"Living Belongside Each Other": A Case Study in the Changing Politics of Memory and Collective Identity in Post-Troubles Northern Ireland

While 2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which officially ended the violent conflict known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British territory still struggles with reconciliation. The two largest communities, Irish Catholics and British Protestants, are still heavily divided: physically by segregation and ideologically by opposing constructions of group identity rooted in ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. Political rhetoric and narratives of collective memory often reify these divisions, as evidenced by the talking points of local political parties since the collapse of the power-sharing government. Economic issues such as rising welfare costs and youth unemployment, as well as Brexit negotiations over the border with the Republic of Ireland, add further complications. Yet my ethnographic research among young Protestant adults reveals how constructions of group identity are changing as the peace process continues. Analysis highlights how young Protestants draw on personal experiences from the last decade of the Troubles to critique their community’s narratives of collective memory, and to adapt and transform constructions of Protestant group identity that so heavily reference “the past.” In doing so, some young adults identify with the same ethnopolitical and religious divisions as their parents, while others emphasize a regional Northern Irish identity or a transnational cosmopolitanism. To explore this change, my case study compares two Protestants, a 30-year-old woman from urban Belfast and a 29-year-old man from rural Armagh, arguing that young people’s ability to transform divisive group identities makes them a key component of long-term reconciliation and peacemaking.