Stuck between the EU ‘rock’ and UK ‘hard place’? Northern Ireland as a liminal space after Brexit

ABSTRACT

Northern Ireland hardly featured as an issue in the historic 2016 Brexit referendum campaign in the UK. Subsequently, however, it became the main zone of contention between the EU and UK. This article examines Northern Ireland's experience since the Brexit vote through the theoretical lens of liminality. It does so, specifically, by focusing on the three strands of relationships at the heart of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace agreement, and how Brexit impacted on each of these relationships. It argues that Brexit proved profoundly unsettling to the existing political order and triggered significant angst and fear in Northern Ireland.

KEYWORDS:

• Northern Ireland
• Brexit
• liminality
• peace process

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

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John O'Brennan

John O' Brennan is a professor of European politics in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University. He also holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European integration and is Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies. His most recent works include ‘Ireland and the European Union' (with Mary C. Murphy) in Politics in the Republic of Ireland, seventh edition, Routledge, 2023.