Abstract: This essay examines the disjunctive temporality of Irish globalization, arguing that past formations of Irish society inhere within, and complicate, the racialization of Irish subjects in the present. It uses Anne Enright’s 2015 novel The Green Road to demonstrate the many ways in which racial difference is made to signify in an Ireland whose emergence as a global economic center during the Celtic Tiger has compelled a re-examination of the nationalist historiographic supports on which prior theories of racial difference were proffered, but which are in need of revision in the global moment.

Keywords: postcolonialism, neoliberalism, race, migrancy, political asylum