‘Seismic’ or stalemate? The (bio)politics of the 2021 Northern Ireland Census

ABSTRACT

This article provides a critical reading of the 2021 Census of Population in Northern Ireland. A close examination of the available data on religion and nationality leads us to suggest that the Census provides a distorted portrait of Northern Irish society in two crucial, and connected, senses. First, the operation of the Census creates incentives for many residents to identify in ethnoreligious terms who might not ordinarily do so. Second, the forms of inter-communal competition generated by the decennial poll serve to obscure the degree of cultural diversity that exists in an increasingly secular society.

KEYWORDS:

• Northern Ireland
• Census
• demography
• secularisation
• Good Friday Agreement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 All of the primary Census data in this article were published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). Some of the information is presented in tables constructed by the agency and when this is the case it is cited using the NISRA acronym, the year of publication, and the relevant codes identifying specific tables. NISRA also provides a facility for researchers to create their own cross-tabulations of a range of different forms of information from the Census (https://build.nisra.gov.uk/en/). These tables have no identifying code and, hence, when data generated this way are being cited they will be set out in a footnote with a link to the source.

2 In this instance, the definition of national identity used is Classification Two. As explained in more detail later in the article, this counts both when people mention a nationality – in this case, Polish or Lithuanian – on its own and when they mention it in combination with one or more other identities. Note also that ‘religion’ here is Classification One which acknowledges only those who claim membership of a church and not those who were raised in a faith but no longer subscribe to it. This is also explained more fully later.

3 These data were generated using the facility on the NISRA website: https://build.nisra.gov.uk/en/custom/data?d=PEOPLE&v=AGE_SYOA_85&v=RELIGION_BELONG_TO_AGG4

4 Please note that there is a small discrepancy in the data recorded here. The figure of 37,504 Poles and Lithuanians living in Northern Ireland was calculated by NISRA using national identity Classification Two, explained in a previous note. The calculation of the number of people with these nationalities who are Catholics derives from a table generated by the authors: https://build.nisra.gov.uk/en/custom/data?d=PEOPLE&v=NAT_ID_1000&v=RELIGION_BELONG_TO_DVO_1000 The modules available in the NISRA ‘flexible table builder’ currently only include national identity Classification One (for nationalities other than Britishness, Irishness, and Northern Irishness) and hence excludes those who say they are Polish and Lithuanian in combination with another nationality. This explains the small discrepancy between the number of people from these backgrounds who appear in the table we generated (35,745) and the actual number in the population (37,504). This discrepancy means that the number of Poles and Lithuanians who identify as Catholic that is specified in our table (27,026) will be a small, but meaningful, under-estimate. To compensate, the difference between the number of people who fall into this category in 2011 and 2021 Censuses has been rounded up from 5,279 to 7,000, which is likely a small, but not as meaningful, over-estimate.

5 The data for 2011 in this paragraph are drawn from the NISRA published table DC2252NI. The data for 2021 derive from a table generated by the authors using the facility on the NISRA website: https://build.nisra.gov.uk/en/custom/data?d=PEOPLE&v=PASSPORTS_HELD_1000&v=RELIGION_BELONG_TO_OR_BROUGHT_UP_IN_DVO

6 These data were derived from a table generated using the facility on the NISRA portal: https://build.nisra.gov.uk/en/custom/data?d=PEOPLE&v=RELIGION_BELONG_TO_DVO_1000&v=RELIGION_BELONG_TO_OR_BROUGHT_UP_IN_DVO

7 The data presented here come from a table generated by the authors using a facility on the NISRA website: https://build.nisra.gov.uk/en/custom/data?d=PEOPLE&v=RELIGION_BELONG_TO_OR_BROUGHT_UP_IN_DVO&v=NAT_ID_1000&v=COB_1000

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colin Coulter

Professor Colin Coulter teaches in the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland. He works primarily on the political and socio-economic divisions in Northern Ireland, the political economy of the Republic of Ireland, and the politics of popular music. His most recent book is the co-authored Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday: lost futures and new horizons in the ‘long peace’ (Manchester University Press, 2021).

Eoin Flaherty

Dr Eoin Flaherty lectures in the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland. His research focuses on how patterns of inequality are formed and maintained, and how they change over time and space, with a particular focus on income inequality during the late 20th/early 21st century. He is the author of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Peter Shirlow

Professor Peter Shirlow is the Director of the Institute of Irish Studies in the University of Liverpool, UK. His research focuses primarily on the spatial and ideological expressions of ethnonational division in Northern Ireland. His most recent book is the co-authored Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday: lost futures and new horizons in the ‘long peace’ (Manchester University Press, 2021).