Abstract
This article explores how young people reimagine social relations and negotiate difference within a deeply divided context in a period of increasing national contention. It explores if and how they combine an ethno-national situatedness and wider shared horizons. It uses a ‘situated cosmopolitan’ frame as a heuristic and shows how the case illustrates the difficulty of this stance. The article reports on research that engaged with 52 young participants in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland between 2014 and 2022. Using interviews, focus groups and a deliberative café method, we analyse how they qualify national particularism to make divisions less important. We argue that ‘friendly conversation’ is a key mechanism by which shared horizons are constructed by young people, who reframe their political choices and constitutional preferences in universalist ways, open to understanding and reflection. Our study has important political implications. We show the demonstrable appetite among young people to explore diversity and division, the need to initiate deliberative arenas for informal friendly conversations among the young, and to reframe divisive national and constitutional debate in terms of the shared values that we have analysed.
Introduction
This article explores how young people reimagine social relations in the deeply divided context of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. How young people negotiate their environments, changing as well as reproducing their ascribed identities, community belonging and norms, is a topic of increasing interest which can be analysed, variously, with concepts of reflexivity, identity change, boundary negotiation, hyperdiversity and everyday peace (in this journal, see Elster, 2020; Every Day Peace and Youth, 2015; Rosbrook-Thompson, 2021; Schilling et al., 2019). The questions are pressing in a period of national contention, and we explore them in the context of a deeply nationally and communally divided place – the island of Ireland, where power/meaning are entwined and a focus on particular belonging at once traps in opposition as well as enables the emergence of their ‘own voice’. We ask whether young people affirm ‘their own’ group identity in a form of nationalism, reject group identities in a classic cosmopolitan perspective, or find other ways to interrelate the universal and the particular through dialogue and deliberation.
Cosmopolitanism is classically understood as rendering ethnic and national boundaries irrelevant by moving up to the global-human level of identification (Held, 2003; Nussbaum, 1994; Skrbis et al., 2004). In ethnically divided societies it takes the form of a superordinate identity that supersedes existing bloc identities and decries ‘narrow nationalisms’. It is also a mode of imposing global power on singular and subjected voices – denying their experience, replacing existing divisions with a cosmopolitan vs tribalist opposition that is highly class weighted (Calhoun, 2002) and failing to recognise the values – of self-determination and rights – with which nationalism was historically associated and which some forms of liberal nationalism still espouse. 1
And yet the cosmopolitan vision retains an appeal because of its normative directionality. Recent work has theorised situated (or ‘rooted’ or ‘everyday’ or ‘ordinary’) cosmopolitanism as a way to understand the interrelation of situatedness and sharedness in a world of power imbalance and cultural inequality and opposition. For Mignolo (2019), it promotes dialogue between civilisations and worldviews ‘based on a fundamental principle that changes the horizon of life and vision of the future’. It has been understood as incorporating membership in local communities while espousing values of openness, tolerance, as well as ‘the transcendence of ethnic difference [and] moral responsibility for the other’ (Werbner, 2008, p. 15; also see Appiah, 1997; Lamont, 2023). It is ‘an ethical horizon – an aspirational outlook and mode of practice’ (Werbner, 2019, p. 143) that coexists with rather than replaces local and national situatedness and modifies it by its openness towards the other (Cicchelli, 2019; Szerszynski & Urry, 2002). A wide range of research has shown how young people move towards such a stance (Cicchelli & Octobre, 2019; Lamont, 2023; Werbner, 2019; Zilberstein et al., 2023). The value of this conceptualisation is put in question in nationally divided places where the opposition of particular identities and traditions may make situated cosmopolitanism a more difficult option than simple cosmopolitan post-nationalism, or plural accommodation of national difference or fluid and normless hyperdiversity (but see Brewer et al., 2018). When young people are faced with these options, how do they respond?
To address these questions, we draw on primary qualitative data generated between 2014 and 2022 across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland which lets young people speak for themselves. We engaged with 52 young people born since 1989 after the end of the Cold War and growing up within a new period of peace and settlement in Northern Ireland. 2 We accessed the socio-political and cultural repertoires they use to negotiate contentious political legacies through focus groups, in-depth loosely structured interviews and a deliberative café (an innovative, grassroots form of deliberation about a topic of contention – in this research, migration – where working-class youth North and South, Protestant and Catholic, migrant and non-migrant, engaged in discussion informed by a wide range of information and Q/A sessions with experts). The research explored their responses to different sorts of divisions: ethno-national within Northern Ireland; state-oriented differences between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and differences arising from migration. It took place in the context of past conflict and present divisions in Northern Ireland, and after Brexit in 2016, an increasing discussion in both parts of the island of potential constitutional change towards Irish unity.
We show a widespread process of ‘opening’ to the other that encompasses rather than bypasses divisive national issues and is expressed through personalised narratives. We found that ‘friendly conversation’ is a key mechanism by which oppositions are negotiated, and convergent cosmopolitan horizons are constructed. While sustained egalitarian contact (Hewstone & Swart, 2011) provides occasions for such conversations, we found that they also existed in circumstances where contact is short term, infrequent, remembered, or retold, and that informal deliberative events provide a good occasion for such conversations. We illustrate how convergent horizons allow negotiation of divisive political issues, although further research is needed on the extent and long-term impact of cosmopolitan perspectives.
After situating our research in the theoretical literature on cosmopolitan perspectives and young people and outlining our research design and methods, we present our broad findings drawn from exemplary types of discourse across our data set. We conclude by discussing the significance of the findings, raise new questions for further research and suggest policy implications.
Cosmopolitan perspectives and young people
Cosmopolitanism is classically seen as a rejection of particularist nationalisms, replacing them with global identifications and universalist values (Held, 2003; Nussbaum, 1994). But this fails to recognise how particular identities become important in struggles against unjust metropolitan power and seems to limit cosmopolitan consciousness to mobile global elites. Recent approaches have analysed cosmopolitanisation as an everyday process which leaves room for rooted social identities. 3 For example, Appiah (2006, p. xv) summarises cosmopolitanism as ‘universality plus difference’ and Cicchelli (2019, p. xvii) explores how ‘otherness and sameness, plurality and universality, openness and closure are handled by individuals, groups, and institutions’. But if ‘rooted’ social identities are oppositionally constructed, as are national identities in deeply divided places, then they are not assimilable within shared universalist premises. Just how far the national is resistant to universal norms needs to be explored empirically.
Important recent research shows how some young people move towards a situated cosmopolitan stance (Werbner, 2019). Theoretical work on youth and everyday peace sees young people as ‘organic globalizers’ where ‘everyday life is a local/global space’ (Berents & McEvoy-Levy, 2015). The young are defined here conjuncturally rather than in generational terms (Pina-Cabral & Theodossopoulos, 2022) in terms of their positioning: within global flows (leisure, social media, tech, education and exchange) making them particularly open to other cultural norms and national differences (Cicchelli & Octobre, 2019); their precarity – economic, climate, health – which provides a distinctive context disrupting settled assumptions (Schilling et al., 2019; for variation with class Liang, 2024; Zilberstein et al., 2023); and their tendency to eschew party politics, engaging instead in social movements, single-issue protests and online petitions which makes them particularly open to cross-national diffusion of themes and ideas (Flesher Fominaya, 2015; Grasso & Giugni, 2022). Yet the success of this ‘cosmopolitanisation’ of youth is questioned by the challenges of contemporary nationalism, protectionism, electoral victory of far-right parties, authoritarian governments, and the difficulties of peacebuilding amidst persistent communal divisions (Cicchelli & Octobre, 2019, p. 14; see also Every Day Peace and Youth, 2015; Pendenza & Verderame, 2019; Zilberstein et al., 2023, pp. 359–360). In deeply divided places, the inclusion of particular perspectives may reproduce opposition, and young people’s ‘own voice’ may provoke others. Our research explores how young people on a deeply divided island construct belonging and diversity and explores whether they move towards shared horizons.
The context of youth in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
Young people on the island of Ireland came to political consciousness in an age of peace and power sharing after the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998. They have been described as an ‘agreement generation’ who have internalised a post-nationalist, non-territorial, consensual and largely secular notion of politics, although recent research has qualified this view (Coulter et al., 2021; De Burca & Hayward, 2012, 2019; Leonard, 2020). The swift electoral rise of once-militant Sinn Féin in both parts of the island, and renewed tensions in Northern Ireland, exacerbated by Brexit, have now put Irish unity back on the political agenda.
In the Republic of Ireland, there is clear evidence of generational political change (Elkink et al., 2020). As elsewhere, the young face serious economic precarity, particularly with respect to housing, and have engaged with single-issue movements such as the ‘Marriage Equality’ and ‘Repeal the 8th’ referendums or broader resistance against the effects of global financial capitalism in the form of ‘Occupy Dame Street’. The imaginative horizons of the younger generations are much discussed, as is their support for Sinn Féin (see e.g. Mullaly, 2023).
In Northern Ireland, there has been considerable youth disengagement from the political blocs, especially amongst those of Protestant background (Farquhar, 2024). There is youth concern about the precarity of peace, frustration with political deadlock, and engagement around issue-based campaigns such as abortion and LGBTQI+ rights and against environmental degradation (Brennan, 2024; Dunlop et al., 2021). However, youth – in particular disadvantaged youth – are to the fore in protest movements aligned to the traditional blocs, most markedly in the 2012 loyalist flags protests.
How will an emerging population with very different experiences than their parents (Brennan, 2024; Dixon, 2022) address political contention over North–South relations and a growing debate on potential constitutional change?
Research design and methods
Our data set was generated in projects between 2014 and 2022, designed to chart the changing character of group division and political thinking in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (see Table 1). There were over 200 participants, including 52 young people.
Phases of research and schedule of questions.
The 52 young participants are diverse in terms of state and locality of residence, class, gender and religion (see Table 2).
Demographic characteristics.
Almost all participants were accessed through networks of neighbourhood, work and university, with an eye on religious, class and gender balance; we accessed disadvantaged youth from segregated neighbourhoods through religiously mixed voluntary organisations. Mixed organisations have increased in Northern Ireland since 1998, but less than a third of teenagers often play sport or socialise with those of a different religion (and a further 30% do so sometimes) (Knox et al., 2023, p. 301, Table 3). Our teenage Northern Ireland participants belong in this 60% of the young population, with about half of them in the 30% who often mix. Participants in the Republic of Ireland were accessed by snowball sampling, beginning with local contacts and are disproportionately third-level educated.
Our open-ended qualitative approach, including in-depth interviews, focus groups and deliberative café discussions, allows us to capture the ‘voices, feelings and meanings of interacting individuals’, letting them speak for themselves, rather than insisting on our categories, thus creating ‘thick descriptions’ (Thompson, 2001) that enable us to tap into complex layered experiences, what young people make of those experiences, and to show the resonances that greater openness and convergence of horizons have for the young people. The multi-method approach lets us augment interview evidence of how young people construct shared horizons, with observation of their interactions across national and communal divisions. Although topics varied in the different research phases, each phase allowed us to access young people’s understandings of their socio-political situation and the values they brought to it. The deliberative café method allowed us to access these understandings and values through participants’ informed discussion of a topic of mutual concern in each part of the island (see McEvoy & Todd, 2023) – in this case migration. We used initial information (in videos and posters) as stimuli to let participants themselves frame the policy problems to be discussed and to set questions for experts. Their discussions and conclusions allowed us to access minority voices and perspectives that are often overlooked, in this case working-class youth and migrant youth.
Discussions were recorded, transcribed, anonymised and coded thematically in NVivo by the authors with the help of a research assistant. 4 We began by coding the 2022 research using grounded theory and worked up to the theoretically-centred themes discussed below. We then recoded the older data to include these theoretical themes. Each transcript was read by at least two of us, and any disagreements on coding/interpretation discussed.
Findings
The young people were very diverse, not simply in their situations but also in their interests and lifepaths (cf. Elster, 2020). In the analysis below, we emphasise points of convergence and divergence: (1) though almost all participants situated themselves in relation to group division, they rejected group identification, using a wide range of repertoires from intersectionality to ‘ordinary universalism’ to deconstruction of binaries, and displaying a situated understanding of the effects of power differentials at play; (2) their narratives were explicitly informed by a consciousness of the collective good, and by values of openness, diversity and rights; other more individualistic values, for example ‘wellness’ or ‘hyperdiversity’, or sectional ones like ‘youth culture’ were not common; (3) convergence on values was accompanied by a sometimes intense opposition to other political perspectives; (4) the key mechanism in their descriptions of change away from group opposition and our observations of it was friendly conversation; and (5) this went only some way to overcome political divergence. 5
Group identification and distantiation from division
Almost all participants located themselves within the complexly configured group divisions on the island of Ireland, although the categories they used varied enormously. In Northern Ireland, almost all participants – with only a handful of exceptions (often from mixed marriage families), identified as Protestant or Catholic background, and those that did not, typically located themselves through their experience of mixed or segregated schooling. Many spoke of a unionist or nationalist family background, and some volunteered an explicitly national (Irish, British, Northern Irish) identity. Almost all related their views and those of their families to key issues in national(ist) debate – in 2014 to the GFA and the changes it brought, in 2018 to local tensions, and to Brexit, and in 2020–2 to North–South relations and potential Irish unity. 6
In the Republic of Ireland, where Irish identity is pervasive, it was typically presumed rather than mentioned. 7 Religious background was discussed only when it was unusual – a child of mixed marriage. But all participants situated themselves in locality and in the political tradition of the state, most distinguished their perspective from those in Northern Ireland, and most brought up the competing nationalist perspectives of the Republic of Ireland. This was particularly clear when they talked about North–South relations and potential future Irish unity.
While recognising group divisions, almost all distanced themselves from oppositional group identities. Some – particularly younger students from Northern Ireland – refused to identify with either group, in a sort of ‘everyday universalism’: ‘I don’t feel like, “Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?”. . . it’s just people’ (focus group, 2018). More typical of our participants was a mix of identification and distancing from traditional identity packages through emphasising the intersectionality of their lives and identity:
Well, I don’t think that my Catholic identity is very important to me. I suppose there’s an expectation that if you’re a Catholic you should be Nationalist in your view so I’d kind of like to distance myself slightly from that. I do think that my identity as being Northern Irish is significant and important to me because I don’t think that I would like to live in the Republic of Ireland when I grow up. . . there’s a lot of things about Northern Ireland which I like: I enjoy the health system and the fact that there is a student loan system. . . the welfare system. . . I also like being able to identify myself as being [from] Northern Ireland so the link with Ireland is there in that I go to university in the south of Ireland and that I work down here and that I would consider myself to be more Irish than British. (Interview Donegal, 2014)
Almost all participants, North and South, talked about themselves relationally, discussing how they distinguished themselves from their family, from the older generations, and from neighbourhood norms. They relativised the dominant binary notions of identity, not by avoiding groupness but by showing how the conditions of group identification and opposition have changed: as one school student said ‘And I get that there was problems in the past but we don’t have to be like hated against each other anymore’ (Focus group, 2018).
This relativisation included a clear consciousness of past violence:
. . . my dad had to wear a bulletproof jacket to work for years because he worked for a particularly Protestant company, who, I think they cut the grass around police stations. . . .because they were to do with police stations they were targets. . . .there is a fear still within the older generations. We haven’t had to experience anything like that. (Focus group, 2018)
Similarly, Daniel, a young man from a loyalist working-class estate in Belfast interviewed in 2022, says that his father is uneasy about his republican friends because he lived in a different time, when such friendships were literally dangerous:
. . . it doesn’t matter what you’re like as an individual and my da’s logic is if there’s dissidents in that estate they’ll be like, ‘Ah, your wee mate Daniel, where’s he from?’ You know what I mean, to try and get information.
Marie, a Dublin student, deconstructs the assumptions that underlie her parents’ opposition to republicanism and Sinn Féin:
. . . my parents, that generation, they would have been. . .very wary of Sinn Féin. . . and. . . this is what the Irish Times and things would say as well, those kinds of outlets would say that the younger generation doesn’t remember the Troubles and doesn’t remember what Sinn Féin was involved in, which is a valid point. If you look at the history of the two civil war parties [Fine Gael and Fianna Fail], like they were all established out of violence and they’ve all been responsible for. . . I’m not trying to equate. . . terrorism with the Magdalene Laundries. . . nobody has clean hands at this point. (Interview, 2022)
The participants in these discussions displayed an understanding of the complex postcolonial legacies of oppression and conflict that came to shape identity and politics in the island, north and south.
Narratives informed by progressive values of openness, diversity and rights
Almost all these young people sought out diversity as something enriching in itself while remaining acutely conscious of their different ways of worlding. They display a desire to engage with people from different backgrounds, both traditional communities and new ones. In 2014, young people crossed boundaries – in their choices of schools, and universities, and in their friendship groups that spanned the border and both communities. In the deliberative café, in 2022, participants were concerned to understand and share the experience of migrants and refugees:
. . . give awareness around. . . migrants and asylum seekers. . . what they’re here for, or what they have moved for?. . . share people’s experiences so people don’t have. . . prejudice or discrimination against them.
They defined their own perspectives intersubjectively by understanding those of others:
Probably just like having conversations between the two communities about the things and learning more so then we can understand where people’s strong beliefs do come from and kind of understand each other. (Focus group, 2018)
Even in areas which might appear homogeneous, there was discussion of local diversity, as captured in the expression ‘Different ways of living in the same square kilometre’ (Interview, Patrick, Republic of Ireland, 2022).
Diversity, for these young people, was compatible with a sense of the collective good, and by the 2020s, with increased economic precarity and political contention, there was more explicit reference to general values – rights, open communication across borders, progressive values on gender issues, socialism and egalitarianism. Whether they were talking about policy matters – e.g. the housing crisis in the Republic of Ireland – or political parties, participants consistently related their views to their general principles. For example, Brian, a 24-year-old-man in Dublin, explained how he developed his left-leaning political awareness in particular on housing policy:
. . . it wasn’t really until I got into college that that shift really started to go more and more to the left. . . as a lot of my friends started to rent in Dublin, I started to look into and take an interest in land ownership in general. . . I’d be more in favour of actually [to] get all of the rental market [to] try to get the local councils to buy it up and push landlords entirely out of the market. . . because a lot of the land ownership is in older generations’ hands, it means that younger people are paying for older people’s rents or paying for older people’s pensions. And that just doesn’t make any sense to me. (Interview, 2022)
The young people were also pragmatic, concerned about housing and economic prospects, but this is seen to converge rather than conflict with their values of openness, diversity, human rights, and progressive politics of equality and justice. In 2014, one young woman went to a Protestant state school against family advice because it better fitted her educational goals. For school pupils in mid-Ulster in 2018, the benefit of mixed education was collective:
Our generation, I mean. . . every generation says, ‘We’re quite different from previous generations’. Like the women’s rights movements and everything. . . we’re progressing forward and a lot of older generations are saying the millennials are killing everything. I just think we’re doing what we feel is right. Just like, we believe this, I just think more interaction between people has been more beneficial. . . integrated schools and everything is very beneficial, more interactions with everyone.
And there are personal as well as educational and material benefits: Daniel is more reflexive and more open, less fearful and distrustful, since meeting a wider range of friends:
. . . as I joined and got to know people, joined university, I was more relaxed about telling. Like. . . if I was out in town and all, people would be like, ‘What do you do?’ I’d be like, ‘I’m a painter’. But now I’m just, ‘I’m a uni student’. But if they’re like, ‘What did you use to do? ‘British Army’, but back then I wouldn’t tell anyone what I do, because my da always instilled it into me, ‘Be careful’. But I think it’s different. A lot of the boys I’ve met in university have opened me up a bit more.
Even when material self-interest was a primary motivation, it was phrased in general terms of collective prosperity and opportunities. For Patrick living some 50 km from Dublin:
I’m 22, I would like to have a house this decade of my life. . . I would also like to have a job and I would also like to grow up, live, I would like my children to grow up in a prosperous economy with opportunities. (Interview, 2022)
In 2022, participants voiced political principles of human rights, gender rights, reproductive rights, socialism, equality, housing for all, and progressive politics, and framed their seemingly conventional nationalist choices – support for Sinn Féin, desire for a united Ireland – in these unconventional ways.
Matthew, a university student in Dublin, argued:
My politics as they developed over my life, I suppose, have kind of changed. . . I mean I’m a socialist and I believe in the project [of a united Ireland] with. . . I suppose, [the] caveat that I would want that to be a better place and not just kind of putting the jigsaw pieces back together. . . holding on to the kind of more utopian aspects of it at the same time. (Interview, 2022)
In 2014 and 2018, there was a general assumption that social and political life was becoming more open. In 2020, and still more in 2022, there was an emphasis on bringing principles to bear on actual politics. At the end of the deliberative café in 2022, the young people drew a political lesson on the need to share information and communication between North and South about the treatment of migrants and refugees in each jurisdiction:
. . . the north and south need to. . . align new policies so that they actually initiate and bring about like real change. . . because if everyone’s on the same page then it’s going to be easier, like to change it. . . together.
From convergence in values to divergence in politics
Political opposition remained, despite the shared values. Politics – including party politics, North–South relations and Irish unity – was one of the least prevalent themes in 2014 and 2018. In 2014, when we were interviewing in the border area, North–South contact was frequently mentioned, but more often in the context of leisure activity and relationships than in an explicitly political context, while Irish unity was seldom mentioned, and usually to dismiss its importance. In 2018, the school pupils wanted to talk about their locality and their school and gave little response even when asked explicitly about Brexit and about the Irish border. This had changed by 2022. The youngest participants still distanced from party politics: ‘[I] don’t like politicians; I hate them with everything I’ve got’ (Deliberative café, 2022), but they were interested in North–South relations. The slightly older participants discussed party politics and Irish unity frequently and fluently, showing that they had thought about the issues. This reflects increased political contention in both parts of the island after Brexit, and the fact that young people – those from Protestant, from Catholic and from other backgrounds – are increasingly engaging with contentious national politics, rather than abstracting from it.
Even amongst those who were politically engaged, however, there was no consensus about political issues or about a united Ireland, and among some there was a sense of the lack of understanding of Northern Ireland in the Republic (Focus group 1, 2020). Reflecting recent survey results, young people were somewhat more likely to support Sinn Féin than their elders,
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although they did so for non-traditional reasons:
I would usually vote kind of Sinn Féin as my number one choice. . . But it’s actually because they’re kind of the most left-wing party in general, particularly socially. So, this made me accept and I kind of played it through in my head and thought – if there was a party that was kind of middle-ground or more of a unionist but were more left-wing on social issues, would I prioritise that? And I think I probably would to be honest because like as I’ve said before, I prefer a United Ireland but it doesn’t sit above most things for me. (Interview, Diarmuid, Belfast, 2022)
There was also extremely strong opposition to Sinn Féin. Jayne, a liberal student from a Protestant and unionist background, was unconditionally negative about Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP):
I find it very hard to speak to anybody my age who would. . . vote Sinn Féin/DUP. . . I would find it very hard to sit down with somebody my age who openly defends either of those parties. (Jayne, rural Northern Ireland, 2022)
Could such political opposition be touched by increasing openness and shared values? For example, Daniel, a student from a loyalist background, said that he would not vote for Sinn Féin but he was impressed by them:
. . . they’re [Sinn Fein] focusing on social issues, like housing – Conor always goes on about housing. . . but if you’re from. . . a neutral area. . . Sinn Féin could go to you and be like – oh, don’t care about orange and green politics, we want the best housing for you. You don’t see the DUP really doing stuff like that, they’re just focused on one group, if you get me. And they’re not branching out to other areas that are available to them, they’re focused on one group and they’re entrenched in the positions, and they’re not willing to shift.
Friendly conversation as central to shifting understandings
How then do understandings shift beyond group-oppositions? What are the turning points? Participants used highly personalised narratives to describe how they distanced themselves from what they saw as closed group attitudes and became more open to diverse perspectives. Predominantly, these narratives concerned friends. Again and again, most participants referred to friends and friendly conversations as important in opening them to different views, whether between North and South, or between communities in the North:
Yeah, just like interacting with. . . friends with different beliefs, it just makes you feel like you don’t want to put down your friends and you wouldn’t judge them for who they are so why would you judge them on their beliefs. (Focus group 2, Mid Ulster, 2018)
One school student in 2018 vividly described a turning point in her life when her mode of perception of Catholics changed dramatically:
. . . I came from a Protestant town school, so I came to this [mixed] school and I remember whispering ‘Catholic’ to one of my friends and they were like, ‘That’s not a bad word’. And then being here I have learned that there is not a difference, that now I am. . . really, really open and I have loads of Catholic friends and I just, I don’t see someone and say, ‘They’re a Catholic’, I see them as a person. (Focus group, 2018)
As for this student, the most radical changes are not in beliefs or preferences but modes of perception and thought. Ulster loyalism tends to have a zero-sum notion of a united Ireland as ontologically challenging and impossible to accept, or even to contemplate. Daniel, from a strong loyalist background, describes how friendly conversations with republicans led him to change this mode of thinking:
. . . there are some people I speak to and they are like – I don’t want a united Ireland. I know one lad and he was like – ‘I wouldn’t be in favour of it but if it came to a vote, I would vote in favour of a united Ireland, but I don’t want it’. And he was like. . . ‘I would vote united Ireland, but I wouldn’t be pushing for it’. So, I just thought, if you are republican, you want a united Ireland. But from what I have gathered, there are a few out there [who don’t much want it].
Immediately afterwards, Daniel says that he would not vote for a united Ireland, but if it came about, he would not be bothered by it – a major change from his previous loyalist perspective. In effect, Daniel moves away from the mundane reasoning common in his community, to describe a new way of thinking shared with his republican friends – he now cares less about constitutional outcomes, than lessening political polarisation (on mundane reasoning, see Brewer et al., 2018, pp. 265–269).
The narrative process was sometimes conducted in retrospect. Especially in the Republic of Ireland, participants retold family history so as to open their own perspectives beyond conventional group horizons. In one case it was the use of the Irish language, which gave an escape from what the participant saw as closed conventional political attitudes in the Republic of Ireland:
. . . my sisters and I were raised speaking Irish and there had always been Irish speakers in the family with kind of a break with my mother’s generation. Her father was a native speaker and he wouldn’t speak Irish to her and her sister so she insisted on raising us speaking Irish. And there’s a certain nationalist sentiment there, or anticolonial desire for your own identity involved in that, involved in that act. (Interview, Mark, 2022)
In the deliberative café we observed friendly conversation in action, where one person’s comment communicates a whole new understanding to the group. In one case, a young woman from a migrant background explained what was different about being a migrant:
. . . so I grew up here. . . it was kind of like a bad experience from the start, because I didn’t know English, so I had to learn English and Irish at the same time. So, it’s still hard because there’s a lot of responsibility on me because my mom doesn’t know how to speak good English, and my sister doesn’t know either. I have huge responsibility to translate everything for my mom. . . she’s been here for ten years, but she has found it hard to settle in, because it’s still so different. (Deliberative café, 2022)
Three young teenage girls from West Belfast volunteered that they had always lived in their neighbourhood and could not imagine leaving its support. One then identified with migration in an unexpected familial way – her grandmother (who had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism when she married) now suffers from dementia, and thinks of herself as Protestant again. This story highlighted the importance of difference, movement and boundary crossing for the young teenagers, and provided an example of how movement and exile are human experiences with which everyone can identify.
Such friendly conversations were central to participants’ narratives of their own changing understandings. We see them as a form of deliberation that is intuitive, perceptual and empathetic where key points are made and understood quickly, in powerful images: the mother for whom translation was necessary, the granny returning to her Protestant youth, the friends who showed different ways of thinking about others (‘Catholic is not a bad word’) and about politics. Strong emotions were not expressed by these young people, unlike, for example, some participants in Curato’s (2019) deliberations or the mixed marriage partners in Todd’s (2018) research. While argumentation was used, multi-layered meanings of the images were sensed rather than verbalised.
The young people adopted new ways of thinking without fuss, learning easily from friendly conversations. This dynamic is similar to the ‘gathering’ which Schilling et al. (2019) describe, where young people make the most of their immediate and contingent social interactions. This mechanism is likely to be especially relevant to youth, for whom friendships are so important, and who are still figuring out their own perspectives, and are not already invested in them.
Political impact
These young people want to understand others and develop shared horizons, while reflexively evolving their sense of particular situatedness. This approximates a ‘situated cosmopolitan’ stance. But are their convergent values enough to allow civil discussion and deliberation, and even mutual understanding, across traditional group divisions? Our study indicates the potential so to do.
The participants were interested in political issues, if not in political parties. However, our research recorded little direct confrontation between people with opposing political views. In a 2020 focus group, one young man from Dublin made a strong argument that a united Ireland should go ahead without taking unionist concerns into account. A young woman from a unionist background disagreed and said that he had miscast the motivations of people like her. He backed off, and dialogue proceeded. In interviews, many described changing their views to greater interpersonal openness, but there are fewer cases where they describe greater political openness. Daniel’s interview is interesting because he shows how friendly conversation can lead to changing political understandings: he would not vote for Sinn Féin although he understands why his friends do. Significantly this is not ‘conversion’ to an opposing viewpoint – Daniel retains his preference for the Union, even while coming to a more relaxed view about a united Ireland. It is rather a new willingness to discuss and accept whatever constitutional option is democratically decided. It is a sort of convergence of horizons, an acceptance of a policy outcome even if not a preference.
It is possible that these young people share universalistic principles of progressiveness, justice, openness, but remain fundamentally opposed on their judgements about what is progressive, or what is unjust, or when openness should be restricted. This is not uncommon within Northern Ireland and we saw it in some interviews. But our research suggests that the common values can have greater impact under positive conditions: first, if occasions for friendly conversation are maximised, e.g. through informal deliberative events, such that inherited assumptions can come into question; and second, if deliberation on contentious issues like constitutional change is framed in terms of shared values and ideals – on the vision of a good society, and whether or how a united Ireland or United Kingdom can meet this standard.
Significance for comparative research and policy
Young people on the island of Ireland do not opt for a classic cosmopolitan rejection of national identity; they do not embrace nationalism, but nor do they subordinate the national to individual wellbeing or to normless hyperdiversity. Rather, our research shows that they move towards more universal, shared horizons, while for the most part retaining their specific ethno-national sense of belonging. This is an example of the ‘situated cosmopolitanism’ increasingly discussed in the comparative literature (Werbner, 2008). Our study shows that this is common amongst working-class young people on the island of Ireland and amongst younger teenagers as well as older millennials. It is developed through critical engagement with societal divisions, and particularly through friendly conversation with those from different backgrounds.
Friendly conversation allowed a seamless, and seemingly easy, transition to a more open perspective. It took a distinctive form: intuitive, perceptual and empathetic. It was not primarily affective: strong emotions were not expressed by these young people. It was not primarily rational-cognitive: argumentation was used, and information was treated as relevant – e.g., the young people in the deliberative café listened closely to discussions about direct provision for refugees and asylum seekers in the South and asked about gender differences in treatment of migrants, but the key points arose in short powerful images of the granny returning to her Protestant youth, or the conditions of young refugees in ‘direct provision’, rather than in long narratives or reasoned discussion.
Our findings provide some confirmation of the contact hypothesis (see Hewstone & Swart, 2011), while showing that one mechanism by which sustained egalitarian contact reduces prejudice is by providing opportunities for friendly conversation, as the school pupils in our 2018 focus groups attest. But friendly conversation also took place in contexts where contact was not sustained – in the focus group when the young man modified his views after only a short encounter with the young woman, and in the deliberative café where participants were together for only three hours. Moreover, some participants engaged in a form of imaginative friendly conversation, providing unexpected retellings of family or neighbourhood history that led to a different way of thinking about familiar things. In short, the discursive mechanism that we highlight is not intrinsically linked to measurable variables of sustained egalitarian contact. Exploring the relation between the measures of contact, and the mechanisms of friendly conversation would be a valuable topic for further study.
Finally, the impact over time of this process of increasing ‘cosmopolitanisation’ amongst the young is of great importance. While our method does not allow us to assess this directly, the cases we have discussed show its potential to ameliorate the emotions and opposition associated with divisive political issues.
Our research has threefold policy implications. First, there is considerable appetite amongst the young in each part of Ireland to explore diversity and division, and a sense that the consequences are beneficial for them. Second, while sustained egalitarian institutionalised contact provides opportunity for the friendly conversations that we have identified as so important, it is not the only opportunity. We found that informal deliberative events also provide these opportunities, even where contact is limited to several hours. This opens the way for policy interventions – the provision of systematic opportunities for such deliberation. Third, the convergent values found amongst diverse clusters of youth can be used to frame divisive national and constitutional debate. In the Irish context, it is necessary to engage in constitutional debate not simply or primarily through issues of identity or ideology, but on grounds of shared values, for example providing more opportunity for openness, diversity, rights and progressive politics. Framing larger set-piece deliberative forums on constitutional change (e.g. citizens’ assemblies) in this way would allow wide engagement.
While the policy implications within an Irish context are clear, our findings have potentially wider import, for they show similar processes of opening across different forms of group division – traditional ethno-communal in Northern Ireland, nation-state between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and ethnic divisions associated with migration. The forms of situated cosmopolitanism that we describe are everyday, as open to working-class as to middle-class young people, and generated in the informal contacts that young people enjoy. We suggest that maximising occasions of friendly conversation between young people of diverse backgrounds and using the shared values that emerge to structure more formal discussions on contentious issues can create opportunities for cross-community engagement informed by openness and tolerance rather than obstructive identity politics.
Conclusion
This article addressed the question of how young people navigated deep communal division and national conflict, and how they related universalist visions and values to ethnic and national situatedness. We found that they did not reject the national but qualified it, making divisions much less important. Far from primarily an elite perspective, this was also clear amongst working-class participants. This can be seen as a form of ‘situated cosmopolitan’ opening across different forms of group difference: some rooted in ethno-communal divisions in Northern Ireland, some in national and state divisions between North and South, and some issuing from migration. It was discussed through personalised narratives where friendships, friendly deliberation and cross-currents of family history played key roles. It was presented as intuitive, perceptual and empathetic, rather than primarily affective or rational-cognitive.
The capacity of this ‘situated cosmopolitanism’ to overcome deep political division remains, however, in question. Many of these young people were uninterested in party politics, and, like youth comparatively, they were less likely to vote in elections than their elders. But those with party political interests – the older cohorts – reframed their party political choices in universalist ways, which were open, if not to convergence, at least to understanding and reflection and capacity for negotiation. The younger, and those from working-class backgrounds who disengaged from party politics, were not disengaged from political issues and could well vote in future referenda. There is need for further research on the situated cosmopolitan horizons of young people in divided places, looking at the extent and limits of sharedness, following up on the impact over time and where it is facilitated, and where hindered.
Finally, our research has important policy implications, proposing widespread deliberation in informal deliberative events which can stimulate the articulation of shared horizons and general values. It also suggests the need to frame policy-relevant deliberation within a universalistic value frame not simply in terms of group interests or self-interests. In the Irish case, this means asking if constitutional change would provide more or less opportunity for openness, diversity, rights and progressive politics.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank research assistants Diana Cenusa and James McElearney; previous research assistants Susan McDermott and Oisin O’Malley Daly; colleagues, especially Stephanie Dornschneider-Elkink, Gladys Ganiel and Dawn Walsh; the youth leaders and head teacher who facilitated our focus groups and deliberative café; and all of the young people who participated.
Funding
The authors wish to thank the Irish Research Council and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs Reconciliation Fund for funding for successive phases of research.
