The representation of the refugee experience in Jane Mitchell’s Run For Your Life and ‘There and Here’

Morrissey, Siobhán. (2025). The representation of the refugee experience in Jane Mitchell’s Run For Your Life and ‘There and Here’. Irish Studies Review, 33(2), 221-235. https://doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2025.2493451

Abstract

Jane Mitchell’s novel, Run For Your Life (2022), and short story, There and Here (2015), document the lives of two young female protagonists as they navigate and endure life in Direct Provision in Ireland. Mitchell’s texts encourage young readers to have empathy for the plight of international protection applicants in Ireland by detailing the systemic problems with the deeply flawed Direct Provision system. My discussion will examine Mitchell’s texts for child and young adult (YA) readers in the context of the Direct Provision system and the rise of far-right, anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment present within contemporary Irish society. I draw upon Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes’ RefugeeCrit framework and Julia Hope’s development of this framework to examine Mitchell’s representation of the refugee experience in Direct Provision and contemporary Irish society, focusing particularly on the details omitted from the texts regarding the protagonists’ nationalities, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, and reasons for their displacement. I argue that to fully evoke empathy in the reader; to avoid a hierarchisation of nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures; and to prevent a homogenisation of refugee experiences, it is vital that within narratives of displacement for children, characters’ nationalities and their cultural backgrounds are specified and the reasons for their displacement provided.

Publisher

Taylor and Francis Group

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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School of Education (Scholarly Articles)