ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/02/020229-21 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI:10.1080/13604810220000111 9 CITY, VOL. 6, NO. 2, 2002 At the heart of the Hibernian post-metropolis Spatial narratives of ethnic minorities and diasporic communities in a changing city Ronit Lentin This article begins by positing some theoretical and methodological issues in relation to ‘re- mapping’ Dublin’s changing ethnic landscape from the viewpoint of its racialized ‘others’. ‘Mapping’ here is an attempt to chart imaginary moments—sketched by racialized members—of the city as human landscape, ever changing to accommodate and encapsulate their shifting spatial needs and desires. The article posits ‘minority discourse’ as a methodological route and historicizes the racialization of the city through the transition from the gaze of ‘the Jew Bloom’, Joyce’s Hibernian metropolitan other, to the postmetropolis gaze of the ‘new Dubliners’. The article argues that no re-mapping project can be undertaken without considering racial harassment and racialization processes, and juxtaposes racialized ethnic populations and Ireland’s emerging multiculturalism, based, as I argue, on a degree of disavowal, and, rather than on a ‘politics of recognition’, on the more appropriate ‘politics of interrogation’. The article concludes with a reflection on some methodological issues involved in mapping the city from the viewpoint of its racialized minorities. “And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant . . .” (Joyce, 1960, p. 432) I n 2002 it is easily discernible that Dublin is in a process of change. Comprising one-third of the population of Ireland, Dublin is predicted to grow to 2.4 million by 2020 (McDonald, 2001). With swelling sub- urbs, and tens of thousands commuting into Dublin each day, causing serious trans- port problems (Burns, 2001, p. 11), Dublin is at once an internal rural-to-urban migra- tion destination, a tourist centre and one of Europe’s prominent cultural capitals, where the effects of Ireland’s economic boom are evident in rapid re-building and changing consumer patterns—such as packed shops and restaurants—but also in the visible side effects of the underbelly of the ‘Celtic tiger’ economy, such as drugs, homelessness and begging. One visible change, frequently if simplis- tically and glibly noted by politicians, media and academics, is the turning of Dublin from the capital of a nation of emigrants to a centre of in-migration, and the city’s ensuing, and visible, multi- ethnicity. Part of the in-migration flow, albeit a minor part, is the increase, in the late 1990s, in the number of asylum applications, seen by government and media as caused by the pull factors of Ireland’s booming economy and ‘generous’ welfare system. Such political and media