Background to the Research

• The desire of ethnic groups to live apart poses a major challenge to peace building in Northern Ireland. Fear, misunderstanding and hostility mark the relationship between many communities and this is especially true of areas, such as Belfast, that have experienced the most violence. More understanding of the extent and nature of the animosity between communities is necessary for the establishment of normal social life. This article explores the daily experiences of divided communities living along peacelines in Belfast.
  

Research Approach

• A total of 1,200 households within 10 communities in Belfast were surveyed. These were divided into the 5 interface areas - where Catholic and Protestant communities live beside each other but separately - Ardoyne/Upper Ardoyne; Lenadoon/Suffolk; Oldpark/Manor Street; Short Strand/Ballymacarrett, and Whitewell/White City.
  

Main Findings

Segregated Communities

• The creation and ongoing protection of ethnic enclaves has been a key feature of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Local areas became, and continue to be, the physical and spacial battlefields of the ideological conflict.
• The process of residential ethnic segregation that had been a feature of housing in Belfast since the 1900s was assisted by the political conflict, so much so that by 1972, only 23% of households were resident in streets where there was an ethnic mix (where Protestants and Catholics formed at least 10% of each other's households). By 1991, 68.4% of the Belfast population lived in segregated areas.
• Between 1969 and 1999, 14 'peacelines' were built in Belfast in order to attempt to minimise violence, to restrict mobility and to help the security forces to manage violence.
• Between 1971 and 1973, around 1,200 families were forced to leave their homes and in 1973 the majority of the 3,000 families squatting in Housing Executive properties were victims of intimidation. Since the 1994 ceasefires about 500 households have moved due to intimidation.
• In areas such as Ballysillan, Ardoyne, Duncairn, Suffolk and the Lower Falls in the period 1971-1974 at least 15% of the total population of each community migrated outward due to intimidation and violence.

The Five Interface Communities

• Each community is separated by a peaceline or main road and high levels of violence, including stone throwing, rioting and attacks on individuals continue despite the ceasefires.
• Less than 15% of Protestants and 18% of Catholics will shop in areas dominated by the 'other' religion. Over 90% of those surveyed will not use a doctor of the opposite religion.
• Public leisure facilities in areas dominated by the other religion are used by less than one in five people. Over 70% will not enter areas dominated by the other religion.
• In some cases people will travel up to 10 kilometers to access facilities, despite similar facilities being as close as half a kilometer from their homes. Many of those surveyed reported fear of the other community as the reason why they would not use nearby facilities.
• The movement of people in interface areas is often informed by individual and communal experiences of violence and attack. These memories are a potent regulator of mobility, encouraging avoidance of areas and perpetuating ethnic tensions.
• There is a high level of victimhood within each community, this is due to the effect of violence and the need for each community to understand their victimhood in terms of real and perceived threats from the other ethnic community.

Conclusions

• Despite the peace process, many communities still experience violence and fear and avoid areas dominated by the other religion. The ways in which each community views itself and represents itself to others remains tied to a link between ethnic allegiance and communal separation. The ability to reconstruct identity and political meaning is inhibited by political actors who use fear in order to promote their political agenda.
• Continued disputes over territory demonstrate the ability of territorial divisions to hamper and threaten the process of constitutional change. The current instability exposes the limitations of the peace process to alter these types of conflicts.
• There is a need to show how depictions of identity only serve to reproduce monolithic nationalist depictions that in turn are reinforced by ethnosectarian interpretation of the communal self.