Dislocation, unsettledness and the long-term consequences of forced displacement in Northern Ireland’s ‘troubles’

ABSTRACT

Based on in-depth interviews, this article explores the long-term consequences of forced displacement during Northern Ireland's 30-year conflict. Despite the many successes of the peace process, the legacy of forced movement continues to manifest in a profound sense of dislocation and unsettledness in the present with regards to identity, place and belonging. It argues the neglect of displacement as a category of violence and harm within the peace process, bequeaths a large cohort of marginalized victims and survivors whose conflict-related losses have yet to be recognized, much less acknowledged and addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Displacement
• Northern Ireland
• the troubles
• ontological security
• refugees

Introduction

Negotiated settlements and wider peacebuilding processes should ideally offer the possibility for all conflict-related grievances to be addressed (Mac Ginty & Wanis-St. John, 2008). Despite a growing recognition that refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs)¹ have a major stake in the success of peacebuilding and transitional justice processes which can shape the stability of post-conflict communities, the forced movement of tens of thousands of citizens over the duration of Northern Ireland’s 30-year conflict have not been recognized as an important category of victims and survivors, and neither have their experiences been acknowledged and addressed (Bradley, 2012). Contemporary peace processes in regions such as Guatemala, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone and Liberia have all attempted to practically address the legacy of forced movement through truth commissions and various forms of reparations (Bradley, 2012). Contrastingly, displacement, refugees and IDPs remain conspicuously absent from Northern Ireland’s peace process where predominant understandings of conflict-related harm consistently pivot on incidents of actor-based violence, that is, observable acts conducted by state and non-state actors in the pursuit of political objectives. Much political and social capital has therefore focused, understandably, on those conventional forms of physical violence that characterized the Troubles.²

The armed conflict, known as the ‘Troubles’, which engulfed Northern Ireland from 1969 until its peace accord of 1998, claimed over 3700 lives and injured over 22,000 people.³ While the roots and trajectory of the conflict are historically complex, broadly speaking, the formation of the state of Northern Ireland in 1921 represented a contested territory between two competing ethno-national communities.⁴ Typically, the Protestant population, which historically formed the majority population of the state, identify as unionist, loyalist and/or pro-British, while Catholics, a significant minority population, self-identify as Irish, nationalist, or republican. Public marches and demands for civil and equal rights for Catholics in the late 1960s were met with brutal state violence. With many Protestants perceiving the Civil Rights campaign as a front for militant republicanism and other left-wing radicals determined to undermine the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, inter-communal violence erupted in August 1969, culminating with the deployment of the British Army. While initially welcomed as ‘saviours’ by some Catholics, the subsequent actions of state forces, including curfews, internment, as well the killing of civilians alienated many Catholics and emboldened the emerging Provisional IRA, setting Northern Ireland on a course of armed violence for the next 30 years. The primary protagonists in the conflict were Irish republican non-state militaries (with the Provisional IRA being the most significant), various pro-British Loyalist non-state militaries (Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters; Ulster Volunteer Force) and state forces such as the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

Based on in-depth interviews and extensive archival research, the originality of this article resides in its rigorous exploration of the long-term impacts of forced displacement, a set of harms and losses precluded both from Northern Ireland’s peacebuilding agenda and the extensive body of academic scholarship. The narratives of dislocation examined in this article extend beyond Northern Ireland and therefore also contribute important insights into the growing body of international debates and research on displacement, place, resettlement and belonging (Ager & Strang, 2008; De Vroome & van Tubergan, 2014; Marlowe, 2017; Poteet & Nourpanah, 2018). Conventional ideas within state-led and NGO endeavours regarding ‘durable solutions’ to refugee settlement pivot on the assumption that the acquirement of new homes, new communities and permanent residence signify the endpoint for liminality and crisis in the lives of those forced from their homes.

However, a range of international studies have shown that liminality and insecurity remain endemic features of everyday life for refugees in many spaces, such as refugee camps, border crossings, detention centres, among others (Hyndman, 2011; Mountz, 2011). Expanding the focus beyond physical shelter and residence, recent interventions considered ideas of integration, identity and belonging as theoretical lens to understand refugee experiences of resettlement, social cohesion and participation in their new homes and environments (Ager & Strang, 2008; Marlowe, 2017; Poteet & Nourpanah, 2018). Furthermore, exclusionary experiences, such as poverty, homophobia and racism, among others, also profoundly shape and often limit post-settlement experiences and opportunities (Marlowe, 2017; Murrani et al., 2023; Wimark, 2021). Therefore, the acquirement of relative physical security via shelter and housing, should not be assumed to assuage insecurity and liminality in the lives of those displaced.

Given this, the article contends that the specific forms of loss, dislocation and insecurity synonymous with forced movement are not addressed by monetary reparations or resettlement in new homes and communities. While the loss of physical homes, possessions, place and community are self-evident and readily recognized as deleterious outcomes of displacement, the issue under consideration here are the long-term consequences related to a sense of biographical dislocation, uprootedness and liminality in the present. The idea of ‘ontological security’ concerns self-identity and confidence derived from a sense of stability, security and familiarity in an often-unconscious understanding of place and belonging. It draws upon the idea of continuity and levels of certainty and predictability in the lives, identities and social knowledge of individuals and collectives, based on a taken-for-granted knowledge of what to expect and how to ‘be’ in the world (Giddens, 1991). As primary foundational blocks, ‘home’, ‘community’ and attachment to place, are broadly understood as spatially defined locations which are emotionally invested with a sense of familiarity, continuity and belonging providing us the context within which we have the confidence, stability and security to go about our everyday lives (Mitzen, 2018).

As this article demonstrates, the dislocation expressed by those displaced refers not to a sense of homelessness or liminality associated with the absence of a physical home but to the dislocation in their biographies, identities and belonging in the present. The purpose of the article is, therefore, to provide readers with a critical encounter with a range of narratives and experiences of harm and loss that have hitherto been overlooked. Recognizing the continuing presence of such harms and the extent of displacement is significant as it not only brings into view a neglected group of victims and survivors, but also disrupts prevailing narratives of a peaceful, secure and transformed society.

Assessing the extent of displacement in the ‘Troubles’

I define displacement as a social process involving the communication of intimidation, fear and threats, or the perception of intimidation and threats, which provokes either an immediate or long-term sense of insecurity and vulnerability that compels an involuntary flight, either permanently or temporarily, for the purpose of securing refuge and safety. As is the case in many armed conflicts, there was no uniform or archetypal form of intimidation or flight in Northern Ireland; some fled as part of mass burning of houses, streets and communities; some were evacuated temporarily due to ‘environmental risks’ (intensity of violence); others experienced intimidation as a series of small, incremental threats that led to a tipping point to seek safety elsewhere. While thousands of displaced Catholics crossed the border into the Republic of Ireland, particularly during the years 1969 to 1974, and hundreds of Protestants evacuated to Liverpool and Glasgow, many of these persons returned to their original homes. Beyond these mass movements, the 30 years of conflict generated consistent and considerable levels movement into the Republic of Ireland and further afield, as well as high levels of ‘internal displacement’ whereby people increasingly fled their homes permanently and sought safety within their own ethno-religious group and residential areas within the state of Northern Ireland. In some instances, some resettled a very short distance from their original home, particularly in urban settings. Therefore, I use the term ‘forced displacement’ and ‘displaced’ as all-encompassing terms to capture all those who fled their homes to secure refuge and safety, regardless of the distance travelled, geographical spread of resettlement, or the transgression of an international border. The narratives considered in this article are those who fled at various points during the Troubles and never returned to their original homes and communities.

It is important to stress that the experiences and issues considered in this article do not represent the totality of displacement in Northern Ireland. The scope of the research design focused solely on forms of displacement from homes caused by threats and fear, emanating from the ‘other community’, thus precluding those accused of ‘anti-social behaviour’ and criminality and forced into exile by republican and loyalist armed groups. It also does not cover those displaced by internecine feuds, of which there were many throughout the Troubles and peace process. With a focus on homes and communities, I am also conscious that the research does not examine those forced from places of employment, the loss of businesses and in some instances family farms, although the targeting of businesses and livelihoods are weaved throughout some of the narratives.

Given the chaos and confusion in the early years of the conflict, and the frenetic and disparate forms of displacement, it is not possible to put an exact figure on levels of forced movement (Shirlow, 2001).⁵ The task of quantifying movement is further complicated given that many did not liaise with the institutions of the state in Northern Ireland, particularly those from the Catholic community, and so any formal record will invariably be incomplete.

However, the figures that do exist are sobering. The Scarman Tribunal that examined the violence of the 12th to 15th August 1969 stated that at least 3500 families were displaced during these tumultuous days (McCann, 2019). As the violence intensified in the early 1970s, between 30,000 and 60,000 people were forced to evacuate their home in Belfast from 1969 to 1973, comprising 11.8% of the population (Darby & Morris, 1974). The city of Londonderry⁶ saw the Protestant population in the city centre’s West Bank decrease from 8459 in 1971 to 1407 in 1991. Beyond the two primary urban settings of Belfast and Derry, there was significant forced movement of Catholics in Carrickfergus, Newtownabbey and Rathcoole (towns north of Belfast) as well as in Portadown and Lurgan in the mid-Province area. Similarly, forced movement of Protestants was a perpetual feature of the Troubles in Newry, South down region and at various places along the border, particularly in Fermanagh and South Armagh. Overall, the Protestant population along the border declined from 19% to 1% between 1971 and 1991, the period of the most intense violence and threat (Murtagh, 1996).

Despite the significance and extent of forced displacement, it has nevertheless constituted little more than a footnote or fleeting reference in most academic accounts. Some welcome and notable exceptions, however, have either explicitly incorporated displacement as part of their overall thematic analysis or in some instances, alluded to its importance. The role of housing, segregation, territoriality and identity in the perpetuation of ethno-sectarian antagonisms is well established and remains a feature that has endured despite the advent of the 1998 peace accord (Boal, 1969; Coyles, 2017; Poole & Doherty, 2010; Power & Shuttleworth, 1997). Shirlow and Murtagh’s (2006) ground-breaking examination of place and segregation in post-GFA Belfast, documented a distinct mutation from armed violence to everyday forms of sectarianism, and a range of direct consequences including deepening communal polarization, social exclusion, fatalism and economic truncation. Until very recently, John Darby’s research on intimidation, violence and housing in the early to mid-1970s and again in the mid-1980s was effectively the lone academic in-depth account of forced displacement. Although limited to the greater Belfast area only, nevertheless his 1974 (with Geoffrey Morris) and 1976 studies examined a variety of forms of intimidation and their cyclical patterns, the immediate effects on individuals and communities, the importance of housing shortages in patterns of resettlement, and the role of various agencies in dealing with intimidation and its consequences.

The 1995 report ‘All over the place’ (Conroy et al., 2005) represented the first post-Troubles endeavour to explore the extent and impact of forced movement. Though highly informative, the report was limited due to the relatively small number of interviewees (thirty-two) and also in that it focuses excessively perhaps on former members of paramilitary organizations. Katherine Side’s (2015, 2018) work on displacement included visual representations of displacement across a range of diverse outputs, while also examining the efficacy of ‘Scheme for the Purchase of Evacuated Dwellings’ (SPED). Other recent outputs argued for the necessity to shift the harms and losses of displacement from the margins to the centre of scholarly approaches to Northern Ireland (Browne & Asprooth-Jackson, 2019; Gilmartin, 2021), while further recent interventions have schematically categorized intimidation and displacement in the ‘Troubles’ (Gilmartin, 2022). Based on focus groups across a wide geographical spread, the ‘No Longer Neighbours’ report (Moffett et al., 2020) documented the sentiments of displacement, the impact of violence on land tenure, as well as housing and redress schemes during and after the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Previous contributions to this journal interrogated the challenges within policies seeking ‘shared space’ in the context of a deeply divided society that is still transitioning from armed conflict. Shared space must entail more than sites of leisure and consumption within neutral urban zones and requires meaningful contact and engagement, such as integrated education (Rafferty, 2012). Others, however, caution that policy based on the inherent qualities of the contact hypothesis is limited and limiting. Segregated communities are not driven by hate of the other; segregation is a structural ethno-religious, social and crucially, economic process, in which paramilitaries, ethnic entrepreneurs and politicians all have a stake in its reproduction (Herrault & Murtagh, 2019; Murtagh & Keaveney, 2006). The patchwork of ethno-religious residential (and often social) segregation is undoubtedly a product significantly impacted by displacement and bequeaths a serious of challenges for those seeking to transform ‘contested space’ into ‘shared space’ as part of Northern Ireland’s peace process.

This article builds upon and adds to these important works. Its unique contribution, however, is its exploration of how the violent rupture of forced movement in the past continues to manifest in a profound sense of dislocation and unsettledness in the present, posing challenges and difficult questions regarding the feasibility of Northern Ireland as a model for conflict resolution.

Research methods

The field research adopts an interpretivist methodological approach using semi-structured, narrative-based interviews with 67 persons conducted by the author between April 2018 and September 2021. The interviews occurred in Belfast, Derry-Londonderry, Liverpool, Shannon, Fermanagh, Newry, Dundalk and Dublin. Of the 67 interviewees, 39 were male and 28 were female. Thirty-nine self-identified as a Protestant or unionist, while 28 self-identified as Catholic or nationalist. Some interviewees requested that their identities be kept confidential and, therefore, in those instances the article uses pseudonyms.

Methodological considerations within the field of refugee studies have led many to concur that qualitative interviewing, specifically narrative approaches, are an important and effective way of learning from refugees because it permits a fuller expression of refugee experiences in their own words. A narrative-based data collection method is grounded in the belief that meaning is ascribed through experiences, and furthermore that we can only know about other peoples’ experiences from the expression they give to them (Eastmond, 2007). While the politics of ‘storytelling’ is, of course, subjective and reflects perspectives and standpoints, its strengths reside in the ability of research participants to structure a narrative that signifies events and experiences in a particular order. In the case of displacement, the use of personal testimony challenges erroneous assumptions regarding the homogeneity of experience among refugees, thus displacing generalized analytical accounts in favour of a more nuanced understanding of the diversity and complexities within those groups forcibly displaced.

While memory is indeed about the past, perhaps its defining feature is its presentism (Misztal, 2003). As an active and dynamic process, recalling and narrating past experiences is shaped and filtered by the present, and moreover, the content of what is recalled or not is situational and contingent on the audience and narrator and the power relationship between them. Testimonies of tumultuous and violent ‘life experiences’ such as forced displacement should therefore be considered constructions and products of active agents and ‘experiencing subjects’ seeking to make sense of violence and turbulent change, paying particular attention to the ways in which experience is framed and articulated (Eastmond, 2007).

Loss, grievance & injustice: the emotional consequences of displacement

Trauma typically refers to the psychological impact of some violent or otherwise shocking event, producing deep-rooted effects which overwhelm the individual, making it difficult to process and come to terms with (Dawson, 2007, 2017). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can manifest in multiple forms of physical and psychological distress; while the ‘event’ may have occurred in the past, its effects may be long-term, and manifest in multiple and contrasting ways. Victims may deal with the enormity of the event by experiencing partial or full amnesia, in other words developing a fragmented memory. Trauma is typically defined and interpreted as a response to an event out of the range of ordinary human experience, generating feelings of helplessness and fear (Dawson, 2017), and, therefore, does not manifest in the actual event, but in the ways the mind processes and memorizes these events in later times. Psychological trauma, at an individual level, stems from a range of threats that shatter our assumptive world whereby the certainties of ‘old’ life are shaken or broken and our ability to make meaning of the predictability and stability of our ‘new’ life is called into question (Waller, 2021, p. 115).

Prevailing and popular understandings of victimhood and loss caused by the Troubles have typically (and understandably) focused on the harm caused by shootings, bombings and related physical violence. Forced displacement, however, also constitutes a form of conflict-related violence and harm, often manifesting via a range of intimidations leading to immense rupture and upheaval in the lives of individuals, families and often entire communities. It is important to state that there was no archetypal form or experience of intimidation and displacement; some literally fled their homes as they were torched, others left quietly in the dead of night after years of incremental intimidation (Gilmartin, 2022). While acknowledging the heterogenous experiences among participants, nevertheless there were discernible patterns of commonality. With regards to their individual experiences of displacement, all research participants spoke of the pain, loss, distress and ‘heart-break’ of losing their family home, their communities, social networks, their places of employment, worship and education (Gilmartin, 2021). Despite the passage of time and physical changes to the landscape, there remains deep-seated feelings of loss and grievance.

While the meanings and understandings associated with displacement memories can and do change across time, nevertheless interviewee testimonies indicate that experiences of displacement have taken on increased significance in the years since the ending of the Troubles. ‘Annie’ was displaced twice from two separate homes in north Belfast, in August 1969 and again in August 1971. Despite the violent destruction of both homes, ‘Annie’ dwelt very little on her displacement when it occurred, stating: ‘at the time you can’t really fathom it and you just get on and forget about things.’ Avoidance and distraction are considered short-term protective devices during the initial stages of trauma-exposure to enable people to get on with basic survival tasks such as fleeing (Puvimanasinghe et al., 2015). Moreover, much of the larger, urban incidents of displacement occurred in the early to mid-1970s, a time when the conflict in Northern Ireland was at its most intense.

Many of the communities effected by displacement were also those that disproportionately suffered the worst incidents of violence throughout the Troubles. It is important, therefore, to avoid framing displacement as a silo aspect of the conflict; categorized and neatly separated from other forms of conflict-related violence. Several research participants such as ‘Annie’ experienced many other aspects of the conflict, including the loss of loved ones and stated that the intensity of the conflict precluded any space for reflection on their forced upheaval. Unsurprisingly, therefore, memories of their displacement experiences became more persistent and prominent in the years of the peace process. Patricia McGuigan’s family were displaced from their home in the Oldpark area of Belfast on three separate occasions in the 1970s. Her encounters with the memories and impact of displacement began occurring in the years after the GFA:

I don’t like watching anything about the Troubles or really talk[ing] about it. I ended up with health problems from it all … to think of us as kids going through all of that and it was supposed to just wash over your head and a thing like, ‘well that’s the way it is’ … part of everyday life. But then when you get older, it starts to have a real effect. So I am now going through counselling because it is all only starting to hit me now. So like you might ‘move on’ on the outside, but inside there’s still … [pause] … like my counsellor told me that I have retained all of this in my nervous system and it only eases by talking about it. And it’s an ongoing battle.

Christina Bennett’s family were forced from their home in Whiteabbey on the outskirts of north Belfast in 1975. The family resettled in Shannon in the Republic of Ireland. Although Christina stated that she has been affected by her family’s displacement all her life, it was only in adulthood and particularly when she had children of her own that she began to really confront the trauma of her displacement experiences a young child:

Later on in adult life, I had this great fear of going back to Whiteabbey; I would have bad dreams. I remember when my first child was born, I would bring her on the back of my bike and one night I dreamt I was back on the Doagh Road close to Rathfern and I was on my bicycle and I was worried that I would sound Southern up there, and then I didn’t know how to get my way out of there, so in my dream, I cycled towards the Doagh Road and make my way to Belfast and find the Falls Road where my husband is from. We took the kids up in the early 2000s to visit Belfast and they asked ‘when are we going to see your house, Mum?’ and this is where it all started to come back for me, and I said ‘no we can’t go there’ and they said ‘why not?’ and I really didn’t know what to say to them but I just said ‘we can’t’ and then my [artistic] work after that was trying to deal with that.

The impact and potency of displacement and its legacy are clearly temporal, with many respondents contending that the years of the peace process provoked memories, emotions and insecurities related to loss of home and place. While the 1998 agreement marked an ending to the violence that characterized the Troubles, nevertheless the aftermath of the violence also furnished the space, time and in some instances, the mechanisms and processes to critically reflect on the enormity and emotional significance of past events. The experiences and memories outlined here are embedded in a wider literature that challenges the notion that trauma and harm are something that improve over time, while simultaneously deconstructing the logic and assumptions underpinning strategies to unilaterally ‘draw a line under the past’. Increasingly, there is an understanding that memories and impacts of conflict-related violence do not have a pre-determined endpoint; in fact, what we are talking about is human loss, hurt, ruptured relationships and these emotions and experiences will undoubtedly shift across time and space but the emotions and experiences do not come to an end, irrespective of the advent of a peace process or other mechanisms. All too often, glib phrases such as ‘closure’, ‘dealing with the past’ and ‘moving on’ assume a self-evident and measurable endpoint.

Many in this research were displaced over 50 years ago and have long since resettled in various parts of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and beyond. Despite the intervening decades of relocation and physical resettlement, many expressed feelings of dislocation and unsettledness. For instance, many of those who resettled in the Republic of Ireland still refer to Belfast, Whiteabbey or Omagh as their true home, despite being resident in towns such as Dundalk and Shannon for well over 45 years. Protestants forced from their homes in Londonderry city also expressed similar levels of dislocation; although they have rebuilt their lives in places like Newbuildings and other parts of the city and further afield, all spoke of their original home in Londonderry as their true home. For some, that sense of loss is exacerbated by the collective sense of ‘retreat’, a phrase that is ubiquitous across the interviews in that city. For many Protestants, the city of Derry is of significant historical and symbolic value in unionist culture. Jonathan Burgess’s family fled their Abercorn Road home near the city’s Bogside in the early 1970s, part of what is colloquially known among the Protestant community as ‘the Exodus’. For him, ‘nobody talked about it [Protestant displacement] because there is a good deal of shame attached to it, that they had run away; people felt that they ran away.’ ‘Phyllis’ and her family fled their Creggan Street home, near Rosemount in Derry. When describing the recent passing of her husband, the participant stated:

his death was listed as ‘formerly of’ and he lived in Newbuildings for 40 years but even then, you still had ‘formerly of Creggan Hill’. If you look at the Protestant deaths listed in this city [Londonderry] you’ll see ‘formerly of’ as their address and you just think those people never really got over losing their home.

The loss of a community and a home was particularly felt by those who were parents at the time of displacement, who interpreted it as the loss of dignity, self-worth, a sense of shame and as an abject failure by them to ‘protect’ the family home and the safety of their children. Feminist scholars have long drawn attention to the ways in which gendered role distinctions function using the gendered dichotomy of ‘male protector/ female protected’ (Tickner, 1992) and many respondents spoke of the differential impact the loss of the family home had on their parents. For many male parents, the loss of home was interpreted as a failure of their primary role and duty to protect family and home, thus engendering feelings of emasculation, inefficacy, resentment and loss of status.

For some respondents, the effect on their parents was immediate and enduring, lasting until their final days; for others the impact and effects only began to manifest in the subsequent years. Kate Rankin (née Heffernon) and her family were forced from their Ardoyne home on 10th August 1971 in the aftermath of the introduction of Internment the previous day, and hastily rehoused in a disused flat in the Glencairn estate. Although a relatively short distance from their exiled home in Ardoyne, Kate’s parents never got over the loss, not only of their family home but also their social networks, affinity and attachment to that part of the city. Despite securing new homes and communities in 1971, Kate stated that her family just never recovered from the loss and her mother spent all the remaining years of her life endeavouring to return as close as she could to her original home:

The stress was terrible, terrible and I’m amazed our parents survived it because my mother was always able to walk up the street to the shops, the Ardoyne shops and do her shopping and everyone knew her; the butchers, you name it they all loved her because she was a character and she’d be in McKenzie’s chemist and telling them all wee jokes and funny stories. So she went from being able to do all that to being forced to the top of Glencairn to a fourth floor flat and no shops anywhere. So her community, her social life, her family circle was all gone and she was now in a strange place, where everything was strange and foreign and she knew nobody. They never got over it, never really settled; the rest of their lives were destroyed, absolutely destroyed.

For those in rural settings, displacement had greater significance and consequence where historical ties between ethnic identity, kinship and place were strong, particularly among Protestants close to the border (Donnan, 2005). Among rural farmers, displacement had three major implications; first, the loss of a home (often a multigenerational household); second, the loss of livelihood and income; and finally, the loss of lineage to a homestead going back generations. Leslie Long lived with his family on their farm in Garrison, Co. Fermanagh. After the IRA killing of Johnny Fletcher in 1972 and after receiving warnings from the police that their farm was being actively targeted by the IRA, the family were forced from their home and farm. He described the anguish and tears of his parents as they watched the last of their cattle being loaded onto the trucks, sold on shortly before the family fled the farm to relocate in Enniskillen. The loss of the home, the farm and their livelihood had a devastating impact on his parents’ health and well-being, which according to Leslie, they never got over. Furthermore, the grievance of forced movement was bound up in a collective consciousness regarding the increasing patterns of communal exodus and the loss of territory. For some interviewees, it was the implications of the latter that caused much anguish and often resistance to fleeing. The forced abandonment of farms among Protestants represented a ‘personal’ tragedy for all involved but was also interpreted as a wider socio-political issue, with a distinct fear of being ‘bought out’ or ‘bred out’ (Donnan, 2005).

‘You need to be from somewhere’: living but not belonging

Refugee narratives reveal a strong connection between the feeling of being ‘spiritually homeless’ and experiences of ‘liminality’ (Den Boer, 2015), whereby those displaced endeavour and continuously struggle to remake a previous way of life that was often violently ruptured, thus experiencing a form of perpetual liminality. An important caveat is not to romanticize the home; while lamenting the loss of home, many interviewees also spoke of the fear, threats and dangers at their original home relating to intimidation but also recounted other non-conflict-related hardships such as poverty, unemployment and social exclusion. Despite this, the idea of home was akin to its symbolic value in providing a ‘sense of belonging’ and its role in the construction of identity, which for many, have never been recovered. While some interviewees resettled permanently in new homes and others led more peripatetic lives post-displacement, the common thread within their shared liminality is the forced context of their departure. The coercive rupture in relationship between person and place therefore advanced an enduring sense of injustice that permeates narratives and memories of place and home in the present, bequeathing forms of ‘ontological insecurity’.

Rooted in existential psychoanalysis, Laing’s (1990 [1960]) original concept of ontological security made the analytical distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘neurotic’ forms of anxiety; the former referring to everyday challenges experienced by most people and are typically fleeting and accepted as part of the human condition. In contrast, the latter refers to a small group of persons who experience a different form of anxiety that is permanent and existentially threatening (Gustafsson & Krickel-Choi, 2020). Giddens’ (1991) idea of ontological security, however, had less to do with its psychological application and more concerned with individuals identity and ‘being’ in negotiating the challenges of late modernity. While agreeing with Laing’s contention that ontological insecurity is experienced by a small number of individuals, Giddens contends that anxiety is both normal and pathological and therefore ontological insecurity is a function of varying degrees of anxiety. In terms of its conceptual application, it is Giddens’ work, however, that has tended to be predominant.

Ontological security, according to Giddens, draws upon the idea of continuity and levels of certainty and predictability in the lives, identities and social knowledge of individuals and collectives, based on a taken-for-granted knowledge of what to expect and how to ‘be’ in the world (Giddens, 1991). While Giddens’ original concept did not have displacement in mind, the idea has been adopted and refashioned by scholars of refugees and conflict into the more pertinent ‘ontological insecurity’, asking critical questions regarding peace, security and humanitarian assistance. For Healey (2006), forced movement disturbs an individual’s ontological security, that being a person’s understanding of their place within their worldview and with which they feel comfortable, through the loss of relative stability in their known world. Post-modern scholars challenge the essentialist and sedentary underpinnings suggesting an innate relationship between persons and fixed territories via the construction of home and spatial belonging (Zetter, 2021). Nevertheless, research with refugees and those forced to flee consistently indicates the prominence of ‘home’ and ‘place’ in the memories and identities of those displaced and the significant symbolic and sometimes physical meaning that memories of displacement retain.

For Perez Murcia (2019), displacement-induced liminality, therefore, has both material and existential dimensions. The material dimension is primarily related to the initial struggle most of the displaced face to find both a secure place to live, work, study, among other considerations after displacement and resettlement. The existential dimension comprises the more emotional and symbolic thresholds the displaced need to overcome in the process of transforming a shelter into a meaningful home (Den Boer, 2015). Research on the post-flight lives of those displaced consistently suggests that the existential dimension of liminality consistently prevails over the material dimension. Indeed, liminality is rarely experienced as the lack of a place to live (Perez Murcia, 2019, p. 1523). Despite years – and, as is the case in Northern Ireland, even decades – living in new homes and communities, those displaced are still searching for an existential home. For them, the material structure of homes and shelter has not been transformed into a home.

Processes of ‘home-making’ by those forcibly displaced, involve much more than the materiality of a new house or dwelling; invariably, it evokes important processes of belonging, attachment and security; a sense of belonging which eluded and vexed many interviewees despite that passage of time and resettlement in new homes and communities. Ontological security pivots on the notion that individuals and groups negotiate and address social risks, anxieties and insecurities by seeking stable anchors such as daily practices, routines and familiarity that essentially constitute our biographies. These practices, when successful, reify our identity and bracket out existential questions. Routines – the repetition of behaviours, physical and social practices – are necessarily spatially situated within our familiar environments and frequently associated with the notion of ‘home’.

For Taylor (2015), the process of persons being forced to leave the geographical location they have called home may actually solidify the idea of home as a tangible physical place. While an individual or group may believe that their relationship to the physical space that surrounds them is singular, places are more accurately seen as cultural processes, acquiring and changing meaning over time as a result of the social activity that occurs within them (Taylor, 2015). Taylor’s (2015) idea of ‘spatial homes’ broadens understandings of loss beyond the materiality of cherished homes, furniture and other possessions, and signifies an expansive sense of dislocation invoked by an uprootedness from a lost place and community. Among respondents, memories, descriptions and meanings of ‘home’ consistently extended far beyond the physical house; the most striking aspect of interviewees’ accounts was, respectfully, their banality and simplicity. Most described ‘home’ via the daily routines and practices revolving around social life. Invariably, this entailed narrating memories of going to shops, work, schools, dances, sports and recreation, religious and cultural events, running errands, visiting relatives – in addition, for rural participants, their narratives outlined daily tasks related to farming. The meaning and attachment to ‘home’ is therefore not a given but ascribed through the repetition of daily practices (Taylor, 2015). For many interviewees, the notion of ‘home’ was constituted via memories and attachments to physical places and particular geographical locations such as streets or defined communities and, perhaps most prominently, their daily routines.

Relocation and rehousing, for many interviewees, was a conflicting mixture of relief tempered by the precarious nature of post-displacement life. The impact therefore reached beyond the immediate loss of home and possessions; in all cases, it led to the disruption of social networks, established routines and familiar structures that form the foundations of ontological security. These experiences reveal a dissonance between the idea that resettlement brings safety and security and the reality that for many, the years of post-displacement have been marked by new forms of insecurity and precariousness as many found themselves and their families living in unfamiliar housing developments and communities. Many spoke of losing jobs or being forced to terminate employment due to their movement. At a time when means of communication were comparatively rudimentary, many lost contacts with friends and neighbours permanently. Other issues such as the practicalities of grocery shopping, education, attending church also presented many new and unsettling challenges. This was particularly evident among those who moved from urban to rural settings and of course for those who resettled in a different jurisdiction. The rupture in predictability and challenges they faced in new environments undoubtedly brought immediate safety and refuge but, in many instances, also presented new forms of isolation, anxiety and uncertainty.

Forced movement, therefore, entailed the acute obliteration of an established way of ‘being’ in the social world furnished a visceral sense of liminality, where ‘one finds oneself cut off from the past, unsettled in the present, and unsure of the future’ (Ghorashi, 2005). ‘Jenny’ and her family were displaced on many occasions in the 1970s and 1980s due to IRA threats and attacks against her father and the family home, due to her father being an RUC officer. The constant movement impacted their lives greatly on each occasion with regards to its immediate impact such as seeking new houses and schools, but it also left a legacy of dislocation and uprootedness:

When people say to me and my husband, ‘oh, where are youse from?’ and my husband is from [named place] and then I always have to stop and think, ‘well I’m not really sure where I’m from’ … it’s quite sad, you know [Jenny becomes upset; pause in interview]. I just think it is quite sad and I don’t know why because I have lived in [named town] almost all my life but I don’t feel I am from there. And I was just thinking about it this morning, there’s something displaced there; what is it that makes me feel that I don’t belong to any of these places? I have lived in [named place] for over 15 years and yet why do I not feel I’m from there and that’s part of this displacement because you need to be from somewhere, so I don’t really understand it and it is just part of being displaced that you don’t attach yourself to particular places but I just can’t get a handle on this.

While the narratives and accounts of respondents are enmeshed with feelings and memories of ‘powerlessness’ and a lack of control over what had happened to them and their families, there is also evidence of anger and resentment that this was something that had been forced upon them and yet its expansive impact remains drenched in a silent sadness and resentment where many believe they are ‘forgotten victims’. A range of critical scholars working broadly within a postmodernist paradigm have correctly challenged the sedentarism and naturalizing assumptions within conventional narratives linking all people to certain places and territories; much of the sense of uprootedness, however, stems not from a blind sentimentality for past homes and communities but from the involuntary nature of their movement. For most interviewees, it was the coercion and lack of volition in their departures that both provoked and sustains their liminality and widespread sense of injustice; an injustice often exacerbated by a lack of societal awareness and acknowledgement of their suffering and losses (Gilmartin, 2021).

Mary McAleese (née Leneghan)⁷, her family and large extended family all lived in the greater Ardoyne district. Mary’s family were forced from their upper Crumlin Road home on 8th December 1972 after the UDA raked their home with gunfire. The family moved to an abandoned house in Andersonstown in west Belfast, before eventually resettling Rostrevor in rural Co. Down. The thoughts and perspectives of Mary regarding the post-displacement dislocation are a powerful expression of the enduring sadness, loss and injustice:

The downstream consequences for us now was all sorts of dislocations for us. The tight community that we had; the aunts, the uncles, the cousins, that was all gone. The businesses that I mentioned, all gone, all closed. Family all scattered, friends all scattered, friends that I never set eyes on again because we never knew where each other went to. I don’t feel that way [emotional or personal attachment] about Belfast; I still feel dislocated; I still feel like I still don’t have a home. We made a home here [current home] and we made a home in Dublin but I still feel that we have been robbed of something. Many people have a great love of the place they were born and a great affection for it and can’t wait to go back to it and that they feel a real sense of belonging and a sense of peace and a sense of return. I don’t feel that. When I go up the Crumlin Road, I feel nervous, I feel frightened, it all comes back; I feel uncomfortable and I feel that the life that we had was disrupted so quickly, I just feel a great sense of loss. It’s a place I can’t trust and I don’t trust, and I just feel a great sense of loss. It’s a place that betrayed us, took away our childhood, took away our right to a childhood, took away our home, never said sorry, never acknowledged the awfulness and the reality of it but in fact did the opposite in ‘just move on’, so it’s a place for me of great mistrust and I think that is a real loss there, a real loss.

While the concept of a ‘double displacement’ (Kabachnik et al., 2010) is premised on the idea that those displaced see their current homes as ‘transitionary’, lost in a bind between memories of home in the past and dreams of returning home in the future, the case of Northern Ireland does not fit the prescribed model where many of those forced from their homes held no desire for a return to original homes and are content with their physical well-being and security in the present. The post-displacement lives built in new homes addressed the need for physical security and well-being but the sense of biographical liminality and dislocation are not assuaged by the material security of a new home. Moreover, dealing with past injustices and the pursuit of truth are now a frequent demand and expectation within transitional justice and peacebuilding processes (Hayner, 2001), and there is clear frustration and anger among interviewees at the lack of acknowledgement and redress within the GFA and wider peace process. Of course, such frustrations are unsurprising given that the shortfalls and inadequacies of the GFA and its endeavours to deal with the past are not limited to displacement.

Despite cursory commitments to addressing the issue of victims in the 1998 peace accord, no state-led, formal structure or process was stipulated or established. Consequently, approaches to addressing the legacy of the thousands killed and injured during the conflict have been at best fragmented, staggered and inept, leaving thousands of citizens without truth, acknowledgement and accountability (Coulter et al., 2021). As the testimonies in this article reveal, the long-term harm and trauma engendered by displacement during the Troubles suggests that those impacted fall within the broader category of victim and survivor and as such should have this recognized. Broader interpretations of violence, harm and loss pave the way for a more critical consideration of displacement and its long-term impact. Such considerations not only spotlight one of the many shortfalls of the peace process in its practical approaches and referential subjects of redress, the narratives and expressions of individual dislocation and liminality also stand as a robust challenge to the tenacious framing of Northern Ireland as a ‘post-conflict’ and peaceful society.

Conclusion

This article contributes important new insights into evolving debates on peacebuilding, trauma and displacement, with ramifications not only for Northern Ireland but for all regions emerging from the aftermath of armed conflict. Within international law, processes of repatriation (right to return), resettlement and integration, and/or material and symbolic forms of reparations remain the staples of addressing the needs and rights of those who suffer and survive forced movement. Such important policy and practical approaches, however, tend to focus on the immediate and often material requirements. Underpinning some of these approaches is a state-centric logic regarding the restoration of state-citizen relationship via processes of social and political inclusion, social integration and the acquisition of citizenship (Janmyr, 2008, p. 162). Though issues of resettlement, integration and reparations are also centrally important to those displaced during the Troubles (see Gilmartin, 2021), this article provided important insights into the long-term and often intangible consequences of displacement that are typically not recognized, let alone addressed by predominant peacebuilding approaches.

For those who experienced and survived displacement in Northern Ireland, the visceral sense of being silenced, ignored, or marginalized are the outcomes of reductive discourse and policy outputs that continue to frame loss, suffering and victimhood solely as those acts associated with conventional forms of physical, armed violence, thus cultivating a hierarchy of harms and victims. Therefore, a pressing and key challenge is to recognize forced displacement as a specific but heterogenous form of conflict-related violence and harm, and thus devise processes and approaches that address their particular transitional rights in a meaningful and holistic way. Given the state’s abject failure to prevent past displacement and, moreover, its continuing failure to address its legacy in the present, any future state-led endeavours to address the legacy of conflict must recognize and incorporate displacement as a source of harm, loss and grievance, and I argue, should consider some form of symbolic acknowledgement as an important means of recognizing the high levels of displacement experienced by its citizens.

Public acknowledgment of forced movement is more than simply being mindful or knowing about past hurts; it is about conferring public recognition on an injustice that was committed in the name of a specific political unit or collective. In doing so, it validates the hurt and suffering of those forcibly uprooted and has the potential to establish new relations and understandings regarding conflict-related harms and their long-term impacts. Addressing the psychological legacy of conflict is a pre-requisite to creating a healthy, fully functioning post-conflict society; any peace agreement or political settlement that does not risk the return of future hostilities (Waller, 2021, p. 123). Given its complete neglect of those forced from their homes and communities, the persistent exaltation of Northern Ireland as a ‘model of conflict resolution’ withers in the face of a society imbued with many forms of unresolved and, in this instance, unacknowledged harms.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express his sincere gratitude to all those participants who generously gave their time to share their stories for this research.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme and the Busteed Postdoctoral Fellowship, Institute of Irish Studies, at the University of Liverpool.

Notes on contributors

Niall Gilmartin

Niall Gilmartin is a lecturer in Sociology.

Notes

1 International law makes a distinction between refugees as those who cross an international, sovereign border to escape war and persecution, and IDPs as those seeking refuge but remain within their country or state of origin.

2 The armed conflict which engulfed Northern Ireland from 1968 until its peace accord of 1998 claimed over 3700 lives and injured over 22,000 people, and is euphemistically dubbed the ‘Troubles’, a term widely used in academic and non-academic accounts.

3 Some violence of the Troubles occurred in the Republic of Ireland, England and mainland Europe.

4 The author rejects foundational understandings of identities as fixed, durable and immutable. The use of ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ therefore does not signify or suggest the existence of homogenous, unified communities; differences of class, gender, location and political affiliation all contribute to the complexity of identification in Northern Ireland. ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ are a means of using a common category of identity while simultaneously respecting the diversity within and across them.

5 Forced displacement was not unique to the ‘Troubles’ but in fact is a historical feature at the very root of division in Ireland. More than any other historical event, the Ulster plantation in early seventeenth century copper fastened the tenacious links between land, identity and power. Ethno-sectarian violence and forced displacement were recorded throughout the 1800s and again during the partition of Ireland in 1921 and the early years following the creation of the Northern Ireland state.

6 Although the city council changed its name from Londonderry City Council to Derry City Council in 1984, (after a change in council boundaries in 2015, it is now Derry City & Strabane District Council) the official title of the city remains Londonderry. Broadly, Protestant interviewees referred to the city as Londonderry while Catholics used Derry. To reflect this diversity, the article uses both terms.

7 Mary McAleese was elected the eighth President of Ireland in November 1997 and served two terms until November 2011. Growing up near Ardoyne in north Belfast, her family and many of her friends were adversely impacted by the Troubles. Additionally, her then boyfriend and future husband Martin McAleese and his family were also forced from their homes in east Belfast in 1971 and Rathcoole in 1972 respectively. After graduating in Law from Queens University, Belfast (QUB) in 1973, she undertook roles including barrister, Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin, the first female Pro-Vice Chancellor at QUB, and a broadcaster and journalist. Mary was the first and to date, the only person born in Northern Ireland to be elected President of Ireland.