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Abstract

Political ruptures such as Brexit open spaces for hopeful projections among stakeholder social groups and revive past political projects. This article uses an innovative photo-elicitation survey to analyse how members of the Irish diaspora in Britain engage with the emerging discourse of a reunited Ireland. This research population was chosen due to their relative marginalisation in these debates. The article used thematic analysis of their responses according to future hopes and fears using the concepts of nostalgia and nostophobia. The findings demonstrate that most participants deploy seemingly nostalgic conceptions of Irish reunification as an analogue to returned membership in more cosmopolitan bodies such as the European Union. However, responses differed over how likely Brexit will lead to reignited sectarianism. These fears crystalised over whether young people would be recruited and how past reminders of the conflict should be managed. The article demonstrates that even in a relatively uniform research population, there are lingering debates about constructions of the past and what role, if any, it should play in the future of post-conflict societies.

Keywords

Brexit diaspora futurity Northern Ireland nostalgia nostophobia

Discussions on the possibility of the citizens of Northern Ireland (NI) retrieving full European Union (EU) membership through a Border Poll on leaving the United Kingdom and reuniting with the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland (ROI) became more prominent across both polities after the Brexit vote of 2016. Fears that Brexit could reignite sectarian tensions also accompanied this discussion. In post-conflict societies, it is important to form conceptual and methodological tools to investigate how hopeful imaginaries that motivate action must also negotiate fearful futures of the return of war.

This article states that nostophobia, the fear of the past or returning home (Baake-Hansen, 2015; Strangleman, 1999; Taksa, 2009; Zhu, 2020), can form an important corollary to nostalgia when conceptualising perceptions of futurity. Events like Brexit upend previously accepted beliefs on the trajectory of the societies they impact. Those who live through these periods must now consider previously marginal possibilities as potential futures. According to their position, these possibilities can be optimistic, pessimistic, or ambiguous. Writing about nationalism in the former USSR Boym (2001) described political movements deploying nostalgic conceptions of the past and fashioning ‘off-modern’ views of the future. Here, nostalgia not only longs for the past but shapes the future.

Nostophobia is less prominent than nostalgia in the literature on conceptions of past and future political action (Adam, 2010; Boym, 2001, 2007, 2010; Browning, 2019; Kenny, 2017; Melhuish, 2022; Robinson, 2012). This article seeks to correct that through centring nostalgia and nostophobia in analysing a post-conflict society experiencing a constitutional crisis. However, nostophobia is not in full opposition to off-modern political projects like Irish reunification. Nostophobia can be an acknowledgement of painful memories among sections of the population. This can be beneficial for younger people in NI whom respondents fear may be indoctrinated by still active paramilitary figures in the wake of Brexit.

The article deploys supporting concepts to capture how feelings of nostophobia and nostalgia can manifest. Liminality captures the sense of political ruptures and deadlock that marked the post-Brexit negotiations on NI’s status (McDowell and Crooke, 2019). Post-conflict societies feel suspended between past and future, and nostophobia can describe the fear of returning to the former. Ontological insecurity can narrate how these uncertainties can mark experience on an existential level. It states that constitutional crises like Brexit can uproot notions of ‘home’ (Browning, 2018, 2019). However, while nostalgia may suggest a longing to return to a home or past, nostophobia can also be a fear of the same. Post-conflict societies have a fractured and divided past, which means that one resurgent political project like reunification can be a source of hope or fear for certain communities. As the discussion of research findings will show, similarly ideologically aligned members of the Irish diaspora can have an ambiguous mixture of these feelings too. The conceptual framework outlined here can explain how respondents navigate these contradictions. Before the discussion of these findings, an outline of the methodology will follow.

This article uses a photo-elicitation survey distributed to members of the Irish diaspora currently or previously living in Britain, defined here as England, Wales and Scotland. It asks them to conceptualise the future of NI in the aftermath of Brexit. Responses indicated post-sectarian conceptions of Irish reunification and positive attributions of EU membership. This indicates both as progressive ideals for this population. However, there are also concerns expressed over whether the youth will be swept up into sectarian recruitment if tensions reignite or if they will break with this past. These link to differing stances on how the past should be memorialised within NI and its role in future trajectories.

The following section will summarise the main impacts Brexit had on NI and how the Irish diaspora in Britain can potentially play a role in its future.

Background

In 1998, the United Kingdom and ROI signed the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). This ended the three-decade-long civil war known as the Troubles in NI, a six-county constituent nation of the United Kingdom. It exists on the island of Ireland and shares a border with the 26-county ROI. The GFA signalled the end of the conflict, promising a defined yet permeable border between NI and ROI for citizens of either polity. NI remained within the United Kingdom. Both ROI and the United Kingdom were members of the EU at the time of signing, thus ensuring free movement across the border (Hayward and Murphy, 2018). The GFA also built conditions for a future border poll on reunification. Any such poll must run concurrently in ROI and NI (Harvey and Bassett, 2019). It would require the assent of a British Secretary of State for NI (Garry et al., 2020). This means that constitutionally, there are preconditions for reunification if the political situation is deemed conducive.

Most of the Loyalist and Republican paramilitary organisations active during the Troubles had decommissioned their weapons. They signed ceasefires with some remnants of the latter, ‘Dissident’ Republicans, refusing to accept the peace agreement. While most of their acts of political violence are small compared to the Provisional campaign of the Troubles, this does not discount key events such as the Real IRA’s bombing of Omagh in 1998, which was the single biggest loss of life in the Troubles. There was also the killing of police and prison officers following this. An attempted attack on the former during rioting in Belfast led to the killing of 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee in 2019. Widespread condemnation followed, even within the Dissident Republican movement itself (McGlinchey, 2021). Meanwhile, Loyalist paramilitary figures are suspected of orchestrating protests and riots over Brexit negotiations (Morris, 2021) as well as making bomb threats towards Irish politicians (BBC News, 2022).

When the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in 2016, the future constitutional status of the six-county NI and the border it shares with the 26-county ROI was a major issue in the exit negotiations between the United Kingdom and the EU. Brexit’s emphasis on stricter border controls presented a challenge for the permeable border that the GFA assures (Holder, 2017).

Meanwhile, both Irish nationalist and centrist parties in ROI and NI have increasingly engaged with emerging discourses on a border poll being more certain after Brexit (Rodden, 2019). It even moved the former Taoiseach, Leo Varadker, to state that Irish reunification would happen in his lifetime (incidentally, Varadker is 45 years old at the time of writing) (Aodha, 2023). Prominent campaign groups on this issue have formed. Ireland’s Future regularly organise large conferences in ROI and the United Kingdom with cross-party representatives and high-profile civil society actors. BXL-Unity was established among the Irish diaspora in Brussels and campaigns on Irish reunification in EU institutions (Irish Times, 2023). This means reunification is now a central concern across Irish civil society and the political spectrum rather than just Sinn Fein and Unionist parties in Stormont.

Ragazzi (2014) and Gamlen (2008) identified diasporas as potential lobbying bodies for their origin states, including in conflict resolution. Members of the Irish diaspora in the United States are often noted as important lobbyists in the peace process that ended the Troubles (Trew, 2018). Reunification campaigners have identified Britain’s Irish diaspora as being able to play a similar role (Ireland’s Future, 2024). This article is a pilot study on this population and their stance regarding reunification and the future of NI, as previous research seems very sparse. For this reason, it engages in preliminary findings to guide deeper and more extensive fieldwork.

The next sections will outline the theoretical framework. It will indicate how past-focused concepts like nostalgia and nostophobia are important as they also conceptualise ambiguous descriptions of the future for post-conflict societies.

Theoretical outline: convergences of past and future

Nostalgia presents the past as providing resources to reimagine the future. This can drive mobilisation and campaigns to make this projected future a reality. Boym (2001: xviii) distinguishes two forms of nostalgia in the former Communist bloc. There is ‘restorative’ and ‘reflective’ nostalgia. The former means the restoration of a lost home or nostos. This motivates the germination of political and national movements. Reflective modes of nostalgia tend to delay any drive towards such a restoration and often engage in a more critical reflection. This often includes accounting for the overlaps of present, past, and future that modernists disavow (Pursley, 2019). Boym is careful to stress that these are tendencies more than absolutes.

From this, Boym (2001) developed her concept of the ‘off-modern’ where previous pasts re-emerge in modernity. ‘Nostalgia’ is often a pejorative to describe an opponent as unable to reconcile oneself with the present or future (Robinson, 2012). Boym counters that it can be a critical engagement with the past and a criticism of modernity’s continuous obsession with the new. These observations mean that nostalgia is reconcilable with social life and social action imbued with strived-for expectations or ‘futurity’ (Adam, 2010: 362).

Support for this latter point comes from sociologists of time. Hirsch and Stewart (2005) contend that any simple distinctions between past and present reflect a peculiarly Western conception of historiography in a Rankian mould. Political resurrections shape the present through uses and excisions of the past. The latter also help construct the future. Pursley (2019) states that in modernity, conceptions of the future as a complete break alienate it from the past. This can be particularly appealing in NI, which holds visible reminders of its conflict in murals, fragmented militant groups, and political crises.

Throughout the United Kingdom and ROI, Brexit spurred nostalgic visions for transformative political campaigns that fit the off-modern description. Knight (2017) describes the ‘European cosmopolitanism’ of Scottish independence narratives as predicting ‘. . . closer cultural integration, freedom of work and movement, tariff-less trade, and imaginaries of boundless socio-economic prosperity’ (p. 238). At the same time, Manley (2022) outlines how independence campaigners retraced lost trajectories of national development from the Scottish Enlightenment. In a parallel counterfactual scenario, Melhuish (2022) states that far from being merely obsessed with the past, leading Brexit campaigners often constructed a picture of a forward-looking velocity for a post-Brexit Britain into technological and industrial advancement. They stated that EU membership prevented this. While Brexiteers believe that breaking free of the EU would regain lost sovereignty, both Scottish independence and Irish reunification frame sovereignty as connected to EU membership and leaving the United Kingdom.

Simply deeming one of these campaigns as hopelessly trapped in the past and another more focused on the future ignores how all of them can repurpose history to build future visions. Brexit and its isolationist mould of sovereignty can undermine treaties such as the GFA (Hayward and Murphy, 2018). Boym’s conception of the off-modern and nostalgia’s role plays well into a conception of time where past, present, and future are coterminous. Nostalgia can be just as mobilising as the future on present action (Beckert and Suckert, 2021; Gokmenoglu, 2022; Mische, 2009).

Grasping the experiential component of political ruptures and their reception in post-conflict societies is important. McDowell and Crooke (2019) state that in NI, wounded cities exist in a liminal space. Liminality describes spaces between a previously existing context and one yet to come to fruition. This allows alternative forms of acting and existing to emerge. Knight (2017) states that the present can become increasingly unreal and unsettling in times of crisis. This sense of ossified crisis (Manley, 2021) can quicken and increase discourse on a Border Poll for Irish Reunification. A unified Ireland is a bridge to recovered EU membership. However, just as different communities can anticipate different futures, they can also hold contrasting memories of the past. After all, reunification was a stated aim of the Provisional IRA bombing campaign. Post-conflict societies often react by ignoring and marginalising experiences of suffering such as in Cyprus (Ireton and Kovras, 2012) and Apartheid South Africa (Mueller-Hirth, 2017). There is a fear, or exhaustion, of revisiting the past. The concept of nostophobia is thus just as important as nostalgia in negotiating these fault lines of memory.

Not as prominent as nostalgia, nostophobia appears sporadically throughout organisational (Strangleman, 1999), heritage (Taksa, 2009), and cultural studies (Baake-Hansen, 2015; Zhu, 2020). This means the fear of returning home or the past. Just as nostalgia can help revive past political projects, then nostophobia can warn of the dangers of returning to, or remaining stuck in, old practices (Gabriel, 1993 [Quoted in Strangleman, 1999]). This affective response to liminal contexts applies well to post-conflict societies. The instability of meaning results in social change experiencing acceptance and resistance. An example of the latter can be the 6th of May riots in Unionist areas in 2021. Media and political leaders attributed this to fears of an Irish Sea border implemented between NI and the rest of the United Kingdom (Morris, 2021).

Boym (2001) is cognisant of the ambiguity existing alongside nostalgia. She describes reflective nostalgists as realising that the longed-for homes may also contain ghosts. This is pertinent to NI, which remains a net loser of population to Britain among university-educated young people. Thirty percent of school leavers opt for a British institution. A high proportion of young emigrants do not return home after university (Trew, 2018). Though it is uncertain whether this is due to NI’s past conflict, it indicates that returning home is often literally and symbolically avoided.

Boym’s statement is an implicit recognition of nostophobia. The past or home may repel rather than be a source of restorative longing. This can be attributable to the past being extremely painful. There is also space for a reflective nostophobia. While reflective nostalgists may be slower to automatically embrace off-modern projects, reflective nostophobia may also be less willing to countenance forgetting or shedding the past. The discussion section will demonstrate examples of these different forms of nostophobia in the responses.

Home is also prominent in discussions of ontological insecurity (Browning, 2018). This focuses on how people hold covert anxieties about emptiness and meaninglessness, which invite a need for purpose. When significant historical events derail accepted trajectories of the social world, it often destabilises social actors’ identities too. Home is a place where individuals exist in an embedded network of relationships that reinforce identity (Browning, 2019). However, nostophobia presents a fear of the past or returning home, which could describe the pre-GFA polity. Most NI voters who chose Remain may observe Brexit as undermining the European character of NI. Godefroidt et al. (2022: 11) described NI Catholic voters resurrecting certain ‘conflict narratives’ around the partition of NI and ROI as well as illegitimate rule from Westminster post-Brexit. At the same time, increased discussions of the border poll can be a threat to the concept of NI as British for PUL (Protestant, Unionist, Loyalist) citizens.

The following section will outline the methodology for the photo-elicitation survey.

Methodology

This article was originally submitted as a chapter for an aborted edited collection on ‘Reimaging Ireland’ that looked at the role of images in the renegotiation of Irish identity after major changes such as Brexit and the Repeal the 8th abortion referendum (Vernon Press, 2020). This explains the unusual methodological choice of the photo-elicitation survey after the idea took root in response to this call. However, the use of visual methods concerning NI is not surprising considering how prominent the imagery of political murals is in popular imagination and in research (Clark, 2022; Goalwin, 2013; Gould and Skinner, 2006; Murphy and McDowell, 2019; Rolston, 2010). Clark (2022) even speaks of a ‘local-visual’ turn in researching peacebuilding and also uses photo-elicitation with interviewees based in NI. There do not seem to be any previous publications querying the role that the Irish diaspora in Britain would play as regards reunification. Like Clark, the survey was a way to bridge the gap between imminent analyses of the images and get the research population to do this themselves. However, my survey sought to gather a wide array of responses to identify this research population in the first place. Suggestions for deeper qualitative research for the Irish diaspora in Britain in the style of Clark (2022) appear in the conclusion.

Photo-elicitation has distinct advantages. It is more associated with interviews where research participants describe the feelings and emotions preselected visual images evoke. This method can highlight tacit knowledge, stimulate memory, and generate emotional answers (Massenden and Jonvik, 2022). The intent was to combine this insight with the more easily and widely administered survey form. There have been non-pictorial, more conventional surveys on how NI citizens view the future of their polity post-Brexit (Garry et al., 2020; Godefroidt et al., 2022). Similarly, Garry et al. (2020: 2) found that there were ‘consistent’ NI Catholic nationalists who were consistently pro-reunification and ‘conditional’ Catholic nationalists who were pro-reunification under the hardest Brexit conditions. This is important in a context where the EU demanded NI’s re-entry to the Union in the event of Irish reunification (Staunton and Leahy, 2017). This creates the space for an emerging Irish Republicanism that is strongly pro-EU and views a United Ireland through the prism of ensuring civil rights, freedom of movement, and prosperity.

Using the software programme Qualtrics, the article circulated an online survey to gain as many responses as possible from the Irish diaspora across Scotland, England and Wales, with England having the highest number of respondents. The survey incorporated photo-elicitation through a portfolio of images representing key issues in the debate on Brexit.

Pre-existing examples of photo-elicitation surveys were not widely found in the social sciences. The closest parallel comes from a recent master’s dissertation in Sociology at West Virginia University. Using a ‘quasi-photovoice’ survey on toxic masculinity, the researcher preselected images for participants to describe and rank (Remsburg, 2023). This highlights how novel this method is. It is qualitative yet stretches the possibility of the survey, usually more associated with quantitative methodologies. It is also a practical boon for unfunded research on new and under-investigated topics.

Overall, 145 respondents made 821 individual picture selections between them. It asked respondents the following questions: ‘Please look at the following pictures and click on the ones you think represent Northern Ireland’s future. Choose as few or as many as you prefer’. The researcher preselected images that portrayed implicit themes such as ‘Brexit and Protests’, ‘the Troubles’, and young people. The survey did not explain this rationale to respondents. This minimised researcher effect. A photograph is open to several interpretations, making this a more open-ended form of inquiry than a ‘scriptocentric’ list of questions (Marx, 1997, quoted in Massenden and Jonvik (2022)).

There was a text box that allowed respondents to give a qualitative description of their choices. This article did not assume technical capability on the part of participants. The majority were white Irish and the Irish community in Britain skews older than the white British community (D’Angelo and Kaye, 2024). Most respondents moved from Ireland before the 2000s. The survey was meant to be as simple as possible to navigate and ensure a large sample. For this reason, it did not ask for separate explanations of each picture but instead asked participants to choose a selection of images and give one overall explanation. Some of these were long, others were a few words. This approach allowed respondents to build a composite representation of the future of NI. This could also allow reflection on contradictory choices (e.g. images of paramilitaries and happy young people) to highlight the contingencies shaping the political situation post-Brexit. It also encouraged connections between the pictures the researcher did not consider. There was also a question that asked people to suggest alternative pictures. It provided an email address for the researcher to receive these. Only one respondent answered, suggesting more pictures of young people unconnected to the conflict.

The images were either available online with a Creative Commons License or from the researcher’s collection taken on previous visits to Belfast and Derry in 2019 and 2020. Readers can find reproductions of these images in the Supplemental Appendix. Other photos used in the survey are not reproduced here due to a negligible response rate and copyright restrictions.

The project was determined not to have a narrow definition of who would count as ‘Irish’. The data collection recruited participants with links to NI or ROI who currently or previously lived in Wales, England or Scotland. This meant that some respondents may have never lived in Ireland but had grandparents or other relatives there. This was an important choice due to members of the diaspora often facing the pejorative term, ‘Plastic Paddy’, or scrutiny of the ‘authenticity’ of their Irish and Northern Irish identity (Walter, 2018).

Recruitment used three different strategies. The first was network sampling, where the researcher used personal contacts among the Irish diaspora. It then moved onto theoretical sampling where the researcher used Twitter to contact prominent individual accounts in politics, sport, culture and media. The researcher then sent emails to groups, organisations and clubs representing Irish or Northern Irish people from different traditions in Britain. These included minority advocacy organisations representing Irish people of colour, Travellers and LGBT+ Irish. It also attempted to reach out to respondents from Unionist backgrounds. Walter (2018: 209) states that NI citizens are a largely ‘invisible’ demographic in studies of the Irish diaspora. Visibly ‘Irish’ organisations appear overwhelmingly Catholic or post-Catholic in ethos.

This broad strategy captured participants who would not explicitly join an Irish heritage organisation. To only focus on the latter would skew the sample towards their members. Other research subjects could follow prominent Irish celebrities, politicians or thought leaders while they live in Britain without engaging with community associations or representative groups.

The leading demographic trends are plotted in Table 1.

Table 1.

Responses to demographic questions.

Questions	No. of respondents
		Irish	British	Northern Irish	English
Nationality	129	64%	10.08%	5.43%	8.53%
		White Irish	White British	White Northern Irish	White English
Ethnicity	113	69%	7.07%	5.30%	7.07%
		Irish Passport Holder	British passport Holder
Passport	135	60.74%	37%
		England	Scotland	Northern Ireland	Republic of Ireland
Country of Current Residence	108	85.19%	2.77%	2.77%	2.77%
		ROI	NI	Neither
Previous ROI or NI Residence	101	42%	25%	30%
		1960s	1980s	1990s	2000s	2010s
Decade moved to Britain	66	13.60%	24.24%	15.15%	10.60%	10.60%
		No Religion	Catholic	Protestant
Religious Belief	110	41.82%	38.18	4.54%
		Male	Female
Sex	109	50.40%	45.87%
		Straight/Heterosexual	Gay man	Gay Woman/Lesbian	Bisexual
Sexual Orientation	100	79%	8%	8%	5%

Overall, this sample largely self-identifies as Irish, white, heterosexual and Catholic or no religion. There is an almost equal balance of gender. Most respondents live in England which is unsurprising due to its larger population to Wales or Scotland. Most of them hold an ROI passport, while a significant minority hold a British passport. This sample is heavily weighted towards residents in England who moved to Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. As only over 5% of them identified as from NI or as Northern Irish the responses were categorised as Irish.

The findings are outlined in the next section. The conclusion will include suggestions on widening the research population for further study.

Findings and discussion

The main findings from the survey follow. Even though several implicit themes were guiding the researcher’s choice of images, most responses coalesced around two major narratives. One was Brexit undermining the GFA and facilitating the possible return of sectarianism. Contradictory positions on how the past can facilitate or halt progressive trajectories for a reunified Ireland accompanied this. Differing predictions also accompanied the other major theme. Respondents conceived of NI youth as either representing the possibility of moving past the violence of the pre-GFA era or falling under the influence of reignited sectarianism post-Brexit.

The first five images focused on Brexit and protests in the United Kingdom and NI. Out of 821 selections, these pictures came to 21.94%. Pictures 4 and 5 (Supplemental Appendix) representing specifically NI-based protests gathered 6% each.

Respondents who chose these images delineated EU membership and a United Ireland as progressive futures:

I am hoping Catholics and Nationalists will gain full equality and that there will also be a United Ireland in my lifetime. I hope Brexit doesn’t make things more difficult.

Peace, prosperity, and a common future in a forward-looking Europe.

The first quote ‘. . . within my lifetime’ is an example of the existential construction of the future as opposed to abstract speculation. This recalls the-then Taoiseach positing reunification as happening in their lifespan (Aodha, 2023). This suggests how central reunification is as an experience in the current liminal period of Brexit. It’s anticipation forms a part of the respondent’s identity, that their life will cross over with its occurrence. A sense of waiting is apparent. The second part of the quote also illustrates how optimism can exist side by side with trepidation regarding Brexit. The second quote emphasises a forward momentum and allusion to economic growth. The phrase ‘common future’ suggests the return to EU membership for both ROI and NI but not specifically as unified.

Other responses that chose these images emphasised fears of re-emerging divisions:

Legacy, the power of memory and sectarian divisions are, and will remain, an inherent part of Northern Ireland. At present Brexit reinforces the existing divisions.

Just see continued strife and tension because of Brexit

. . . it feels very stuck in the past and it feels that brexit [sic] and the polarised views around it will exacerbate that

. . . I think Brexit is a much more divisive maneuver [sic] for all parties involved. But what particularly concerns me, is the history of colonialism . . . Brexit just represents one more example of the British government exercising its ability to control what happens to Northern Ireland, and this is nothing short of colonial activity

Here, a contrasting temporality of observations combines with different emotions about NI’s future. These more pessimistic comments are past-focused and thus betray disquiet over the future. This recalls the resurrection of ‘conflict narratives’ among NI’s Catholics of an illegitimate rule from Westminster post-Brexit (Godefroidt et al., 2022: 11). The participants in the present study view reunification as a more progressive cause, but it may also be a revival of key discourses from the Troubles. This parallels Robinson’s (2012: 20) observation in British politics that the opposition between ‘conservativism’ and ‘progressivism’ is an inherently progressive historiography suggesting time as a linear construct. Here, Brexit is supposed to be the past, and the EU and reunification are the future. This is despite reunification drawing off of nostalgic themes even if, as Boym (2001) counsels, this is for a home that no longer exists.

Allusions to returns of sectarian violence are more prominent than some idealised past. The respondents never offered an example of such pleasant memories pre-GFA for Irish Catholics. This does not mean they do not exist, but they are probably just not at the forefront of their minds. The concern over reignited sectarianism also speaks to how essential nostophobia as a concept is.

Both images 6 and 7 allude to paramilitaries’ return and made up 8.04% of entire choices. Interestingly, one participant who selected Picture 6 (Supplemental Appendix) among a range of other photos was quite positive on prospects:

Looking towards a more inclusive Northern Ireland leaning towards a united Ireland in the future whilst protecting those wishing to retain their British heritage.

Ontological insecurity is relevant as this comment makes an explicit reference to protecting British identity as ‘heritage’. This indicates awareness of how dislocating reunification could be for PUL citizens’ conception of themselves as living in a British homeland (Browning, 2019).

Another commentator stated that NI should not shed the darker aspects of its history:

I tended to choose the pictures that reflected the values of younger generations, such as inclusivity, equality, and cooperation. However, I also preferred the images of murals commemorating the dead, as the events of the Troubles and casualties of other major historical events must not be forgotten.

The other comment recognises the duality of NI with a post-conflict generation and visible markers of its previous conflict. However, it does not seek to separate them and advocates for the symbols of the conflict as sites of reflection and commemoration. These comments caution against reductive interpretations hyper-focusing on one choice participants make while ignoring how each image fits into their overall assemblage of choices. These latter comments take a different stance to the past, where it needs to be preserved as opposed to being shed.

Another commentator managed to unite these two considerations:

A peaceful Ireland, and Northern Ireland is what the vast majority of people want. But progress towards this cannot be achieved or maintained if any community feels that their cultural identity is under threat. The wall murals are a visible expression of these internalised cultural beliefs.

A previous commentator stated that division is ‘inherent’ to NI, as almost natural. Contrarily, this commentator states that cultural beliefs are internalised but that this is no obstacle to peace. There is a contrast between the suggested attitude of fatalism and careful optimism.

These comments create the space for what this article describes as reflective nostophobia. Boym’s (2001, 2007) reflective nostalgia is aware of the past not being a universal source of fondness. There is a recognition that Irish reunification can create a deep existential crisis for those who consider NI as fundamentally British. Likewise, a reflective nostophobia can also encourage reconciliation despite living memories of past conflict. These do not need to discount against hopeful political projects. Scholars of futurity recognise that trepidation is a big part of prediction. Mische (2009) states that it is important to examine the level of contingency in actors’ future projections and to what degree they view their constructed future as certain. Despite hope acting as an animating factor for those seeking to shape the future, Bloch (1995) also states it must be concrete, not ‘fraudulent’. The emerging concept of reflective nostophobia here can caution against any hasty forgetting of the past in any incipient political campaign in post-conflict societies.

Cultural beliefs among different communities motivated the researcher’s choice of Pictures 8 and 9 (Supplemental Appendix). These were to highlight themes from the Troubles without direct allusions to paramilitary groups. These made up 9% of total choices. However, some respondents grouped them with the previous paramilitary imagery and described them as coterminous. For instance, one person who selected the Bloody Sunday mural stated, ‘I think we have to look forward as positively as possible and move away from flag waving symbols’. One respondent who chose all four stated they,

. . . chose mainly pictures of the past because both sides are still living with the actions and decisions made in the past. I cannot see that changing in the future and think a very unsettled time is on the way (again).

One other respondent for all four merely stated, ‘Divided Militaristic Sectarian Tribal’.

This suggests that for these respondents, any symbol of the conflict is an automatic marker of liminality between the past and the future and potentially contributes to lingering tension. By way of contrast, a respondent who also included the Bloody Sunday mural in their selection of 8 and 9 chose to comment on the current status of civil rights:

The images I chose represent, I feel, the future as I see it – more openness, greater understanding of civil rights as pertaining specifically to the North and human rights in general, including gender issues.

It may be that one interpretation of the Bloody Sunday mural saw it as part of an assemblage of images depicting sectarian conflict involving extra-judicial fighting groups and the British State. However, this latter comment’s emphasis on civil rights demonstrates a recognition that those killed on Bloody Sunday were unarmed protestors that organised peacefully for the equality of NI’s Catholics (McGovern, 2019). Hence, this mural is part of a composite picture in the struggle for a more open society in the past and the present and not necessarily coterminous with sectarian imagery.

This is further evidence of two modes of nostophobia and captures how conflicted commemoration can be within NI. This exists not merely between unionists and nationalists but even within a comparatively uniform group such as the sample of this study. This highlights the advantage of the more open-ended character of images when eliciting respondents’ answers. Some consider any Troubles imagery indicative of sectarianism. Any political use of the past as a resource for arguing for a United Ireland must also contend with divisions over memorialisation of conflict. For ease of reference, Boym’s distinction of the modes of nostalgia can translate to restorative and reflective forms of nostophobia. Restorative nostophobia can be a fear of a restoration of the past these murals depict. Meanwhile, reflective nostophobia does not advocate a return of violence, but it does not deny the ghosts of the past. It seeks to avoid the disinterest that survivors of South Africa’s apartheid, for instance often find themselves experiencing in the present day (Mueller-Hirth, 2017) as do other survivors’ accounts of past conflicts.

It was important to include images of youth and emerging realities that did not map easily onto the sectarian constructions that marked the Troubles. Image 10 was included with two further images that could not be reproduced in the Supplemental Appendix due to copyright restrictions. One was a mural in Derry City of the popular sitcom Derry Girls. It’s coming-of-age focus on the closing years of the Troubles is highlighted as an example of a revival of discourse of Ireland’s conflict and division in the cultural mainstream and political fora (McVeigh and Rolston, 2021). Another was a mural of Lyra McKee, the young LGBT reporter killed by a stray bullet in 2019 while covering New IRA-organised riots (McGlinchey, 2021). The billboard came in at 11.79% and Lyra McKee was almost on par with 11.66%. The mural of Derry Girls came in at 10.30%. A lot of respondents stated they selected these due to optimistic predictions for the future of NI:

I picture a more positive future for NI because the next generation of voters are for the most part sick to death of the same old arguments and want to enjoy a more peaceful existence.

I have chosen the pictures that seem to represent a modern, progressive and diverse northern part of Ireland despite the Plantations, Unionist discrimination, I R A and U D A [sic] violence and a right-wing Tory government in Westminster.

Signs are that the younger generation are moving away from fixed tribal positions and looking for a more pluralist politics and a more socially progressive society.

However, some respondents admitted their choice of these may have stemmed more from a desire for this future than prediction:

I’m hopeful that Ireland will eventually be united – in large part because of Brexit, the obnoxious Tory government, and the collapse of the power of the Roman Catholic Church in the Republic. I know it’s a lot to expect, after years and years of antagonism but, with a bit of luck, what unites will prove stronger than what divides.

One commentator shows a high degree of reflexivity in identifying their position within the centrist Alliance Party, which claims to neither represent an exclusively Catholic or Protestant constituency:

I have tried to click on those that should [emphasis added] have a part in Northern Ireland’s future. My choice was influenced by my being a founder member and former leading activist in the Alliance Party.

While there are descriptive explanations, there are also expressions of desire. Both modes do not need to exist in a binary opposition. This nuanced mingling of analytic and affective responses justifies photo-elicitation as a method. Here respondents explained how they chose which photographs to group together and how they construct ‘planned or outlined utopias’ (Bloch, 1995 [Emphasis in the Original]). This is much the same as painters of such murals or designers of such billboards recall the ‘. . . wishful landscapes of painting and literature’ and thus also construct the future (Bloch, 1995; Inch, 2021). When respondents engage in utopian calculations in their selection of images they are engaging in what Dewey (1981 [In Mische, 2009]) would describe as an ‘experimental projection’ of the future or what Sargent (2006 [In Inch, 2021: 23]) calls ‘social dreams’.

However, as with imagery of the Troubles and Brexit, optimistic expectations were not solely held:

I feel that Northern Ireland will continue to become more diverse and less binary than before . . . That said there are still those factions that will fight tooth and nail to cling to the past, keeping it alive through the indoctrination of vulnerable younger people.

Another commentator echoes this sentiment:

Sectarian violence will return as a generation that grew up in peace and don’t know what the Troubles were like are used by people with other agendas. There will be a stronger groundswell for peace however and this will eventually win through.

These comments were posted after the 6th of May riots in Unionist areas in 2021. Commentators variously condemned figures from Loyalist paramilitaries encouraging young people to partake (Morris, 2021). While mostly positive, respondents also held a marginal disquiet over what role young people will play in a post-Brexit NI. There is the suggestion of some sort of a restorative nostalgia being inculcated among young people who will glamourise sectarianism in pursuit of reunification or resistance to it.

Some respondents deposit hopes in the child or young person (Pursley, 2019: 8). Pursley borrowed the term ‘reproductive futurism’ from Edelman. For Edelman (2004), ‘[The] . . . Child remains the perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics’ (p. 3). Here and there is emphasis on the post-GFA generation being entrusted with breaking with the past. However, the continuing presence of militant groups and pronouncements from pro-Brexit politicians can elicit contradictory responses. It is an important question how the past should be taught to young people. The reflective and restorative modes of nostophobia from respondents can categorise how young people are taught (or indoctrinated) about different visions of the past. This speaks to the need for theorisation on the ‘folk’ or ‘public’ pedagogy (Sandlin et al., 2011) of the Troubles. This points the way to a research project going beyond formal schooling in present-day NI to scrutinise how political and public discourse, as well as culture, frames the Troubles for a generation that never directly experienced them.

To summarise, respondents speak approvingly of the reunification of Ireland and continued EU membership for NI. They are mostly opposed to its advocacy by armed groups. Here classically Republican aims seem to exist alongside pro-EU attitudes as coterminous in the post-Brexit moment. However, for NI, the past is a difficult resource. The images depict contested reminders of the Troubles still visible in NI’s physical spaces. Statements from still-existing militant factions can create anguish over whether they will take centre stage along with discourse around reunification. Boym (2010) describes the off-modern as eccentric versions of modernity arising outside the mainstream. Reflective nostophobia can exist alongside reflective nostalgia and measure different modes of optimistic projections in post-conflict societies experiencing liminal moments of transformation. Meanwhile, restorative nostophobia can demarcate how citizens may also want a total break from the past. Restorative nostophobia links with Pursley’s (2019) description of how modernity usually considers the past as something needing to be shed. Using both conceptions of nostophobia to analyse how the past is communicated to younger generations is an important future area of inquiry. There is a fear over whether the past will be glamourised or whether young people can transcend such divisions. The conclusion will follow with further suggestions to build upon the findings here.

Conclusion

This article set out to analyse how the Irish diaspora in Britain conceived of the future of NI post-Brexit. There is no clear overarching feeling of optimism or pessimism among participants. There is an opening for reflective nostophobia among respondents regarding post-conflict polities that see reminders of conflict as a warning for future generations. This exists alongside responses of restorative nostophobia. The latter considers the same reminders as an allusion to existing and continuing divisions. These divisions arise due to ontological insecurities around identity and home in times of crisis. However, respondents often imputed these insecurities more to PUL communities. This demonstrates that any concern with futurity in post-conflict contexts must also deal with the stance research subjects take regarding the function of the past and remembrance. Both modes of nostophobia here reflect attitudes on whether the future would be better arrived at by shedding the past or preserving it.

If not always explicitly linked, there was a cosmopolitan Irish reunification narrative expressed alongside strongly pro-EU and anti-Brexit attitudes. There must be a critical reflection on the liberal character of this hypothetical reunified polity. Events such as gains for gay marriage and abortion rights in recent referendums in ROI (Allen, 2021) can accompany reunification hopes. The relatively increasing poll gains of the cross-border party Sinn Féin in NI and ROI with a mix of liberal social policies and left-leaning economic policies also lend optimism to these predictions.

But future debates on reunification must acknowledge the scale of poverty in ROI, with some of the highest income inequality and lowest public spending in Western Europe (Fearon and Barry, 2022). There is a temptation to state that reunification will allow greater growth for both NI and ROI as they are fully integrated into the neoliberal model of the EU. This pins hopes on a neoliberal ‘trickle-down’ model of prosperity. Such hopes led post-Apartheid South Africa to experience severe disappointment among its majority black population (Mueller-Hirth, 2017). This also overlooks the current number of direct provision residents from outside the EU languishing in squalid accommodation in ROI (Fathi and Soleimani, 2021 [2020]). This reflects asylum detention throughout the EU, which concurrently prioritises freedom of movement for European workers (Boucher and Watson, 2017). This indicates Ireland aligning itself with modern Europe and its border regimes rather than making common cause with other previously colonised peoples. McVeigh and Rolston (2021) argue that the tendency to wrap Irishness into an unproblematic conception of Europeanness is a process of power. This can potentially marginalise questions of Irishness and Blackness. Conceptualising reunification as bound up with social liberalisation (while also acknowledging the potential for division) occurs through a paradigm of whiteness reflecting the population sample of respondents. It is not intentional but more of an absence of consideration.

The method of the photo-elicitation survey has been useful for a large collection of thoughtful responses. It allowed the commentators to express ambiguity in their choices, reflecting fragmented feelings of pessimism and optimism. Future research should go deeper with qualitative interviewing. Targeted recruitment could particularly focus on Irish people of colour, Irish Travellers, and diaspora members from PUL backgrounds. This can deepen the discussion of different modes of nostophobia. There can be Unionists who are positive towards the idea of a United Ireland (Collins, 2022). This can exist side by side with observed fears of marginalisation in present and future arrangements (McKay, 2021), testifying to a feeling of ontological insecurity.

The new millennium has felt like a long collapse of the surety of the End of History (Fukuyama, 2012) thesis. Liberal capitalist hegemony did not ensure stability across the globe. 9/11 and the War on Terror, the 2008 Global Financial Crash, Brexit, the rise and electoral victories of white nationalism in the United States and Europe, the Covid-19 Pandemic, conflict in the Middle East and Europe, and civilisation-threatening climate collapse have all overturned previously held beliefs on what futures will look like and what courses of action are suitable. Hence, all modernity appears off-modern post-1989. The future of NI post-Brexit seems a comparatively small consideration. However, this research demonstrates it as a case-study of liminal post-conflict societies experiencing sudden ontological insecurity. Deploying a duality of nostophobia and nostalgia will help guide researchers on how societies draw off different framings of the past to respond to increasingly unstable and threatening futures.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-mss-10.1177_17506980251350252 – Supplemental material for Irish rEUnification? Post-Brexit futures of nostalgia and nostophobia among the Irish diaspora

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-mss-10.1177_17506980251350252 for Irish rEUnification? Post-Brexit futures of nostalgia and nostophobia among the Irish diaspora by Aidan O’Sullivan in Memory Studies

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Drs Jessica Omukuti, Nathan Kerrigan, Zaki Nahaboo, William McGowan, Birgan Gokmenoglu, Licheng Qian, the research participants and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable contributions and advice for this manuscript.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Aidan O’Sullivan

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biography

Aidan O’Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Birmingham City University. His research interests include legacies of conflict, state violence, climate change and neocolonialism. His work has appeared in Sociological Inquiry and Journal of Global Faultlines.

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