Rebuilding Northern Ireland: the geography of peace

10 years ago was established the Good Friday Agreement (1998) bringing an end to 30 years of civil war and struggle between the 2 communities in Northern-Ireland. This course reviews the changes that occurred from the troubles to the peace process and examines the role of segregation within the communities.

Northern-Ireland during the troubles
The history of Northern-Ireland is the history of a deeply segregated society patch-work. All the aspect of the social life is leading by the ethno-nationalist belonging: work, education, leisure, living space etc. Discrimination, fear and mistrust remained in the Northern-Irish society. The ethno-religious conflict was also linked with a dropping economy. The unemployment rate was the highest in the UK (30%) and no investment came to the North due to a massive lack of infrastructure. Road network, social and public services were totally out of date; most of people lived in deep state of poverty. During 30 years almost all the financial support of London was concentrated on security and military presence. Therefore, Northern-Ireland experienced a massive out-migration until the 80s.



Segregation
Segregation is a process which divides people; it excludes parts of the population from social or economic opportunities. Segregation may be based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion etc. Protestants and catholic have lived like two parallel societies with very restrictive relations between them. In Northern-Ireland, the place or the social environment you come from can have a profound effect on your mobility, your social relation etc. Many Northern-Irish had only few or no contact at all with the other community since they were used to socialise in different places. The function of segregation during the troubles was to provide a feeling of security and solidarity within the community.
Marcuse (1994, 35) argues that walls that divide people in cities represent “power, but they also represent insecurity; domination but at the same time fear; protection but at the same time isolation”

Belfast: the segregated city
In Belfast, segregation is not dated from the troubles but has always been a key feature of the social life. English and Scottish settlers who first inhabited the city have founded Belfast in the 1600s. The Irish Catholics resided outside. In the 19th century Belfast has become the first immigrant-industrial city in Ireland. Many migrants came from the mainland (Great Britain) but a sizeable amount was Catholic.
The social context was quite different than this in the British city like Manchester or Glasgow since the immigrants were not foreigners but came from the same country just outside the city. Yet segregation characterized the social and economic life of the city. Catholics had not the same rights than protestant and remained a marginalized population. The inequalities in Ireland leaded by the British government between the two communities brought about the conflict.
Belfast has become a frontier-city (Kotek, 1999): “a territory for two different dreams” located on fault lines of ethnic, religious or ideological wholes.
In 1921 a the island is split in two parts: 6 counties of the north-east of Ireland would belong to the UK, this division has given rise the violence in Ulster till the end of the century. By the 70s, segregation was concretised by physical barriers between the ethnic enclaves. Walls have been erected, murals have marked the ethnicity of neighbourhoods and paramilitary infrastructures such as checkpoints have totally shaped the urbanscape. Belfast was a fortified city dominated by a military landscape symbol of the civil war.

Peace line between Shankill and Falls in Belfast

The way to peace and the Good Friday Agreement
The relationship between the 2 opposites political parties in Northern-Ireland, the SLDP and Sinn Féin, only started to improve in the 90s. In August 1994, the IRA (the Irish military branch of Sinn Féin) calls a ceasefire, followed later by the Combined Loyalist Commando. The peace process seemed to be started before the bomb-attack of Canary Wharf, London, in 1996 by the IRA.
A historical agreement has at last brought an end to the conflict with a political arrangement between both sides. The political cooperation was going to create an efficient government in Northern-Ireland known as the ‘Home Rule’. The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement has completely reformed the policing body (several military organizations controlled the country before). It negotiated the decomissioning of weapons and reformed totally the criminal justice. But if this Agreement seems to create a stable political framework for Northern-Ireland, some other aspects has been very controversial. 500 prisoners have been released including numbers of terrorists which remains a real shock for the victims. The Agreement did not mentioned any social aspects of people victims of violence. It did not give solutions to resolve the segregation in Northern-Ireland.

Carving a geography of peace
Peace has had a considerable effect in the townscape since the troubles has a very material and visual presence throughout Northern-Ireland. The infrastructure of defence such as checkpoints, watch towers, security bases have been little by little dismantled provoking a dramatically change in the architecture of towns and neighbourhoods. Between 1995 and 2005, 63 military bases were closed and demolished. Normalisation policies, as Ellis and McKay argue (2000, 53), have undoubtedly lifted ‘the psychological strain of living under siege’.
Time to peace is also time to replace all the dated infrastructure by massive investment in water, health, education, public services etc. The British government transferred the military sites to the Northern-Ireland councils. The Maze prison, symbol of the conflict where most of the terrorists and prisoners were in jail, constitute now an important debate for the future of this site. The Maze prison (called H-blocks or Long Kesh as well) occupies a huge site near Lisburn, 15 miles south Belfast. And the opinions are very wide about its near future:
- ‘As far as we (DUP) are concerned every square inch should be razed to the ground’ (DUP 2004).
- ‘It is one of the most important twentieth-century buildings in the world’ (Sinn Féin 2005).
Managers plan to create a mutli-used Sports Stadium with hotel and leisure activities around .

Contemporary geography of Ireland: Success and failure, the Irish story?

L'Irlande une île à la géographie passionnante qui a changé considérablement depuis ces 20 dernières années. Je vous propose un condensé de mon cours de géographie Irlandaise pour comprendre un peu mieux ce qui a transformer l'Île Emeraude.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the political, economic and cultural geography of the island of Ireland over the past 15 years. It considers the transformation of the Republic from “the sick man” of Europe to the arrival of the “Celtic Tiger”. And it questions about the political changes in Northern Ireland ten years after the Belfast agreement (1998). Finally it reviews the place of Ireland in the world and challenges its future after the downturn of th current financial crisis.

I. Reshaping the Irish Republic: the arrival of the Celtic Tiger
The Republic of Ireland has changed considerably over the past decade. Considered as the “sick man” of Europe, the country has been (before the crisis) one of the most attractive place in Europe for foreign investment. This course attempts to explain how this spectacular economic growth occurs and examines the Republic of Ireland before and after this recent development.

Past-Ireland: tradition and poverty
20 years ago, Ireland was one of the poorest country in Europe and deeply conservative due to its peripheral location in Europe. On the Northwestern edge of Europe, the country lived mainly on the (poor) agricultural resources and remained very rural. Poverty affected a large part of the population. Even until the mid-80s, 30% of Irish people were unemployed and 26% of the population were living beneath the poverty threshold. Ireland was at the brink of bankruptcy in 1988. Religion has had also a great influence on the Irish society. Divorced has been legalised in 1985 and homosexuality “decriminalised” only since 1993! And so far abortion remains still illegal. Emigration has been a solution to these economical problems since the middle of the 19th century. Millions and millions of Irish moved out of their home to the eastern part of Ireland, the UK or the USA. But Ireland changed considerably by this time.

The Economic boom
How Ireland has become one of the most prosperous places in Europe and has achieved to attract foreign investment? Several key reasons can explain the Irish success:
- The Irish government has planned a series of national agreement since 1988 for its industrial strategy. Furthermore Ireland remained competitive for its low industrial costs (wage bargaining) in an English-speaking country!
- Ireland had a reliable human capital educated and hard-worker. The social peace due to a strong partnership between employers, trade unions and organisations has been able to attract investment.
- Membership of the EU in 1973. It has brought capital of course but mainly widen the trading partners. Two-third of Irish exports are going now to the EU.
- Neo-liberal strategy with tax exemption and one of the lowest personal income taxes in Europe which enable to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

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The “Celtic Tiger” has shaped a new Ireland
For the first time for two centuries population of Ireland has started to rise in the 60s and this shows that Ireland is at last becoming more attractive after centuries of deprivation! Return migration and new migrants explains this trend. And it’s all the society who has been affected by this tremendous economic boom. Unemployment fell from 18% to 3% and wages have significantly risen. New forms of consumption and way of life have appeared like the increase of car use, properties and recreation thanks to new financial facilities. However it questions about the goodness of this evolution. Obesity rate is up 14% since 1998 and Irishmen are among the most obese in Europe! Furthermore alcohol consumption rose nearly half between 1981 and 2001. The Irish are the most beer-drinker in the World with 155 litres per person per year (UK=98, world average=77). Commuting and fast living is now the common way of life of most of the Irish population. The essential consequence of this sudden economic growth stays the enormous cost of living in the Republic, the second most expensive place to live in the EU after Finland.

Finally the success of the Celtic Tiger in the 90s questions about consumption and “Irishness”. Ireland is not definitely the same than before, moreover this development seems quite uneven and inequalities remain the shame of this success.

II. The dark side of change
Unfortunately the economic growth did not bring only good things in the Republic. This course carries out an exploration of the social and economic patterns of the recent change in Ireland. Has change been consistent and equal in Ireland? What are the current barriers the country is facing in?

Uneven and concentrated development
Globalisation in Ireland didn’t affect the whole island equally even if most parts of the country enjoyed an unprecedented success. The main cities such as Dublin, Cork or Galway have attracted most of the investment thanks to their better infrastructure and services. Even the regional cities throughout the country achieved the role of gateway for the local and national economy. However this success can be balance by the recent economic downturn which question about the stability of this development.

The monocentric dominance of Dublin
More than all other cities in Ireland, Dublin has become the core of the Irish economy concentrating 80% of the political institutions, 70% of company headquarters and almost all the financial services in Ireland. Dublin is also the heart of a huge urban area representing 40% of the population, which entailed massive stressed in its current infrastructure. Roads and public transport networks are now overcrowded because the State didn’t have enough money to improve the old networks. And the development of Dublin has been too fast to maintain and replace a proper infrastructure. Traffic-jam in Dublin has been compared that in India!

Social unevenness
Ireland has just become one of the most unequal countries in the world and the gap between rich and poor is still widening. Gender inequalities are also one of the largest in Europe! The economic growth has brought about a dual welfare system where the no-haves are dependant on voluntary and charity firstly concentrated in the cities. The rest of the population is spatial disadvantaged. Ireland and particularly Dublin is now the most multicultural city in Europe with the lowest rate of indigenous people! It is still an important challenge to integrate the foreign population in a country traditionally mono-ethnic after years of emigration.
The housing market remains always a crucial issue in Ireland despite the huge recent building boom; the country had the lowest number of dwellings in the EU in 1980. It reflects the relatively high average of household size with about 3 persons per accommodation. It is the result of historical lack of shortage and rising house price.

The collapse of the financial market is now a major threat to Ireland. The country has become very dependent of foreign investment and the security of the middle-class rested on the value of property. House price has risen dramatically till an average of €410,000, but economists evaluated that they are overvalued by 25%! In 1999, the construction sector accounted for 25% of the gross national product and employs 13% of the Irish work-force. The current economic downturn is dropping all the Irish economy in a durable crisis.