Clare Dwyer

Navigating Risk: Understanding the Impact of the Conflict on Children and Young People in Northern Ireland

Twenty years on from the 1994 cease-fires, Northern Ireland is a markedly safer place for children and young people to grow up. However, for a significant number, growing up in post-conflict Northern Ireland has brought with it continued risks and high levels of marginalization. Many young people growing up on the sharp edge of the transition have continued to experience troubling levels of poverty, lower educational attainment, poor standards of childhood health, and sustained exposure to risk-laden environments. Reflecting on interdisciplinary research carried out since the start of the “transition” to peace, this article emphasizes the impact that embedded structural inequalities continue to have on the social, physical, mental, and emotional well-being of many children and young people. In shining a light on the enduring legacy of the conflict, this article moves to argue that greater attention needs to be given to the ongoing socioeconomic factors that result in limited lifetime opportunities, marginalization, and sustained poverty for many young people growing up in “peacetime” Northern Ireland.

They might as well be walking around the inside of a biscuit tin: Barriers to Employment and Reintegration for 'Politically Motivated' Former Prisoners in Northern Ireland

The prisoner provisions under the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement emphasised the importance of the reintegration and civic inclusion of ‘politically motivated’ former prisoners; however, numerous barriers to full reintegration remain. Notwithstanding the fact that these prisoners were released as part of a peace process, based on principles of conflict transformation and reconciliation, there were still numerous conditions placed upon them as part of their release process and they continued to hold a ‘criminal’ record upon release. As with ‘ordinary’ ex-prisoners, these ‘politically motivated’ former prisoners have subsequently faced numerous obstacles in their attempts to reintegrate back into society, particularly in the area of employment. Recognising that they needed to deal with the consequences of imprisonment, ‘politically motivated’ former prisoners formed numerous self-help organizations to assist in the reintegration process and have mobilised to lobby for protection against the discrimination and unequal treatment experienced by ex-prisoners seeking employment. This article explores the remaining barriers to employment for ‘politically motivated’ former prisoners and the consequences of these barriers. The article moves to assess how prisoner groups have subsequently used a ‘rights based’ discourse to engage local government in their struggle to overcome existing obstacles before finally concluding that any piecemeal attempt to remove barriers to full reintegration will only impede the longer term conflict transformation process in Northern Ireland.

‘Sometimes I wish I was an “ex” ex-prisoner’: identity processes in the collective action participation of former prisoners in Northern Ireland

Since the signing of the Northern Ireland peace agreement, a plethora of community-based prisoner self-help organizations has been established wherein former prisoners and staff, manage and deliver services to colleagues. By forging and maintaining their collective identities through community-based mutual aid, members of these self-help organizations not only have progressed to create individual change/assistance but have also developed and evolved to tackle serious wider social issues which impact the members of their organizations. This is a critical analysis of how the conditions of a post-conflict society can influence both the development and evolution of these organizations and also how members situate their claims about the self in the organization and beyond. Using the social movement framework, it is argued that the work of these self-help organizations have given rise to a new politics of identity – the ‘politically motivated’ ex-prisoner.