Experience, Identity & Epistemic Injustice within Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries

How are the identities of women shaped by religious disciplinary processes in Magdalene laundries and how do women re-engage with their sense of self after leaving the institutions? This monograph situates these questions within the current cultural climate in which the institutions now sit, considering how they fit into Ireland's present as well as its past.

This book represents the first secondary analysis to be conducted of 81 oral history interviews recorded by Justice for Magdalenes, as part of the Irish Research Council-Funded project, 'Magdalene Institutions: Recording an Archival and Oral History'. These were taken with women formerly incarcerated in these institutions, as well as others associated with this history.

Grounded in qualitative analysis of this archive, the book is structured around the voices and words of survivors themselves. With a strong focus on how the experience of being incarcerated in a Magdalene laundry impacted on the gendered religious selves of the women, this book tracks the process of entering, working in, and leaving a laundry, explored through the lens of epistemic injustice.