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Dr David Ralph was Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century from 2013 to 2014.
David works on issues related to migration and families. His PhD research at the University of Edinburgh looked at the re-integration experiences of Ireland’s return migrants during the so-called Celtic Tiger years. Following this he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at NIRSA, NUI Maynooth. The project he worked on there looked at the Irish family from a historical perspective, examining what has changed, what remains the same, over the course of the 20th century. His current work looks at the experience of ‘Euro-commuters’ – those whocommute across the EU working in one country during the week, living in theother at weekends. David has also worked as a journalist, and continues to do so on a freelance basis.
Transnational Commuting:
In recent years, as the phenomenon of 'Euro-commuting'grows, it has gained some policy and research attention. Euro-commuters can bedefined as those who live primarily in one European country and work primarily in another. As a group, they raise many questions, chief among them being why choose this as a way of life? Issues around family life also need interrogating. How, for instance, is intimate life negotiated when one of the partners in a couple relationship lives in another European country much of the time? Where children are involved, how does this affect parent-child relations? And what are the consequences for gender relations between heterosexual couples in such households?
This project focuses on the case of Euro-commuter households whose primary centre of interest is the Republic of Ireland, and seeks to answer the above questions. It is being carried out in the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century (ISS21) at University College Cork, and is funded by a Marie Curie Fellowship.
