© Irish Journal of Sociology. In this article, I consider some of the overlaps and distinctions between the uses of the term diaspora in socialleultural theory and its circulation in the specific socio-political site of the Republic of Ireland in the I990s and early 2000s. I argue that diaspora can be seen both as mediating Irish national culture in an increasingly globalised world and as a reassuring site of cultural continuity. A number of sources are used to argue that discourses of the Irish diaspora are both complicit with agendas of global capital and potentially resistant to these. While the recent use of diaspora as a heuristic devise for rethinking contemporary belonging should not be embraced uncritically this term opens up new spaces within which the often emotive politics of transnational and transgenerational affiliation and belonging can be addressed.