In September 2009, Fintan O'Toole wrote an article in the Irish Times in tribute to the late second-generation Irish poet, Michael Donaghy. Born in the Bronx, Donaghy lived most of his life in London and, through his work, epitomized the ambivalent yet undeniable attachment to Ireland experienced by many of the second generation. In the article, for which O'Toole coined the term I have used to title this chapter, he makes the following statement about Irishness:

By inventing the expression ‘Elastic Paddy’, O'Toole provides a clever lexical counterpoint to the derogatory term ‘Plastic Paddy’ which had been used since the 1980s (mainly by Irish-born members of the Ryanair generation) to refer to people of Irish descent whom they perceived as having bogus or dubious claims on Irishness. By so doing, he emphasizes the positive characteristics of second-generation Irishness that Philip Ullah identified in the 1980s, i.e. its resilience and adaptability. Crucially, O'Toole also highlights the way that it operates through time as well as space, a feature of identity formation which echoes the narrative dimension developed in Ricoeur's work and which is particularly relevant to migrant memoir.

Second-generation identities have, for many years, been interrogated through the concept of ‘hybridity’, popularized by Homi Bhabha in the 1990s. When allegiances of class, religion and sexuality are all competing for precedence alongside nationality, one can see why such a concept might be useful in discussing the second-generation condition. However, the extent to which ‘hybridity’ is an appropriate term to describe the identities of the subjects I cover in this chapter is questionable. While it has been useful as a means of challenging uncritical assumptions of ethnic essentialism, its suggestion of an inexorable fusion of cultural traditions tends to obscure the fact that varying degrees of ethnic distinctiveness and allegiance continue to exist within migrant groups according to specific socio-political contexts.