landed in Addis Ababa for a challenge that blended my love of running with a commitment to those in need’

In the 40th anniversary year of Live Aid, New York-based Bray man Mark O’Toole explains what motivated him to do the Great Ethiopian Run

‘Copenhagen is like Disneyland compared to Munich: moving here immediately resonated with me’

Wild Geese: Caroline Ryan, Copenhagen

‘I stepped through a door and emerged as a US citizen’

With a fierce drive to prove myself, I was the underdog from Milltown determined to outwork everyone in the room

An Irish designer making waves in sustainable fashion in Portugal

Wild Geese: Molly Walters, Lisbon

New Year’s in Australia: When you leave home to live abroad, you take any traditions you can feasibly translate

I don’t really know what a new year in Australia might hold. It has a vast unfamiliarity to me that country itself still does

Undocumented Irish still fighting for legal status in US as Donald Trump promises new crackdown

Former congressman Bruce Morrison says Irish who overstayed holiday visa waivers lose right to a defence if new president takes aggressive approach on illegal immigration

Megan Nolan: A conversation with a man in his late 30s made clear the realities of this new era in my dating life

Family, career, friends or adventure? Only the truly wealthy can attempt to have a bit of everything

An Irishwoman sailing around the world: ‘This paradise has just seven residents and two dogs’

Dubliner Kate Ashe-Leonard left Ireland in 2017 to live with her partner in London. In 2018, they began their adventure to sail around the world

Older Irish people in London: ‘It is so important to have something to get people out of the house. It breaks down the loneliness’

The networks of ‘joy and friendship’ helping the older Irish community in London

‘The Christmas swim is going to be a lot nicer’: Young Irish expats embrace their first Australian Christmas

How do the Irish in Melbourne feel about spending their first festive season Down Under?

The top five most read Abroad stories of the year

The challenges of returning to Ireland from Singapore, the intensity of college sport in the US and how to get in flight attendants’ bad books

A critic of this column thinks there’s too much negativity about Ireland, not enough about Australia’s beaches

That reader should know that, even though I live 3½ hours from the coast, I am taking her concerns on board

‘In Ireland we have lost some the human connection in business dealings. In Uganda it is deeply valued’

Wild Geese: Living and working in Uganda, Declan Peppard ‘truly misses’ St Anne’s Park in Dublin

An Irishman in Basque Country: ‘My first encounter with a tortilla came out of necessity. Now I order one out of desire’

From my experience of them in Ireland I expected a bland flavour. How wrong I was

From an Irish workhouse to Australia – the story of the Famine orphan girls

Every year descendants of the thousands of orphaned Irish teenage girls sent to Australia during the Great Famine gather in Melbourne to remember them

Australia offers me a more dignified life than the one I had in Ireland. It’s not unpatriotic to say so

Like many emigrants, the reality is that I am more invested in Ireland than the country I have moved to

‘Trades are very well paid here compared to anywhere else in the world I have been’

Wild Geese: Chris Kidney is a carpenter in Melbourne, Australia

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