Abstract

This article explores the ways a salient sectarian community division in Northern Ireland frames the imagination of newcomers and the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. We examine the dominant ethno-national Christian communities and how their actions define the social-spatial landscape and challenges of manoeuvring everyday life in Northern Ireland as an ‘Other’. We argue all newcomers are impacted to some degree by sectarianism in Northern Ireland, adding a further complexified layer to the everyday and institutional racism so prevalent in different parts of the UK and elsewhere. First, we discuss the triangle of nation, gender and ethnicity in the context of Northern Ireland. We do so in order to problematise that in a society where two adversarial communities exist the ‘Other’ is positioned differently to other more cohesive national societies. This complication impacts how the Other is imagined as the persistence of binary communities shapes the way local civil society engages vulnerable newcomers, e.g. in the instance of our research, asylum seekers and refugees. This is followed by an examination of the situation of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland. We do so by contextualising the historical situation of newcomers and the socio-spatial landscape of the city of Belfast. In tandem with this, we discuss the role of NGO’s and civil support organisations in Belfast and contrast these views with the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. This article is based on original empirical material from a study conducted in 2016 on the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees with living in Northern Ireland.

Highlights

  • In recent years, a heightened moral panic (Garland, 2008) has emerged with respect to the so called, ‘refugee crisis’, or as we suggest what is a ‘border crisis,’ a term which indicates a failure of particular nation states or supra-national organisations such as the EU to respond ethically to conflict and the massmobilisation of people from other regions

  • We have discussed the ways in which the Northern Ireland legacy of conflict and sectarianism continually imprints public and political discourse and shapes everyday life, that of asylum seekers and refugees

  • High levels of community and domestic violence, unemployment and poverty have created a legacy of mistrust that constitutes a driving force in generating suspicion of the Other. This intertwined with a layering of different kinds of invisibilities means the position of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland is highly precarious

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Summary

Introduction

A heightened moral panic (Garland, 2008) has emerged with respect to the so called, ‘refugee crisis’, or as we suggest what is a ‘border crisis,’ a term which indicates a failure of particular nation states or supra-national organisations such as the EU to respond ethically to conflict and the massmobilisation of people from other regions. Triggered by different layers of social, economic and political crises, the world has been confronted by a backlash to cosmopolitan and multicultural concepts of plural and diverse societies coupled with a rise of far-right extremist political parties in different countries One expression of this ideological shift to a far-right populist ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak, 2015) is a gendered moral panic in the form of blaming newly arrived male refugees for crime, and in particular, for the physical and sexual harassment of white, Christian women in European public spheres (Vieten, 2018). Key questions exist regarding the imprint and the consequence of this differently anchored, extremely divisive, imagination of community, which does not reflect Anderson’s (1983) often cited notion of the ‘imagined community’ This connects to how the meaning of gender, or intersectional positions, and the imagination of the Other, unfold in different ways. We conclude with some precautious remarks on what that means to the temporary and situated ideological construction of the (gendered) Other, e.g. with respect to the situation of refugees in (Continental) Europe

Imagining the Other
Northern Ireland and the Continuity of Sectarian Tension
Newcomers to Northern Ireland
Researching Difference
Conversations with Civil Society
Findings
Concluding Remarks
Full Text
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