Sectarian, recreational, or anti-social? Interpreting juvenile violence in post-conflict Belfast

ABSTRACT

In North Belfast, in 2018 and 2019, street violence involving groups of teenagers from unionist and nationalist communities resurfaced. To explain the persistence of this problem in contemporaneous Northern-Ireland, I focus on the obstacles local actors face when assessing the nature of this public problem. I return to the notion of ‘recreational rioting’, and how its critique led to debates on whether those behaviours were political or not: this unsettled controversy characterises the stalemate in the management of juvenile violence. I argue that this situation reveals a liminal moment in increasing interdependencies between unionist and nationalist communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• violence
• recreational rioting
• Northern Ireland

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Marine Boisson, Colin Coulter, Dominique Linhardt, the reviewers and the editor for their attentive readings and their advice during the writing of this article.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Though following different theoretical traditions, these authors shared an interest for the processes of increasing integration and differentiation characterising modern societies, rendering them especially attentive to this type of tension.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Théo Leschevin

Théo Leschevin is a PhD in Sociology from Maynooth University, Ireland, and the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, France. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher with Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH) as part of the ANR TROC (Terrorists Reintegration in Open Custody) research program.