Living Apart in Belfast: Residential Segregation in a Context of Ethnic Conflict

Author(s): Paul Doherty and Michael Poole
Document Type: Chapter
Year: 2000
Title of Publication: Ethnicity and Housing
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Place of Publication: Oxford
ISBN: 1 85972 596 1
Pgs: 179-189
Subject Area(s): Demography


Background to the Research

  • A major part of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland has taken place on the streets of Belfast.
  • A spatial outcome of this struggle is the residential segregation of Protestants and Catholics that exists in much of the city today.
  • This paper provides an historical analysis, using census data from 1871 to 1991, and a spatial perspective on the variation in segregation levels in Belfast.

Research Approach

  • The authors draw on census data from 1871 to 1991 in order to measure the extent of religious segregation within Belfast and to provide a spatial perspective on the variation in segregation levels within the contemporary urban area. The authors analysed the data using the dissimilarity index D which measures the unevenness of segregation, where D has a value of zero this means a perfectly even distribution of population, and 100 indicates a very uneven distribution.

Main Findings

1871-1891

  • During this period the city population increased by 46.7%, growth was greater for Protestants than Catholics, the D values were low but rising from 13.2 to 21.6.

1901-1971

  • The population of the County Borough rose from 349,180 in 1901 to 443,671 in 1951, falling to 362,082 in 1971. The D values show a constant level from 1901 to 1911, increasing steeply by 10 percentage points between 1911 and 1926 (due to the Troubles of 1920-23 which related to the partition of Ireland). Between 1926 and 1951, D values levelled and declined from 1951 to 1971.

1971-1991

  • Both the 1971 and 1981 censuses were the subjects of politically motivated campaigns to encourage non-response. During the period 1971-1991, the Urban Area population fell by 17.2%, due to decentralisation of housing and population; the intense urban violence of the 1970s was accompanied by a steep decline in population numbers.
  • In 1971 the D value based on 15 wards is 44.9 and between 1971 and 1981 it is estimated that in the Greater Belfast area between 8,000 and 15,000 families were forced to move home (between 6.6 and 11.8 per cent of the urban population). The current D value is 60.2 for the Urban Area as a whole.

Segregation variation within the City

  • Of the ten subdivisions of the Urban Area of Belfast, only Belfast West has a Catholic majority and the other subdivisions vary in the size of their Protestant majorities. The majority is very high in Belfast East and the neighbouring area of Castlereagh.
  • The unweighted average D value for the Belfast LGD subdivisions is 43.7 - which is almost ten percentage points lower than the corresponding suburban average of 53.3.

Conclusions

  • The evidence suggests that Belfast has been segregated since its beginnings, and once segregated areas develop they tend to remain and intensify.
  • Segregation in Belfast is a direct spatial outcome of violence, with upsurges in violence being followed by increased segregation. In periods of peace, segregation falls back but not to its previous level.
  • The highest levels of segregation are found in public sector housing, and the Urban Area new-build developments in the 1980s were almost entirely segregated.
  • Contemporary Belfast has the highest segregation levels since the city was founded, and the history of the last century showed that it took 25 to 30 years before a decline in segregation levels was detectable.
 

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