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Abstract
In the British Isles, traditional accounts surrounding the concept of citizenship usually develop along liberal or neo-liberal pathways. That is to say the study of citizenship in these Isles derives from the work of the late T.H. Marshall. While the importance of his work deserves its time-honoured acknowledgement in the literature, various writers such as Giddens, Heater, and Turner have taken issue with his argument that citizenship rights were handed down or that they ‘re-evolved’ over the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, their main differences with Marshall are not along theoretical lines but rather the applicability, or otherwise, of his model to other societies. Roger Brubaker points out that the nation state is the final arbiter of who is, or is not, a citizen which in the modern world is an act of social closure. This paper will discuss the efficacy of a sociological approach, based on social closure theory, as a means of understanding the struggle that has accompanied the granting of citizenship rights. Northern Ireland will be used as a case study to assess the effectiveness of social closure theory as a sociological explanation for the expansion of citizenship rights in a divided community.
Notes
1. Some women householders were given the right to vote in 1869.
2. Wilson, in his memoirs, records that the ‘Westminster Parliament and…many of our 1964 and 1966 entrants, was deeply concerned about human rights. It seemed inconsistent to assert human rights in Africa or the darkest areas of Europe when they were being patently denied in Ulster, a part of the UK’ Wilson (Citation1971, p. 270).
3. For instance, doctors jealously guard their monopoly to treat patients, although they are coming under increasing pressure to devolve their position through, for example, nurse prescribers.
4. For instance, in youth culture, it could be dress or language codes; in criminal gangs, it could be having conformed to an initiation rite; in black society, the ability to ‘rap’, or being proposed for membership for those who wish to gain access to a golf club, or any other number of items or behaviour that is designated by groups as necessary for membership. Of more pertinence to this paper is that to be Protestant was to be a member of the dominant social group in Northern Ireland during Stormont rule.
5. See Ringer (Citation2004) for an elaborated discussion regarding Weber's view of ethnicity and indeed nation.
6. Whether it is reasonable to use armed force is beyond the scope of this paper.
7. A previous IRA campaign lasting from 1956 to 1962 petered out due to lack of public support (Buckland Citation1979, Citation1980).
8. An attempt to establish a power-sharing executive, the Sunningdale Agreement, involving both Unionists and Nationalists in proportion to their numbers, was brought down by a two-week campaign of civil disobedience and intimidation by Loyalist workers in 1973 – surely a very rare example of anarchy overcoming democracy and being rewarded in modern times.
9. Though the concept of ‘learned helplessness’ may, perhaps, be a more accurate interpretation.
10. Shea also notes that he was told by one of his bosses that ‘because you are a Roman Catholic you may never get any promotion. I'm sorry’. Shea (Citation1981, p. 177).
11. Between 1971 and 1987 unemployment among Catholics doubled to 36% for men and 15% for women. Even though unemployment also rose among Protestants – the figures for 1987 are 15% for men and 9% for women – it increased faster among Catholics than among Protestants (Lundy Citation2001, p. 713).
12. The role of John Hume, SDLP, leader, was crucial as was the work of former Prime Minister John Major and former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.
13. There was widespread outrage and condemnation of this racist attack by local political and community leaders, and by the hierarchy of some loyalist groups like the UDA.
14. It was not until the election of November 1965 that the Nationalist Party assumed the title ‘Official Opposition’ in Stormont for the first time.
15. While political power is actually shared is a debatable point, ministers have the ‘authority’ to take unilateral decisions, of which the abolition of the 11+ transfer examination is just one example.
16. The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement included the removal of all territorial claims by the Irish State from its constitution, especially Articles 2 and 3.