The future of Northern Ireland: border anxieties and support for Irish reunification under varieties of UKexit

ABSTRACT

The paper assesses public attitudes in Northern Ireland towards the potential hardening of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as a result of the UK’s exit from the European Union. It investigates the relationship between border-related anxieties and support for a United Ireland. The study draws on specially designed qualitative and quantitative data, generated from a one-day citizens’ assembly and a representative attitude survey. It identifies a group of conditional Catholics who support Irish unity, but only under ‘hard exit’ conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Northern Ireland
• referendum
• border
• unification
• UKexit from the European Union

JEL:

• H1
• H10

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For a detailed account of the negotiations, see Connolly (2018); for an economic historian’s perspective, see O’Rourke (2019); for an historical account of the border, see Ferriter (2019); and for an overview of the implications for Northern Ireland, see Murphy (2018).

2. This was a favoured theme of John Hume, former leader of the moderate Irish nationalists in the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and one of the architects of the peace process, and the Good Friday Agreement (for a discussion, see McLoughlin, 2013).

3. For example, see the exchange between Sammy Wilson, DUP ‘Brexit’ spokesperson, and Lady Hermon in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, 6 March 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKIDkp3Wc4E). See also, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-good-friday-agreement/.

4. On the history of the differences between the DUP and Sinn Féin on the EU question, see Ganiel (2013) and Maillot (2013).

5. Citizens’ assemblies have been formally instituted by several states to consider, and make, recommendations on public policy questions. There have also been many research exercises resembling the present study (e.g., Farrell, 2014; Farrell et al., 2019; Fournier et al., 2011; Fishkin, 2018). We transcribed the citizens’ roundtable discussions that occurred after expert presentations by two of the authors and we analysed the text to identify emerging themes.

6. In the deliberative forum these concepts were carefully and neutrally explained; in the survey we are confident that the significance of the customs union and the single market were widely understood because of their prominent public salience since the summer of 2016.

7. See McNicholl et al. (2019) for a discussion of identity distinctions; and Garry (2016) on the partisan distinction.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge that this work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the UK [grant number ES/R000417/1].