Citizenship and the Biopolitics of Post-nationalist Ireland

In June 2004 voters in the Republic of Ireland endorsed a constitutional amendment to deprive children born on the island of Ireland of their previously automatic right to Irish citizenship. This change came amid increasing immigration and so-called 'baby tourism', whereby non-national mothers were alleged to be coming to Ireland to give birth for the sole purpose of bestowing Irish citizenship on their children. This article sets the referendum in its historical and contemporary context. Along with recent jurisprudence of the Irish Supreme Court, the amendment betokens a distinctive biopolitics orchestrated according to neo-liberal themes consonant with Ireland's membership of the European Union and its foreign direct investment strategy. As such, the amendment confirms the shift in Irish constitutional history from autarkic nationalism to cosmopolitan post-nationalism embodied in the Belfast Agreement of 1998.     

Law, Struggle, and Political Transformation in Northern Ireland

This article analyses the role of law as an element of the Republican Movement's violent and political struggle during the Northern Ireland conflict. The trials and legal hearings of paramilitary defendants, the use of judicial reviews in the prisons, and the use of law in the political arena are chosen as three interconnected sites which highlight the complex interaction between law and other forms of struggle. The author argues that these three sites illustrate a number of themes in understanding the role of law in processes of struggle and political transformation. These include: law as a series of dialogical processes both inside and outside a political movement; law as an instrumental process of struggle designed to materially and symbolically 'resist'; and the constitutive effects of legal struggle upon a social and political movement. The article concludes with a discussion as to whether or not Republicans' emphasis upon 'rights and equality' and an end to armed struggle represents a 'sell out' of traditional Republican objectives.     

Women,the Home and Resistance in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This paper provides a perspective on women's resistance in Northern Ireland by focussing on their experiences of house raids. In light of a growing literature on women in conflict with the state, it argues that women have become increasingly politicised and organised in their resistance to repeated incursions into the home by the security forces which have ruptured traditional boundaries around relations of motherhood, home maker and sexual privacy. Based on a qualitative study of one hundred women in Northern Ireland, this paper suggests the coercive agents of the state have played a significant role in both the individual and collective resistance of women. Paradoxically, it seems, the security forces have become agents of change whereby the exposition and violation of the home has been one of the forces which has nurtured and defined women's political consciousness.     

Fraud,extortion and racketeering: The black economy in Northern Ireland

One of the central reasons for the longevity of the terrorist conflict in Northern Ireland is that the main terrorist groups generate support from their ethnic constituencies through their powers of patronage in the informal economy. The terrorist groups have evolved into formalised structures which have been able to amass a sizable amount of dirty money which has been used in part to create an informal welfare network. The paper explains the inadequacies of some accounts of the terrorist groups, examines the links between those groups and the informal economy, and examines the government's recent attempts to combat racketeering. Racketeering will not be eliminated by police action alone.     

School exclusions: Lessons from Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland there are many fewer permanent exclusion from school than in England and Wales. It has been suggested that this may be linked to differences in the statutory schemes which regulate exclusion. This article compares the legal framework for school exclusions in Northern Ireland and England and Wales; provides a comparative analysis of the statistical data in relation to school exclusions; assesses whether the differences in the legal framework may have an impact on the propensity to permanently exclude; and considers whether there are any other non-legal factors which may explain lower rates of school exclusions. The overall objective is to see whether the legal differences which exist have a meaningful effect on the overall rate of school exclusion and to extrapolate best practice. In particular, the analysis focuses on experience of the statutory pre-expulsion consultation procedure in Northern Ireland, which has no equivalent in England and Wales.     

Extra-parliamentary behaviour in Northern Ireland: MLAs and constituency service

Little is known about the attitudes and behaviour of Northern Ireland’s subnational legislators (Members of the Legislative Assembly, or MLAs) beyond their activities at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. This article provides the first analysis of MLAs’ extra-parliamentary behaviour through a mixed-methods study of their constituency service. The study finds that MLAs attach considerable importance to constituency service, devoting more time to its provision than to parliamentary duties. Noticeable variation exists between and within parties in terms of constituency service effort, although unionist MLAs tend to have a stronger constituency focus than non-unionist MLAs. Variation in constituency service effort at the individual level has more to do with MLAs’ role orientations than electoral incentives. In terms of their home style, MLAs exhibit local behaviour that is more characteristic of their contemporaries in the Republic of Ireland than their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom.     

Parent power: building bridges in Northern Ireland?

‘Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’ (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26(3))     

The devolution era in Northern Ireland

By creating ‘outsiders’ … labelling invariably gives rise to repeat interventions of increasing intensity that … ultimately establish, consolidate, and/or confirm offender ‘identities’. Such ‘identities’ attract further intervention and/or negative reaction and so the process continues.

(Goldson, 2010)

As the above quote attests, labelling theorists recognise the harmful impact of formal system contact on the individual and contend that problems occur when members of society become intolerant towards the individual's offending, forming a ‘negative social reaction’, invoking damaging consequences for the ‘offender’ (ibid).     

'An effective mask for terror': Democracy,death squads and Northern Ireland

Defining terrorism solely as anti-state activity is in the ascendant in the aftermath of 9/11. Yet the existence of death squads – paramilitary groups involved in state-sponsored or state-tolerated terror against political opponents – reveals that the state can also be terrorist. Most commonly, death squads exist in non-democratic states, and most of the literature on death squads focuses on such societies. This article seeks to examine the circumstances in which death squads and democracy can coexist, looking specifically at the case of loyalist paramilitary violence and state collusion in Northern Ireland.