About Eimear Kearins
Dia Dhaoibh ! My name is Eimear Kearins and I'm an undergraduate Economics and Politics student at Trinity College Dublin.
My research focuses on the effects economics and trade has on minority languages. As a lover and speaker of the Irish language, I'm delving deeper in the impact trade with Britain had on the language's decline particularly during the 19th century.
I feel really privileged to be a part of the Laidlaw community, and I'm really looking forward to connecting with everyone on this Network!
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Fascinating topic! How would you control for the possibility that more English speakers (traders) would migrate to better connected coastal burrows in Ireland? Idk if this would show up as "English speakers" in the statistics? (But does not necessarily indicate a change in language of the native population). Adding fixed effects would perhaps control for some spatial heterogeneity between port and rural regions. Perhaps you could locate where the language was outlawed first, and use this variation to estimate some causal relation (Difference in Difference?). You'll figure it out. Best of luck!
I am looking forward to reading your paper.
J
Thanks so much for your comment Julian!
You make some really interesting points that really show the difficulties in tracking language development due to all its innate intricacies. In terms of migration, I am mainly focusing on migration abroad as a fixed factor, as it has been seen that when Irish migrated from rural to urban areas within the country, Irish-speaking neighbourhoods were formed in the urban centres. I am basing my research mainly on a previous study looking at the Irish speaking population in each of the decennial cohorts of the 1881 census, which (I'm hoping!) will account for the loss of Irish from one generation to the next that may have occurred due to rural to urban migration.
l have the project well underway now and have added county fixed effects in the regression analysis to account for all the other variables that have definitely also contributed to the decline in the language like the concentration of national schools in the areas (Irish was outlawed in the nationwide system), migration levels, as well as religious factors, which interestingly enough, also played a large role in language in Ireland at the time!
I actually hadn't considered using a DID model, so thank you for that suggestion.
I read your project proposal and the topic is really fascinating, and extremely important- I'm really looking forward to reading what you find!
All the best,
Eimear