Partitioned identities? Everyday national distinctions inNorthernIreland and theIrish state

Abstract

How does political structure affect ethno‐national distinction? Partitioned societies are a good test case where we can see the effects of changed socio‐political circumstances on historically inherited distinction. This article takes nominally identical distinctions of nationality and religion with common historical roots and shows how they are differentially understood in two polities partitioned in 1920: Northern Ireland, a devolved region of the United Kingdom, and the Irish state. Using a data base of interviews with over 220 respondents, of which 75 in Northern Ireland, conducted between 2003 and 2006, it shows how complex, potentially totalising and exclusive ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethno‐national’ divisions are built up from simpler and more permeable distinctions. Respondents interrelate the same elements into a loosely‐knit symbolic structure – different in each jurisdiction – which frames expectations and discourse, and which is associated with different logics of national discourse, one focussing on personal orientation, the other on group belonging. The resultant ‘ethno‐national’ distinctions function differently North and South.

‘Our wee country’: national identity, golf and ‘Ireland’

“…Some intra-variety exists within these groups of course, along social class lines of which McIlroy is one example. He declares himself a Catholic more comfortable with British culture owing to his father's identity but, in general, most inhabitants take the Protestant/Catholic and Irish/British distinctions as a form of self-positioning (Todd 2015;ARK 2017). While religion and identity are deeply connected in NI, sport, neighbourhood affiliation and educational background also play a significant role in identity and divisions.…”

“…While religion and identity are deeply connected in NI, sport, neighbourhood affiliation and educational background also play a significant role in identity and divisions. For instance, Todd (2015) found that identity-as-orientationencompassing a value perspective, assumptions and expectationsis prevalent in NI where people are guarded in their use of the national 'we', and much more likely to speak of 'I'. For many Northerners then, national identity is much more a project or orientation than a shared collective feeling, not least because of the unstable Around the time of the vote, he commented 'if I'm Northern Irish, what's better?...To be part of the UK and not be in the EU?…”

The politics of identity change and conflict: An agenda for research

“…So too in the Irish case, we see multiple informal criteria of being Irish – from place of birth and socialization through to associational practices and interactive norms – with meaning and reference intertwined. These are popularly understood in variable geometry form such that all criteria are relevant, some sub-set of them is necessary, but which and how many are sufficient for acceptance of a claim to be Irish is very much a matter of context and negotiation (Todd, 2015: 30).…”

“…The conventional rules, the ‘grammars of nationality’ as Todd (2015: 27–31) has called them, are not simply official categorizations. They are made in social practice, with multiple areas of dispute, uncertainty, and discretion of interpretation.…”

Paradoxes of identity change: Integrating macro, meso, and micro research on identity in conflict processes

“…Political science has looked at how ethnic and national landscapes are remapped in contentious politics (see for example Beissinger, 2002; Brubaker, 2002; Coakley, 2012; McAdam et al, 2001). But there are also ways of reinterpreting the meanings of nationality and ethnicity that make boundaries more or less exclusivist, more or less permeable, more or less salient; this does not simply shift categorical schema but reinterprets their meaning (Hoewer, 2014; Lamont and Mizrachi, 2011; Mitchell and Ganiel, 2011; Shenhav, 2006; Todd, 2015). Moreover, the Self/Other opposition often relies on a Western metaphysical conception of actors as independent and discreet entities, rather than as correlated and co-embedded parts of an organic whole, constituted by their interrelationship (Ling, 2013; Qin, 2016).…”