National identity in transition? Moving out of conflict in (Northern) Ireland

This thematic section of Nations and Nationalism starts from a question of substantive political importance: How does institutional change - in particular reforms towards ethno-national equality and the opening of borders - affect national identification in divided regions? It takes the case of Northern Ireland where a radical process of institutional change is underway. It uses new approaches to national identity to map different aspects of change and continuity – in categories of identity and in their interrelations and contents, in elite and in everyday popular identifications (for useful overviews, see Abdelal et al, 2003; Ashmore et al, 2004). It examines the trajectory of the Protestant minority in the Irish state to show possible repertoires of change. The authors look respectively at self-reported categories of identity, official discourses of identity, and popular understandings of nationality. The introduction outlines the relevance of this research to current comparative and theoretical debates.