| Traditionally known as a country of poverty, famine and Catholicism, Ireland has developed into "the Celtic Tiger" after its entry into the European Union which is reputed for its fast growing economy and open society. Its rapid economic take-off has led to the shortage of labor force, and has attracted a large number of immigrants coming to Ireland, including European citizens with legal work permits, immigrants outside EU, asylum seekers and refugees. And Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia have become the major exporters of these immigrants. For the first time in history, Ireland has been transformed from an emigration country into an immigration country. And Among the immigrants, women have distinctly surpassed men in number, becoming an emergent figure in Irish contemporary cinema. As a new focus of Irish cinema studies, immigrant women have moved from the periphery to the center of the cinematic stage. And cinema, being an art form capable of reflecting the social reality, has consequently become a significant part of Irish cultural studies.The thesis tries to interrogate the representation of immigrant women in contemporary Irish films to reflect the Irish society's attitudes towards them and further analyzes the reasons behind these representations. Based on the concept of the construction of woman identity put forward by Teresa de Lauretis, the thesis proposes an analysis framework consisting of three levels:personal, interpersonal and social. Three films featuring immigrant women from different nations are selected and analyzed on the three levels. The result obtained is that although these immigrant women are all regarded as the "Other", live and work in the lower-class of Irish society, they demonstrate a hierarchy in terms of female subjectivity and integration level, two important indicators of Irish attitudes towards them. And it is believed in the thesis that the reasons behind this hierarchy are rooted in aspects of history, culture, religion, and ideology and so forth. |
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