A few years back I went to Dublin with my son. I’d never been to the fair city before, but its emerald embrace had long held me captive. My late wife’s ancestry was rooted in the island of Ireland, and although I knew much of our trip would revolve around the consumption of Guinness, I wanted to better understand the reach of the Irish across the globe and what had led my in-laws to make the journey across the Irish Sea in the 1960s.
Before we had consumed too many pints of black magic, I booked admission to the EPIC Irish Emigration Museum. As I sat watching a film charting the story of Irish migration, I cried. Not simply because of the resilience of the Irish people, though that alone would have been reason enough. It was because history suddenly became personal.
If Jerry and Maureen had not left Ireland, if they had not boarded whatever train, ferry or aircraft carried them towards a different future, my son, seated beside me and obliviously texting his girlfriend, would never have existed. Nor would my beautiful daughter.
It is a strange thing when mortality and migration collide. An entire life can hinge on a family choosing to leave home.
The story of Irish emigration is, in many ways, the answer to another question: why is there an Irish bar in almost every city on Earth?
The causes stretch back centuries. Poverty, political oppression, a lack of economic opportunity and, most famously, the Great Famine of the 1840s drove millions from Ireland’s shores. Families left not because they wanted adventure, but because they wanted survival. They crossed oceans to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Others settled in Britain, where generations of Irish workers helped build the roads, railways and cities of modern Britain.
My own in-laws were products of a different chapter in the Irish story. The famine ships had long disappeared over the horizon, but by the 1960s many Irish families were still leaving for Britain, drawn by plentiful jobs and the promise of a better life. Like countless others, Jerry and Maureen crossed the Irish Sea with little certainty about what awaited them, but everything that followed for their children and grandchildren depended upon that single decision.
Yet unlike many migrant communities who slowly disappeared into the fabric of their adopted countries, the Irish carried Ireland with them. They carried the music, the stories, the humour, the sense of community and, naturally, the pub.
The Irish bar became more than a place to drink. It became an embassy of belonging. A refuge for homesick emigrants. A place where news from home was exchanged, jobs were found, songs were sung and identities preserved.
Over time, these establishments ceased to be solely Irish. They became places where anyone could experience a little of Ireland’s warmth and welcome. That’s why you find them in New York and Sydney, Singapore and Cape Town. Or, to be more exact, pretty much everywhere.
My favourite remains one I stumbled across in Mumbai. Thousands of miles from Dublin, deep in the heart of India, I found myself watching the most quintessentially British of endeavours: West Ham United versus Arsenal. Around me were excited locals and at least two Englishmen, all gathered beneath Irish memorabilia, drinking beer and talking football. It made no logical sense and perfect sense simultaneously.
An Irish bar in Mumbai is not really about Ireland. It is about connection. It is proof that people can leave one shore and somehow bring it with them.
As I left EPIC that day, I realised that the Irish story is not merely one of departure. It is one of arrival. Wherever they landed, they enriched the places they called home without ever entirely forgetting the place they came from.
And perhaps that’s the true reason there is an Irish bar in every metropolis on Earth.
Because the Irish never conquered the world through empire. They conquered it through community.
The Irish do not forget. They carry home with them, and in carrying it, somehow make the whole world feel a little more like home.
© Ian Kirke 2026 & title image
@ Iankirke.bsky.social