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Beyond Inequality? assessing the impact of fair employment, affirmative action and equality measures on conflict in Northern Ireland
Author(s)
Date Issued
2012-10
Date Available
2015-10-31T04:00:08Z
Abstract
Northern Ireland is an excellent test case of the impact of fair employment,
affirmative action and equality measures on ethno-communal conflict. Given the
complex interconnection of factors at play in conflict, the conclusion is not a simple
one although the facts are clear. From deep and historically entrenched inequality
on a multiplicity of dimensions, a disadvantaged Catholic population only very slowly
– and with the help of a range of allies in the US, and emerging international equality
norms – got increasingly strong equality measures enacted, and very unevenly
moved closer to a position of equality and indeed power. This population had
traditionally mobilised on a nationalist rather than an egalitarian platform. In 1968-9,
however, a civil rights campaign (in which discrimination in public employment and
housing, and a consciousness of social injustice more generally, formed an important
part) triggered thirty years of violent conflict which quickly became framed in
nationalist terms. In the 1980s, for reasons which we discuss below, issues of
economic inequality came high onto the political agenda. Since 1998, there has been
a political settlement on the basis of a substantive improvement in the condition of
Catholics there on all measures – economic, political and cultural - while leaving the
national question open for the future. Equality is neither perfectly assured nor
stable, and national identities and oppositions remain salient, yet there is a
discernible identity shift and change in the urgency of nationalist aims, which appear
to be related to the equality measures. The intellectual challenge is to pull apart the
various strands of causality, to see how equality (for the purposes of this paper,
economic equality and in particular, affirmative action measures) contributed to this.
This paper gives a broad overview of the relation between changing processes of
collective mobilisation, changing policies and changing benchmarks of communal
in/equality in the context of a radically changing economic structure. It argues that
the politicisation of economic inequality was a phase in a longer process of
communal struggle, one which lost intensity only when some of the most striking
aspects of employment inequality were remedied, but well before complete equality
was achieved: while wider forms of in/equality have become politicised, the
achievement of substantive economic progress towards equality has changed the
frame of struggle, significantly moderating nationalist politics and shifting unionist
self-conceptions although not blurring communal boundaries.
Type of Material
Book Chapter
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright (Published Version)
2012, Palgrave Macmillan
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Part of
Graham Brown, Arnim Langer and Frances Stewart (eds.). Affirmative Action in Plural Societies : International Experiences
ISBN
978-0-230-27780-9
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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