Session "Shifting mobilities in times of crisis: exploring new rural and island migration flows in a disorderly world" ---------- Human diversity linked to foreign immigration and other international mobilities is increasingly relevant in various places of Ireland (Creighton et al., 2022). During the 2000s, foreign immigration meant unprecedented change in demographic terms, particularly in urban and periurban areas (e.g., O Dhuibir et al., 2011). According to the Census, ‘Non-Irish nationals’ rose from 5.2% in 2002 to 13.8% in 2022 (CSO, 2022), and during recent years a wider variety of places in Ireland are hosting foreign immigrants, including villages (e.g., Woods, 2018). This new rural immigration has occurred in rural areas where various challenges or crises were already taking places, including housing problems, questioned spatial planning, or BREXIT (Keaveney, 2009; Gkartzios & Shucksmith, 2015; Sirr, 2019; Davenport, 2022). This paper offers an overview of recent international immigration in small villages of this Atlantic Island, focusing on the perceptions of population change and sustainability among a variety of residents in hamlets of County Cavan and County Leitrim. These counties belong both to the Northern and Western Region of the Republic of Ireland (RoI) and to the so-called Border Region of the RoI that is adjacent to Northern Ireland (UK). This paper is mainly based on semi-structured interviews to various informants as well as documental, statistical, cartographic, and photographic work. Concretely, in 2018 and 2022 fieldwork was carried out in several Electoral Divisions with fewer than 500 inhabitants of County Cavan and County Leitrim. In addition, complementary fieldwork was carried out in other parts of Ireland, including Dublin (e.g. interviewing informants from Ireland-wide organisations). This paper offers insights from a research visit in 2022 to Dublin City University, DCU, that was funded by the European Consortium for Innovative Universities, ECIU, as well as is also built upon the HAMLETS project on Immigration and Sustainable Development in Small Villages (RECERCAIXA, 2017-2020; see: https://ods.cat/en/hamlets-immigration-and-sustainable-development-in-small-villages/ ).