‘Devout, profane and hard’, – chasing integration policy in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the experience of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland against the background of different periods of non-governance, arguing that consociationalism is hindering the implementation of an integration strategy. Northern Ireland is one of the only regions in the UK without a dedicated refugee integration strategy, in spite of one existing in draft form. As a devolved region, it sits outside the UK policy of asylum dispersal, but has to adhere to UK immigration legal policy. Northern Ireland has, however, the power to create and embed refugee integration policies and strategies as a devolved region. We seek to problematize the notion of refugee ‘integration’ within the context of a divided society, thereby questioning what it is asylum seekers and refugees are being asked to do within this discourse of integration. In a context where sectarianism continues to shape the spatial and social infrastructures, this is even more complex an aspiration.

KEYWORDS:

• refugees and asylum seekers
• ‘Sectarian omnipresence’
• consociationalism
• integration policy
• Northern Ireland

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two guest editors for their support and the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and advice how to strengthen our argument and the direction of our paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Devout, profane and hard is a line in the Northern Ireland poet Louis MacNeice called Valedictions-the poem is about Belfast but also the island of Ireland as a whole.

2 This is the date/ month the article was accepted.

3 It also does with respect to Irish diasporas, but there is no space here to reflect on this.

4 https://nilq.qub.ac.uk/index.php/nilq/article/view/174

5 The United Kingdom has established a resettlement programme for Syrian refugees – the Vulnerable Persons Relocation (VPR) scheme. Northern Ireland has been a recipient of both programme refugees (through the VPR scheme) as well as having an estimated number of 200–300 new asylum seekers per year from different locations. Northern Ireland has also received individuals with refugee status from Somalia.

6 https://www.embraceni.org/information/asylum/syrian-refugees-in-northern-ireland/

7 https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/9166/documents/159683/default/

8 https://www.mmecouncil.org/

9 https://consultations.nidirect.gov.uk/teo/refugee-integration-strategy-for-northern-ireland/

10 https://www.embraceni.org/asylum/uk-asylum-statistics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ulrike M. Vieten

Ulrike M. Vieten is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Sociology (of Gender, Migration and Racisms) in SSESW, Queen’s University Belfast.

Fiona Murphy

Fiona Murphy is an Assistant Professor in Refugee and Intercultural Studies in SALIS, Dublin City University.