Migrants,transcultural memory and World War I commemoration in post-conflict Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article explores a community memory project on World War I led by first-generation migrants living in Northern Ireland. As a location recovering from 30 years of political violence, debates on commemoration are frequently reduced to the bi-partisan lens of Irish nationalism or British unionism. World War I is one episode often interpreted through this exclusivist framework. Recent immigration, however, raises questions as to how those who are neither nationalist nor unionist can partake in public memory debates. Drawing on the project’s experiences, I argue that incorporating migrants’ worldviews on the past can elucidate important transcultural analysis and positively aid in reframing simplistic ethno-national interpretations. Transcultural methods can illuminate cross-cultural themes and explicate differences and similarities across multiple groups rather than just two historically divided communities. Thus, transcultural approaches offer a novel means of generating holistic dialogue on memory which has transformative potential for a society transitioning from conflict to peace.

Introduction

This article explores a memory project on World War I commemoration which focused on the perspectives of first-generation migrants living in Northern Ireland. As a contested space recovering from the implications of 30 years of ethnopolitical violence (1968–1998), debates on the past are often reduced to a bi-partisan lens of Irish nationalist or British unionist ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002). The memory of events such as World War I, which took place in the lead up to the partition of the island in the 1920s, have traditionally reflected differing contemporary views on the region’s constitutional status within the United Kingdom. However, recent immigration problematises the notion that perspectives on the past can fall neatly within simple container memory cultures (Welsch, 1999). Instead, increasing diversity shines light on the relevance of overlapping transcultural approaches to memorialisation in post-conflict settings. Borrowing Erll’s (2011) interpretation, transcultural memory is defined as a mnemonic process, ‘unfolding across and beyond cultures. It means transcending the borders of traditional “cultural memory studies” by looking beyond established research assumptions, objects and methodologies’ (p. 9). A transcultural consideration of memory, particularly in the public domain, is significant for a place like Northern Ireland in challenging and deconstructing presupposed ideas about the past as rooted in narrow ethno-national politics. Transcultural approaches also discard the notion of simple segmented identities in favour of a profoundly complex dialogue about memorialisation as neither homogeneous nor bounded. Such interpretation is often missing in many participatory projects around remembrance and is a gap which the article attempts to address (Waterton and Smith, 2010).

In this study, I explore several interlinked issues. First, what is the position of new migrants in debates on commemoration in an already divided place like Northern Ireland? Second, can and should migrants, with their different worldviews and transcultural perspectives, play a more prominent role in problematising simple ethnonational understandings of the region’s past? And third, is there potential benefit for a divided society in pursuing diverse interpretations of the past through input from new migrants? In elucidating these questions, I analyse a participatory migrant community initiative on World War I’s centenary, an event often ‘remembered’ very differently by unionist and nationalist communities. ‘Diverse Perspectives on a Global Conflict’ (hereafter, ‘Diverse Perspectives’) was a collaborative initiative that was researched and led by 12 migrants who explored the war’s legacy in their countries of origin and in Northern Ireland. Several workshops, organised collaboratively between migrants and the author in 2017 and 2018, offered opportunities for contributors to debate the ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ of difficult pasts as well as human dimensions of conflict. Working collaboratively, participants prepared a panel exhibition that toured the region with the official library service in 2019 and early 2020, and which was also exhibited in the Ulster Museum (the region’s national museum). ‘Diverse Perspectives’ was subsequently identified as an example of intercultural working through its inclusion on the programme of Good Relations week – a government initiative to promote peace, reconciliation and a shared public environment.

The article posits that such transcultural approaches to memory, while small scale, can instigate new opportunities for dialogue on the past. First, the project offered an important process for individual migrants to engage with and reflect on public memory. Second, the project had a wider group impact in its ‘un-silencing’ of migrant perspectives of World War I memory to be heard publicly. Third, the later display of an exhibition about the project and the associated launch events throughout Northern Ireland provided the ‘contact point’ through which the wider population could start to engage with the stories and with participants. Approaches like these are part of a deeply democratic endeavour and sit well within the wider ethos of cultural pluralism that peace processes and culturally diverse societies, more broadly, are premised on (Kymlicka, 1995; Nagle, 2016; Taylor, 1994; Young, 1990). Transcultural views around commemoration and the past have additional utility in complicating and thus multi-politicising previous notions that are rooted in ethno-national competition. Paradoxically, a potentially stabilising effect is engendered through a broadening of debates which challenges the binary perspectives of the two dominant ethnopolitical groups (Irish nationalists and British unionists). Such approaches, therefore, indicate transformative potential in relation to the way the past is considered in an already divided society like Northern Ireland.

Reconsidering perspectives on divided memory in Northern Ireland

Despite global interconnectedness, the imagined national community remains a pervasive marker of public remembrance and this has implications for individual identity alongside wider senses of group cohesion (Halbwachs, 1992). World War I commemoration in Northern Ireland falls within this trend where the event has, for over 100 years, played a central part in the social construction of group affiliation. Despite involvement from all sides of the community in the Great War, commemorative rituals associated with the event in the intervening years became primarily associated with a protestant/unionist collective memory (Switzer, 2007). Physical memorials to the fallen of World War I and remembrance events each November became central performances of Britishness. By contrast, the service of catholic nationalists in the British military during World War I, was primarily rejected, or consciously ‘forgotten’ (Halbwachs, 1992). This was especially pronounced after the onset of the ‘Troubles’ from the late 1960s to 1990s when the British state and its military came to be viewed by many nationalists as the oppressor (Robinson, 2010).

Traditional assessments of World War I commemoration as a solely unionist endeavour were, however, re-interpreted somewhat in the early 1990s. The Irish state and moderate nationalist parties in the north engaged in a process of détente, bolstered by lowering levels of violence and embryonic discussions around peace. Such a changing environment facilitated some northern nationalists to tentatively re-engage with family histories of British Army service during World War I (Grayson, 2010: 331) and in 1994, the Irish National War Memorial at Island Bridge, Dublin, officially opened several decades after it was partially completed (Macleod, 2013: 648). In the north, representatives of the moderate nationalist party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), attended armistice day events for the first time in 1992 (Grayson, 2010: 331), while representatives of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Party, slowly moved from ‘peripheral’ to more ‘formal engagement’ since the early 2000s (Grayson, 2014: 102; Rousvoal, 2020). While Irish nationalists have more frequently engaged with World War I memory, it is important to note that they often do so in a way which remains within their political ideology. Many have emphasised that their family members had joined the military in the hope of gaining Irish independence at the war’s end as a reward from the British state. A discourse of sacrifice, so prominent in wider war commemoration, is positioned, therefore, in relation to Ireland and not Britain. World War I remembrance for many other nationalists, however, remains ‘deeply associated with “British militarism”’ which renders aspects of contemporary remembrance difficult (Grayson, 2010: 340). Sensitive navigation and progress have not been easy feats given that contested memories of the same event often contribute to further tensions between groups, as evidenced in many examples of war memorialisation globally (Logan, 2020: 33). Affinities to Irish or British identities, mythologies, and memories still frequently frame parallel, rather than overlapping, collective perspectives on World War I and other historic events.

Indeed, debates on the past have consistently been among the most sensitive of the peace process (Lundy and McGovern, 2008). Consequently, heritage agencies and government have come to recognise fully the importance of approaching significant commemorations cautiously. A particular example was during the so-called ‘Decade of Centenaries 2012–2022’, a programme of public events, lectures, exhibitions, performances, and documentaries, to commemorate key moments in Ireland’s history (Crooke and Maguire, 2018). These included the 1912 Covenant, the partition of the island, the Irish Revolution, and World War I. The programme, and other similar cultural initiatives, attempted to present the past as a resource for debate within a wider process of reconciliation (Brown, 2019; McDermott et al., 2016; McDowell and Crooke, 2019; Mullan, 2018). However, while the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ raised public questions around identity and memory in a more reconciliatory tone than previously, there continues to be a pervasiveness to unionist and nationalist perspectives, and it is these which act as the most robust frameworks of social remembrance, even in a supposedly post-conflict context (Halbwachs, 1994).

Recent censuses though have shown a rise of those who define themselves in more complex ways. This has included those who view themselves as British and Irish, Northern Irish, or none of these. In line with debates on late and liquid modernity (Bauman, 2000; Giddens, 1991), other social categories like sexuality, class, gender and others, have, some argue, usurped or at least challenged nationalism as a prevalent identity marker. Also, in some limited contexts, there are cases of groups crossing established identity boundaries. Examples include the small numbers of protestants engaging with and learning the Irish language – an endeavour most frequently associated with nationalists (Nic Craith and McDermott, 2023). Economic migration from new European Union (EU) member states after 2004, as well as the so-called international refugee crisis, have acted to diversify the nature of the demography further (McDermott, 2015; NISRA, 2021). Literature on the experiences of migrant groups outlines challenges such as racism, access to public services and language barriers but more limited attention has been placed on the ruptured senses of ‘belonging’ and/or ‘exclusion’, these groups face within the context of an already divided place (McDermott, 2018, 2023). Indeed, in early workshops for the ‘Diverse Perspectives’ project when participants were asked why they wanted to pursue a public memory/commemoration project the simple response was often ‘because we are here!’

Despite the efforts of public programmes, including the ‘Decade of Centenaries’, the prevalence of the binary ethno-national approach to the past has arguably served to marginalise those from migrant backgrounds in formal or public debates. This is true even in the context of global events such as World War I which have direct relevance to many migrant communities whose origin regions were equally impacted. Instead, migrants perhaps more frequently partake in private space commemoration through activities such as the celebration of a national day or an important anniversary from their country of origin in the home environment, or in localised community spaces. Stark distinctions between private and public realms can be construed as a barrier to enhancing wider senses of belonging within the civic sphere for this section of the population (Antonsich, 2010; Glick Schiller et al., 1995; Huyssen, 2003). This article argues that opening up public commemoration and enhancing the polyvocality around a divided society’s social memory challenges homogenising approaches to the past in beneficial ways. Drawing on migrants’ outlooks can aid in developing rounded and complex interpretations for all citizens which capture the nature of complex events like World War I. To ground this argument theoretically, I now discuss the turn towards transnational, transcultural and multidimensional perspectives that have emerged within Memory Studies, especially in the past two decades.

Migrants and the turn towards transnational memory

Established national memory cultures have often been viewed as aligning to one specific territory or place. However, collective memory in a global age can never be merely associated with one territory but is fluid and overlapping in nature and this is reflected in the lived experiences of international migrants (Erll, 2011; Safran, 1991). Memory Studies as a field of scholarly attention has witnessed an enhanced interest in the idea that commemorative practices and cultural memory are ever more ‘in transit’ due to globalisation and will inevitably hybridise in the process (De Cesari and Rigney, 2014; Rothberg, 2009, 2014).

Recent literature has built on several interlinked terminologies including ‘multidimensional memory’, ‘transnational memory’, and ‘transcultural memory’. The multidimensional approach emerged from Rothberg’s work on Holocaust commemoration which illustrated how the global Jewish Diaspora’s remembrance could not be understood neatly within defined borders or as a single mnemonic culture. Instead, memory of the holocaust, as a cultural phenomenon constituted interlocking and multi-way discussions within and across borders (Rothberg, 2009). These debates were invaluable in dissecting the nature and nuances of power still inherent in the global transmission of memory and our understandings of the past. De Cesari and Rigney (2014) and others like Delanty (2018) appear to prefer the term ‘transnational memory’ (my emphasis). This focus while recognising the travelling aspects of a remembrance culture concurrently emphasises the continued importance of established social structures, such as the nation state, as well as smaller scale individual and group agency. Transnational memory thus appreciates ‘the significance of national frameworks alongside the potential of cultural production both to reinforce and transcend them’ (De Cesari and Rigney, 2014: 4). Sierp and Wüstenberg (2015: 324) likewise acknowledge the tensions between the idea that historic memory is rooted in ‘particular places and social structures’ but simultaneously is shaped by ‘flows that transcend borders’.

Erll’s (2011) preference is for the notion of ‘transcultural memory’ as a ‘mnemonic process unfolding across and beyond cultures’ (p. 9). The focus here is that travelling memory creates a dynamic social hybridity. While still multidimensional and transnational in character, the transcultural element acknowledges that we must also be mindful of social memories as potentially important meeting points within a diverse world. Here, ‘different social classes, generations, ethnicities, religious communities, and subcultures all generate their own, but in many ways intersecting, frameworks of memory’ (Erll, 2011, 8). This article draws on this intersectional approach to memory, as it most adequately captures the totality of interacting issues discussed later in relation to the ‘Diverse Perspectives’ project.

Transcultural approaches have huge potential in informing interventions on the past in a divided society like Northern Ireland. Grand narratives of historic conflicts set by elites and cemented over time in nationally aligned discourse have frequently gone unchallenged. However, migrants’ inputs into contemporary debates have the potential to positively query and ‘disrupt dominant accounts through messier and more complex narratives’ (Rothberg, 2022: 1326). Delanty (2018), for instance, notes, how transnational approaches to heritage illustrate ‘how national histories are interconnected’ and ‘shows that such interconnections must be situated in a yet broader and more global context’ (p. 3). This introduces the notion that a more critical and flexible interpretation of social memory itself is an important aspect of any democratic society. Dialogue around remembrance is thus part of a civic endeavour which avoids overt antagonism through positive, critical, and considerate debate which is more agonistic in nature (Mouffe, 1999). Features like these are crucial in the context of a post-conflict setting where the objectives of peacebuilding often align with the creation of open and shared public space for all (Nagle, 2016). Inclusivity and polyvocality were, I argue, central tenets of the ‘Diverse Perspectives’ project. The aim of the exhibition output was to add to, rather than replace, the norms of Northern Ireland’s memory culture through the incorporation of migrants’ views within the debate. Moreover, through the exhibition, the project aimed to generate dialogue and reflection within and between groups about exclusions and hierarchies of remembrance.

Such holistic ‘memory citizenship’ is especially relevant to traumatic and difficult legacies. For example, past studies have considered the dynamics of Holocaust memorialisation in a multicultural Germany where migrants are frequently excluded from official debates. Perceptions that migrants are ‘in’ but not ‘of’ Germany, or that the arrival of these communities only after World War II renders the event as irrelevant to them are widespread (Rothberg, 2022). Rothberg and Yildiz (2011) point to initiatives in Berlin which have worked with migrant women, mainly from Islamic backgrounds, on the Holocaust’s legacy. They argue that this approach serves to reflect more broadly the diversity of the contemporary population and the opportunities provided can broaden and transform understandings. For example, many of the individual participants had led traumatic or difficult lives perpetuated by conflict, exclusion and forced emigration. While this does not mean that these individual traumatic histories ‘always intersect harmoniously’ (Rothberg and Yildiz, 2011: 41), especially with unique events like the Holocaust, the approach did provide opportunities for themes such as exclusion, discrimination, hatred, displacement and state violence to be situated in both historical and contemporary contexts through those with lived experiences. The presence of many from Turkish backgrounds also explicated other thematic issues around other state atrocities, including the Armenian Genocide, and the challenges caused by absent social memory or denial of such events. In this transcultural approach, ‘former narratives and aesthetics have not gone away’ instead interpretations have been added to ‘through the addition of new layers’ (Becker and Lentz, 2013: 11).

Challenging engrained memory cultures is by no means a short-term process. Instead, this likely involves everyday encounters and small-scale interactions. As G.H. Mead (1932) noted, our pasts are always constructed in the present in engagement with others and speak to contemporary issues. While community activities may not instigate instant hegemonic shifts, these efforts align with Tarde’s (2000 [1899]) assertions that social transformation often starts due to small-scale interactions which feed change from the ‘bottom-up’. Indeed, small engagements ‘off the central stage point to an understanding of the alternatives to the dominant pattern’ (Goldfarb, 2005: 161). Applying such interactionist perspectives, Hirsch and Spitzer (2015: 15) note that interactions about the past at a micro-level are the basis of transformation processes and can become ‘acts of repair’ which can, over time, challenge power structures and offer alternative, and more inclusive transcultural interpretations.

These conceptual discussions provide the underpinning framework for the ‘Diverse Perspectives’ project. As discussed later while small-scale in nature, the intervention evidences one way in which difficult public memory might be broached in a post-conflict society that has become diverse due to immigration. In facilitating space for migrants to reflect on Northern Ireland’s ‘collective memory’, the more established and entrenched ethno-national interpretation of the past is reframed with a more holistic civic discussion. As noted earlier, while memories associated with ethnicity and nation are not replaced, the additional global lens adds alternative foci which tease out other dynamics such as power, class, gender and others that speak to a human collective experience. Erll (2011) notes, ‘the overall aim of transcultural memory studies, must consist in complicating the notion of “single memory cultures”’ (p. 8) which has direct relevance to the wider quest for dialogue, peace and reconciliation in a place like Northern Ireland. Advancing transcultural approaches to the past in such a context, can, therefore, identify new pathways for remembering through the introduction of views which are not alien, or separate from, but part of the contemporary demography of the region. Before embarking on a discussion of some of the findings, I first relay the method, process and outcomes from ‘Diverse Perspectives’.

‘Diverse perspectives on a global conflict’: methods, process and outcomes

‘Diverse Perspectives’ developed from an earlier workshop organised with a migrant community organisation, North West Migrants Forum (NWMF), in 2016 around the broader theme of migrants’ voices in Northern Ireland’s public commemoration. Discussions at this early event shed light on the ‘in-betweenness’ and marginalisation that migrants felt in relation to public remembrance. These debates inspired a more sustained collaboration between the author and members of the organisation to develop an initiative specifically on World War I’s legacy. Twelve individual first-generation migrants from within the organisation’s membership came forward as co-researchers. As a non-governmental organization (NGO), NWMF is run for and by migrants in the city of Derry and provides information on accessing social welfare and practical support. However, it has also tackled questions around identity and intercultural dialogue as a means of enhancing migrants’ senses of belonging within the wider society. Through its programmes, NWMF recognises that belonging is intersectional and does not just involve questions around race or ethnicity but overlaps with class, gender, religion and many other social categories which connect migrants’ own experiences with many of those from the non-migrant population (Anthias, 2016).

The small number of 12 participants facilitated an in-depth engagement where all group members could contribute to the design, decision-making, delivery and on-going reflection/monitoring of the project. Indeed, individual members of NWMF co-drafted the funding application with the author. This approach falls within a participatory methodology where contributors are not passive but active agents within the wider research process (Lundy, 2022; Park, 1992). Participants established tasks, goals, deadlines, approaches and working methods which they laid out in early workshops and reiterated throughout the project. Each migrant participant then took the lead in researching the impact of World War I in their country of origin and subsequently prepared an exhibition panel detailing this story. Each panel also included participants’ reflections around remembrance in Northern Ireland. People originally from Cameroon, Congo, China, Ethiopia, Guyana, Italy, Ivory Coast, Poland, Romania, and South Africa explored World War I’s legacy. In the case of Guyana and South Africa, two individuals from both countries researched their panel collaboratively. Of course, the events of the Great War predate the independence of several of these states while for others World War I instigated major boundary redrawing. This context provided opportunity for deep reflection on issues associated with the early-20th century such as colonialism and nationalism. Three professional academics, one of whom was the author of this article, assisted the group in the specialist use of databases, photographic archives and in the collation of text.

While the project employed a participatory methodology (Park, 1992), the involvement of the professional researchers clearly presented challenges around power imbalances. Research that defines itself as participatory has, at its core, the desire to fully involve groups in processes of knowledge production, but this can be challenging if individual contributors have suffered, due to structural inequalities and lack of social, symbolic or cultural capital inherent within their socio-economic status (Bourdieu, 1983). Therefore, the professional researchers’ involvement aimed to provide a ‘bridging’ role that supported the acquisition of knowledge and skills required for elementary research (Grele, 1981; Putnam, 2000). Importantly, participatory research channels a multidimensional process of learning for all involved. The author had, for example, after the initial 2016 event around the ‘Decade of Centenaries’, become an active volunteer within NWMF, a role which he continues. This process did not only engender trust but established new working knowledge about the principles and expectations of the grassroots and voluntary sectors, which vary greatly from academia. As Bergold and Thomas (2012) note in projects which hinge on close partnerships, ‘the difference between the academic worldview and that of the research partners from the field is actually an asset which must be exploited in the exploration process’ (p. 202).

Moreover, during ‘Diverse Perspectives’, there were multiple openings provided for learning across the partnership. Co-researchers (which includes the participants and academic researchers) took part in a process of stepping back from their established world views, networks, and power relations to collectively rethink and reinterpret presupposed strategies and ideas (Bergold and Thomas, 2012: 192; Shea, 2019). In these contexts, it is advisable to reflect on the potential power dynamics at play between academics and the community-based researchers (Cook, 2012). Working closely with the NGO ensured that activities took place in a familiar setting for migrant participants, which included NWMF’s community centre. Spaces of perceived safety are vital in facilitating open and honest discussion which can sometimes involve dissent or disagreement around direction. Indeed, it was the three academic researchers who were primarily the ‘outsiders’ and which required a level of re-orientation in these unfamiliar settings.

Discussions around the re-alignment of power in participatory research are well documented (Boser, 2006). For example, Lynch (2014: 69) notes that ‘[w]hen there is a high-visibility “product” at stake – an exhibition or a piece of published research’ there is a need to constantly reassess the relationship and thus avoid ‘overpowering participant input even while making claims for “co-production”’. There were instances where this came to the fore such as an example where one individual insisted that a photograph of a key figure be included on her panel. Initially, the academic researchers had tried to discourage this on practical grounds as only very poor-quality images existed in databases and this would not be reproduced well on the exhibition panel. Nonetheless, the individual was consistently vocal that the image should appear so additional designer work was undertaken to enhance the image digitally which ensured its place within the final panel. Such a simple example illustrates how power relationships were reflected on and addressed during the exhibition production. This incident also relates to the earlier point around familiarity of location. As these opinions were expressed in the group’s own community centre, participants were in a space which facilitated a certain positive agonism in the encounters between the academics and the participants.

While the project was developed and led by migrant participants, the exhibition itself provided a tangible ‘contact point’ through which to engage with the wider population. The panels were displayed for the first time at the Millennium Forum convention centre, Derry, as part of the NWMF’s 2018 intercultural festival which attracted more than 400 visitors from the wider population. This facilitated discussion between individual visitors, groups, families and the migrant researchers who had the opportunity to explain their exhibition panels. ‘Diverse Perspectives’ was also launched and displayed in the Ulster Museum in Belfast later that year and subsequently toured Northern Ireland with the national library service in 2019 and early 2020. Again, several of these events included input from participants and facilitated discussion with attendees. Good Relations Week, which is a public initiative supported by government to promote peace and cultural pluralism, also included ‘Diverse Perspectives’ in its official 2019 programme. This could be construed as a small acknowledgement that interpretations of the past by migrants are not separate from but part of Northern Ireland’s continuing reconciliatory journey. While less binary narratives will not necessarily replace established memory cultures in a place like Northern Ireland, they potentially connect local issues with wider shared human themes and thus help to deconstruct overly simple ethno-national perspectives. As the migrant population inevitably increases such approaches could have growing relevance in debates around the past and in wider public history initiatives that more formally connect those from the migrant and non-migrant populations.

While attempts throughout the project were made to ensure ownership and a wider ethos of inclusion, it is also important to acknowledge the limitations of modest grassroots interventions. Participatory research is, for example, unlikely to fully neutralise all power imbalances or systems of exclusion. Due to practicalities, all participants, for instance, had fluent English capabilities alongside their several other languages. This is certainly a potential point of criticism but generates reflection for future better-resourced initiatives. Participatory research as an underlying ethos, nonetheless, was a method that had important benefits in its ability to contribute to and add new layers to social phenomena through the perspectives of largely unheard groups in polarised memory debates.

A transcultural approach to World War I memory in Northern Ireland

As noted, commemorative practice in Northern Ireland has been maintained by communities themselves but also apathetically through an established heritage discourse cemented in ‘official’ practices (Foucault, 1994; Smith, 2006). ‘Diverse Perspectives’, in a small way, challenged these established memory ‘norms’ and ordered systems of knowledge on World War I memorialisation. The project’s activities can be construed as a wider social act which furthered, through discussions of the past, the notion of a civic democracy invested in a multicultural dialogue (Kymlicka, 1995). The additional layering of the past provided by migrants can, therefore, become a resource which complicates memory in positive ways for a society like Northern Ireland. While the narratives emanating from the participants’ research demonstrated the continued importance of ‘national’ frameworks, they also illuminated the impact that many other forms of social organisation had on World War I experiences. In keeping with transcultural approaches to the past (Erll, 2011; Sierp and Wüstenberg, 2015) debates on issues such as gender, ethnicity, religion, power, class and national identity intersected during the exhibition production process. Moreover, the diversity of the group and their experiences often illuminated different commemoration ‘norms’ across and within borders and broached questions around memory that related to their countries of origin, as well as Northern Ireland. In exploring these dynamics, I now assess three key issues emanating from the community research. In doing so, I draw on qualitative data from the participants which was gathered during the research process.

First, the exploration of 10 separate regions exposed World War I memory globally as a selective process of both ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ (Ricoeur, 2004). European participants tended to have more predisposed awareness of the Great War. Maciek, from Poland, commented that World War I commemoration was, for him, synonymous with his country’s road to independence on 11th November 1918. This participant relayed how, after coming to live in Northern Ireland, he became aware of the date’s different importance as Armistice Day and its relevance particularly to unionist identity. Christina, who came from Romania a decade earlier, noted how World War I was a central part of national memory and rooted in the school syllabus when she was a child. She commented, ‘we study history young. Therefore, I had good knowledge of WWI’ (Christina). She also noted how later in life she had visited war graves first in Romania as a child, and later in France, after having come to live in Ireland. These stories elicited how World War I was embroiled in debates around independence, border redrawing, and antagonisms around national ‘awakening’ in Poland and Romania but were also reflected on by the participants vis-à-vis the Irish context in which they were living. A century after the conflict, the migrant researchers were utilising a transcultural lens to expound these connections while simultaneously providing alternative, seldom heard interpretations within Northern Ireland.

Some participants, originally from outside of Europe, joined the project because they had heard of the centenary commemorations and wanted to know more about it. Several were aware that their region of origin had been involved in World War I, yet public acts of remembrance were not common. Nandi, from South Africa explored how Black South Africans often ‘avoided’ Great War remembrance during the apartheid years. Instead, she explained how narratives around ‘independence and the apartheid era and Mandela’s release from prison are the memories that we still keep alive to this day’ (Nandi). Feza from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) noticed similar ‘cultural amnesia’. For example, while researching her exhibition panel, she was surprised to uncover that the region around Lake Kivu, where she had grown up, had been a strategic battleground between the British, Belgian and German militaries, yet this was not discussed publicly when she was younger. Instead, national memorial culture in DRC, she argued, has focused on the obtainment of independence. Feza noted, ‘WWI perhaps brings up bad memories of a time when people felt colonised. Maybe this is why they forget and people perhaps wanted to change that memory’. As Rigney (2021) notes, in many colonised places World War I’s legacy acts as ‘uncomfortable evidence of past subjection’ (p. 11) which accounts for its erasure from official discourses on the past.

Despite these challenges, participants also welcomed a re-engagement with difficult and erased pasts. Nandi in her exhibition panel noted that remembering Black South African soldiers’ experiences of WWI was important for wider reconciliation efforts. Indeed, the examples from Congo and South Africa have some correlation with Ireland’s experiences where the independent Irish state for most of the twentieth century had avoided public commemoration of World War I. Likewise, Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland had, even when there was a deep family history, concealed stories due to the perceptions of the British military during the ‘Troubles’ (Grayson, 2014). Détente brought by the Peace Process altered the dynamics of this somewhat with the Irish state and Irish nationalists reengaging with this element of the past from the 1990s onwards. Therefore, migrants’ perspectives bore resonance with aspects of the debates about World War I in Ireland and these were teased out in a transcultural way through the exhibition process.

A second approach evident in the project involved an emphasis on human and emotional experiences of conflict. Various stories reflected on individual biographies or marginalised groups and criticised the negative impact of power hierarchies in disparate cultural settings. The research of some participants focused on social stratification around race, class and gender and identified how these were often absent from the grand narratives of national remembrance. Orlando from Italy explored how World War I tragically worsened individual circumstances for working-class people and destabilised the political landscape for decades. This participant made the connections between his own region and others, including Ireland. He commented,

There are histories of different groups like social classes. I think it is important to remember Ireland and Italy’s history, of course. However, the history of social movements and their impact is vital. Studying similarities and differences of social movements helps us identify common experiences across countries. (Orlando)

Christina, from Romania, dissected questions relating to gender. She challenged the idea that women were only passive observers by exploring the story of Ecaterina Teodoroiu, a female general, who died in battle in 1917. Teodoroiu is commemorated in many Romanian public memorials and such a prominent example was significant as it instigated discussions as to why women were so absent from memorialisation in the other panel stories, and also in elements such as photographs of the conflict. Orlando and Christina’s contributions evidence why memory as a form of ‘container culture’, or a bounded entity within an imagined community should be challenged in the pursuit of deeper understandings and meanings (Welsch, 1999). A multi-scalar approach, in a small way, evidenced how the memory of the past can be approached through themes which go somewhat beyond a one-dimensional ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002).

Indeed, ‘National’ memory has frequently established what Stoler (2011: 125) has referred to as a systematic ‘occlusion of knowledge’ that results in a form of ‘colonial aphasia’. The imperial dimensions of the War for many years laid the mnemonic ‘frames of reference’ as to what and who should be remembered and often occluded stories of subjugated peoples (Crooke, 2022; Irwin-Zarecka, 1994). Participants confronted this by considering how ideologies around race and power had dehumanised certain groups and omitted their experiences from official narratives. Yang, originally from China, researched the story of the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) who often worked in dire conditions to bolster the French and British armies as World War I came to an end. The CLC’s experiences were exacerbated by colonial racist attitudes. Only recently has this story been recaptured, especially by the United Kingdom’s Chinese diaspora, who have campaigned for a permanent memorial to the CLC (Calvo and Qiaoni, 2015: 9; Maguire, 2021). Such campaigns contribute to a sense that ‘the “unforgetting” of a shared history can sometimes become a resource for redefining and extending the social imaginary’ (Rigney, 2021: 13). World War I commemoration in Northern Ireland has traditionally presented the notion of sacrifice, trauma and loss as a deeply European and White experience. ‘Diverse Perspectives’ shed some light on the racist overtones of a colonial war, its impact on human beings and the subsequent removal of this aspect of the story from official variants in subsequent years. Significantly, this aspect of the debate around memorialisation provided a powerful way of contextualising wider contemporary concerns around racism which in recent years has replaced sectarianism as the most reported form of hate crime in Northern Ireland (Doebler et al., 2018; McDermott, 2015).

A final trend was that participants noted the potential positive role of remembrance as an agent in challenging ‘exclusion’ and in contributing to better intercommunal relations between all groups – a key objective of the Northern Ireland peace process. Several individuals remarked that a more robust discussion about memorial practices could have a positive impact in helping the region to ‘avoid past mistakes’. Maciek, for example, commented how after his arrival in Belfast it took time to recognise the sensitivities around World War I between nationalists and unionists. He noted that it was important for both migrants and non-migrants to take responsibility in obtaining an appreciation of what that past collectively means. This was viewed as a critical aspect in building cross-cultural understanding in a Northern Ireland which is more ethnically diverse but which has simultaneously not fully addressed the legacies of its own recent past. Remembrance and memorialisation were considered by Maciek as an important means through which to further not just military remembrance but to note that in any conflict it is ‘civilians, men, women and children’ who are ‘affected by the tragedy of war’ (Maciek).

Similarly, Christina, observed that World War I remembrance for all communities should be part of a societal investment in the move towards a peaceful and shared society. To achieve this, she commented that the inclusion of migrants would add global threads within the more localised narrative central within nationalist and unionist perspectives. She noted,

we must remember the events that helped shape today’s world. How can we understand the present if we do not know the past? Especially in a place like Northern Ireland. If we remember our shared past our children can learn about the price for division.

Thus, by placing more localised interpretations alongside a complex range of global views a more comprehensive understanding of the many issues at play can emerge (Hylland Eriksen, 1995). Like Christina, Yang noted parallels between China and Ireland’s experiences of World War I, again in a way that reflects a transcultural perspective. She said,

I think there are similarities between the impact of the War on China and Ireland and other countries in that the people were used to fight in a war that was not their war. In both countries people were promised things that they never got. (Yang)

Mutual human devastation, grief, subsequent loss, and lack of recognition were, therefore, critical to Yang’s understanding.

Bacadine, from Guyana, also argued for the need of more inclusive remembrance in Northern Ireland which worked across and beyond groups and which did not create systems of ‘worthy’ and ‘non-worthy’ rememberers. She recalled how such hierarchies were evident not just in Northern Ireland but during her own school days. She noted how her own ethnic group (Amerindians) were often subtly excluded from World War I commemorations as they were, in her words, viewed by the elites of society as ‘forest people’ who were considered as detached from Guyana’s wider colonial administration. As a consequence she argued her group were often viewed as not being interested in discussions about the conflict. Despite evidence of interest in World War I from within her own family, she noted how the Guyanese state still aligned debates on commemoration to certain ethnic groups rather than acknowledging that individual citizens might have their own broader interests. This global example is pertinent in the context of Northern Ireland where commemoration practices have frequently drawn borders between communities who live alongside one another rather than utilising such heritage activity for bridge building purposes (McDermott and McDowell, 2021; Tracey and Lilley, 2020). For Bacadine, the potential of memory activities as a positive tool for holistic debate about the past was often lost in Northern Ireland, and elsewhere, in the face of a state’s ‘chosen’ discourse of remembrance.

Conclusion

Overall, the research process, the production of the panels and subsequent dissemination, facilitated a more transcultural telling of World War I commemoration in Northern Ireland. From the debates that occurred, it was clear that migrants often felt detached and excluded from elements of public memory, even those events which had relevance to their own histories, such as World War I. The highly sensitive nature of memory in a divided place like Northern Ireland meant that migrants have often felt that debates on the past do not ‘belong’ to them. This is likely also an issue for migrants living in other societies with an already existing ethno-national cleavage and where memory is highly politicised. Migrants must navigate wider social environments daily where the legacy of these pasts is palpable yet there is often little attempt to include such groups in these difficult public debates.

‘Diverse Perspectives’ challenged these unionist/nationalist suppositions in small ways by providing a memory space through which migrants could contribute to broader public debates on World War I commemoration. The approach offered additional layers that complicated simple narratives of ethno-national contestation around World War I inherent in the host population. Discussions revealed how the impact of the war traverses national identity, gender, ethnicity, power, religion and many other social categories. Moreover, participants shed light on the potential use of the past in future reconciliation initiatives which involve migrant populations more widely. The exhibition dissemination acted as a contact point through which the stories could be presented to the wider population in community libraries and museums. Such dissemination to the non-migrant population is of course only a starting point in a much wider debate but contributed to building NWMF’s capacity in exploring heritage work more widely. For example, during the 2020 Black Lives Matters debates, the organisation became involved in heritage work around Black history and heritage in an already divided society. In 2022, the group, under the leadership of Director of Programmes, Lilian Seenoi-Barr and researcher Naomi Green, acquired significant funding to explore interpretations and experiences of Black people living in Northern Ireland, including memories of the ‘Troubles’ and the ‘peace process’. This project involves significant levels of outreach to the wider population and also builds on the need to challenge established and entrenched memories, thus developing further many of the themes explored during ‘Diverse Perspectives’. The initiative discussed in this article was clearly small-scale, but it did illustrate how transcultural methods to the past can inform further work. Such alternatives have the potential to add layers to more insular commemorative practices in favour of more complex polyvocal ones which reflect the broader diversity of a population.