Ireland: The Land of A Hundred Thousand Welcomes? Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Ireland: An Examination of the Ideological Mechanisms of Exclusion.

Comprehensive and reliable statistics on refugees in Europe are difficult to assemble. It is estimated, however, that between 1987 and 1997 that the number of refugees world-wide increased from 8 - 1 5 million. This means on average that every 21 seconds a refugee is created. In 1938, the American journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote that: “A whole nation o f people, although they come from many nations, wanders the world, homeless except for refuges which may at any moment prove to be temporary.” (Marrus 1985: 3). Unfortunately, these words are still applicable today. Few can deny that there is now a refugee crisis