Immigration, Identity, and Belonging in the New Northern Ireland

Devashree GuptaDepartment of Political Science

Carleton Collegedgupta@carleton.edu

** DRAFT **Please do not circulate without permission

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Abstract:

This study investigates how ethnic minorities in deeply divided societies participate in public life.

While much of the focus in historically divided societies has been on the design and operation of

formal institutions, or on the interactions between the main parties to the conflict, understanding

how smaller, often overlooked groups in such places engage with political and civic issues can be

a useful way to think about how such societies can move beyond old divisions to become more

integrated and cohesive. Focusing on the example of ethnic minority communities in Northern

Ireland and drawing on original survey data, this study finds that members of such communities

do indeed participate in public life, but that such participation is strongly conditioned by their

own desire to preserve the unique advantages that come with being part of communities that are

not easily subsumed into the main Catholic-Protestant cleavage. Moreover, their strategy of

engagement is contingent on the perceived sectarian character of the particular form of

engagement and the public visibility of the venue. These limitations suggest that while ethnic

minorities in divided societies can usefully contribute to the evolution of a more “normal”

multicultural society, this contribution is also likely to be limited in nature.

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Introduction

During a recent trip to Northern Ireland, I fell into conversation with a Jewish acquaintance who

had lived in Belfast for many years. What was it like, I asked her, to be part of a society that is

best known for its decades-long sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants for those

individuals who—like her—do not belong to either community? In response, she told me the

following story:

A Jewish man was walking in the city center when he was stopped by two strangers.

“Hey, you,” one stranger said, “are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” “Neither,” said

the man. “I’m Jewish.” “Yes,” said the other stranger. “But are you a Catholic Jew or

a Protestant Jew?”

This (almost certainly apocryphal) story is one that is told repeatedly by members of Northern

Ireland’s minority communities. Variations exist that substitute the Jewish central character for,

among others, his Chinese, Indian, and Filipino counterparts. Talk to individuals who do not

belong to the dominant Protestant and Catholic communities, and it is only a matter of time

before someone offers up this story to illustrate the daily experience of living as a member of a

minority community in Northern Ireland.

The story underscores two key points about the location of minorities in deeply divided

societies. First, identity categories in such societies tend to crystallize into a limited number of

mutually exclusive groups, leaving little room for either cross-cutting categories or alternative

identities. Such polarization can both precede conflict as well as emerge as a product of conflict

(Fearon & Laitin, 2000; Esteban & Ray, 2008), but the end result is the same: a society where the

available salient identity categories are limited in number and oppositional in character

(Nordlinger, 1972; Lustick, 1979). In the case of Northern Ireland, the dominant cleavage

separates Catholics from Protestants, and most other potential cleavages—economic, geographic,

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political—have historically reinforced this division or, like gender, faded into the background (for

example, see Murtagh, 2008). Second, this polarized identity landscape makes the incorporation

of “others” enormously difficult, especially if these others have identities that cannot easily be

reconciled to the dominant cleavages that structure social and political space. The attempt to

assign the Jewish character of the above story to a particular side of the dominant cleavage

merely reinforces the totalizing nature of the cleavage itself: to locate himself in this society, he

must pick an identity that has little personal relevance because there is no meaningful alternative

available to him.

While minorities in non-divided societies may also experience a sense of otherness or feel

disconnected to majority communities, those who live in deeply divided polities face a

qualitatively different institutional and social landscape in which social divisions are reproduced

across multiple domains in both formal and informal ways. In Northern Ireland, for example, the

main sectarian division colors multiple aspects of life, from individuals’ experience of the

Troubles (Fay, Morrissey, Smyth, & Wong, 1999) and their residential patterns (Anderson &

Shuttleworth, 1998; Adair, Berry, McGreal, Murtagh, & Paris, 2000), to the ways that formal

political institutions operate (Crighton & Iver, 1991; Evans & Duffy, 1997). Consequently, the

otherness of minorities in divided societies is often more emphatic, fixed, and total than the

otherness of minorities in more “normal” societies. In the latter, identities are more fluid and can

be more easily re-negotiated, which can aid in the incorporation and involvement of minorities in

public life. In divided societies, however, public space is itself a minefield of oppositional

identities, which can sharply limit both minorities’ desire to take part in public life as well as the

forms of participation that are judged available and safe.

While participation in divided societies might be difficult and possibly even risky for

members of minority communities, it is also potentially valuable. Participation can help

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minorities better access scarce resources, make their interests known to policymakers, and result

in a polity that is more cognizant of and responsive to the particular needs of communities that

have likely been “hidden” from public view for an extended period of time (Lawless & Fox,

2001). In divided societies, where public attention, political energies, and civic resources tend to

be lavished on a few dominant groups, minority communities may find that participation, or

“voice” (Hirschman, 1970) is a constructive way to redress historical neglect. Moreover, the

incorporation of diverse communities in both political and civil society can help transform deeply

entrenched cleavages by broadening the range of voices and interests that are represented, which

in turn can help moderate political views and reduce the likelihood of extra-systemic violence

(Schwedler, 2007). As a result, the engagement and incorporation of minorities in deeply divided

societies has intrinsic value, not only because of a general normative stance that participation is

desirable in democratic societies, but because incorporation can produce desirable outcomes at

both the individual and aggregate level (Lijphart, 1999; though also see Rothchild & Roeder,

2005)

Accordingly, this project investigates whether minorities choose to participate in the

public sphere of divided polities and what that participation might look like. Specifically, I focus

on how minority communities in Northern Ireland think about participation in both political and

civil society, what factors influence participation, and what that participation (or lack thereof)

might mean for the future of Northern Ireland’s deeply embedded sectarian divisions. I argue that

in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom that minorities in Northern Ireland tend to withdraw

from public life out of a desire to remain neutral and uninvolved, they do participate in a variety

of ways, in both political and civil society. Moreover, this participation is not anemic, but robust.

However, minorities set clear limits on the forms of participation they choose, eschewing

activities that are overtly structured along the central Catholic-Protestant cleavage in favor of

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activities that have the most cross-community participation. As a result, minority communities

have the potential to be a positive—but limited—integrating force in Northern Ireland’s transition

to a more “normal” post-conflict society.

Constructing Identity in Deeply Divided Societies

Deeply divided societies are those in which “ascriptive ties generate an antagonistic

segmentation of society, based on terminal identities with high political salience, sustained over a

substantial period of time and a wide variety of issues” (Lustick, 1979, p. 325). Several factors

differentiate deeply divided societies from ones that are simply diverse or multicultural. First,

there may be multiple cleavages in both types of societies, but in the latter, these cleavages

overlap and cut across one another in various ways and without any dominant hierarchy. In

deeply divided societies, on the other hand, cleavages tend to reinforce one another, dividing the

population along the same lines rather than creating alternative groupings. Moreover, in divided

societies, cleavages can be ordered from those that have primacy to those that are trivial, and this

ordering is largely stable, without significant shifts or changes over time or by situation. Second,

unlike in multicultural societies in which multiple group identities can exist side by side, in

deeply divided societies, identities crystallize around a limited number of groups judged to be

relevant; identities that are “off the main diagonal” may not be acknowledged at all or accorded

any importance. The Northern Ireland Assembly, for example, requires all elected officials to

declare themselves to be a member of either the Catholic or Protestant communities (with a

residual “other” category for all other communities and those individuals who choose not to

declare a sectarian affiliation). This sectarian self-identification then becomes the basis of

various rules about cross-community support for various legislative decisions: key votes require

minimum buy-in from the two main communities, but the support of other communities is not

considered necessary—a move that essentially devalues the place of alternative identities in favor

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of an increasingly sharply defined Catholic-Protestant division (Horowitz, 2001; but see McGarry

& O'Leary, 2006; Tilley et al., 2008).

Though this view of identities in divided societies suggests they are far more static than

identities in non-divided polities, they are not essential or unchanging. Rather, identities are

inherently fluid constructs, situationally dependent, multiple in nature, and, to a large extent,

socially constituted (Brubaker, 2004; Anderson, 2006). However, there are important limits on

who constructs identities and what they can imagine (Hutchinson, 1987; Smith, 1991). Identity

choice is also circumscribed by the categories that are available and salient in a particular place

and time (Posner 2004), and can wax and wane in response to various social mechanisms and

processes, including changing context, economic competition, political manipulation by elites,

and conflict (Nagel & Olzak, 1982; Olzak, 1983; Nagel, 1994; Brubaker, 2004; Brass, 1997;

Posner, 2004; Kaufman, 1996; Fearon & Laitin, 2000; White, 2001).

Of these different mechanisms, conflict processes are the most likely to promote rigid and

starkly delineated identities. Group identities can help predict an individual’s affiliations, beliefs,

priorities, and even likely future behavior—potentially vital knowledge in times of conflict when

information about antagonists might otherwise be costly or scarce (Lake & Rothchild, 1996).

However, the value of group identity as an informational shortcut disappears if individuals cannot

place others in their appropriate groups quickly and accurately. As a result, conflict processes

create incentives to simplify possible categories of belonging as much as possible: rather than

multiple, nuanced affiliations, conflict encourages straightforward, binary choices with clearly

marked boundaries and minimal ambiguity. The identity categories that result are far more

inflexible with few cross-cutting cleavages. In such societies, cleavages can still change over

time, but the process of change is likely to be far slower. Furthermore, because the conflict-

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clarification process tends to reduce salient dimensions of identity, alternative groupings that can

challenge or supersede the central axis of conflict are harder to identify and mobilize.

This dynamic aptly summarizes the construction of identity in Northern Ireland where

conflict processes have contributed to the current static cleavage structure, embedding it in all

manner of institutions while eliminating alternative identity constructions. Northern Ireland’s

party system nicely illustrates this point: of the four largest political parties, two are Catholic,

espousing nationalist political views and two are Protestant, promoting continued union with

Great Britain. Together, they control 91% of the seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly and 14

of the 15 ministerial positions in the Northern Ireland Executive. Even outside of formal

institutions, this primary axis of belonging structures multiple areas of daily life: 61% of

individuals in Northern Ireland reported that most or all of their friends were of the same religion,

60% reported that they lived in neighborhoods where most or all of their neighbors were of the

same religion, only 13% reported attending an integrated (mixed-community) school, and only

15% reported sending their own children to an integrated school.i Most tellingly, 82% of people

said they believed that religion would always make a difference in Northern Irelandii—a

proportion that has largely remained the same since the late 1980s. Put together, these data

suggest that Northern Ireland, like many divided societies, is a place where minority communities

must negotiate a tricky and limited public space if they wish to take part in civic and political life

in any systematic or meaningful way.

Minorities as Middlemen

Given this particular terrain, what are the responses available to minorities in Northern

Ireland? Empirically, we know little about these groups, let alone their strategies of resistance or

accommodation (though see Irwin & Dunn, 1997; Hainsworth, 1998). The most in-depth

investigation specifically on the topic of participation comes from a 2005 report by the Electoral

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Commission of Northern Ireland, which studied voter registration and voting behavior among

different minority communities in the region. Drawing on a survey of 500 individuals from 59

different ethnic groups, the Commission found very low incidences of both registration and

voting among minorities: only 40% of the sample were registered to vote, compared to 85% for

Northern Ireland overall, and 80% for minority communities in mainland Britain. Only 48% of

registered minority voters in Northern Ireland cast a ballot in the 2003 Assembly election,

compared to 64% turnout in the general population (MMMA Consultancy & Omi Consultancy,

2005). When asked to give the reasons why they chose not to participate in the electoral process,

respondents reported not being aware of how to register or vote, or not being interested in politics

in general—reasons that parallel answers given by minorities in non-divided societies (for

example, see Hero, Garcia, Garcia, & Pachon, 2000; Xu, 2005) However, minorities in Northern

Ireland also cited not wanting to take sides in the sectarian conflict and feeling marginalized by

parties who are not attuned to views of individuals from outside of the two main communities—

reasons that are directly related to the divided nature of public space and the polarized cleavage

structure in Northern Ireland.

This type of response illustrates one possible strategy of minorities that, like those in

Northern Ireland, occupy a small section of a larger, possibly hostile society. These “middlemen”

minority groups (Blalock, 1967; Bonacich, 1973) are typically the product of economic migration

and take on specialized or niche jobs in the host society’s economy. Characterized by high levels

of in-group cohesion, middlemen minorities serve as literal and figurative buffers between other

groups in society – literal because such groups often physically locate themselves in interface

areas since their status and apartness allows them to negotiate this type of space by emphasizing

the group’s very otherness: because their identities are not easily assigned to either side, they are

more easily perceived as outside of the main conflict and therefore neutral.

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This approach, deemed the “sojourner” response in theories of middlemen minorities,

emphasizes the separation of minority groups from the majority population. Individuals remain

tightly bonded to their co-ethnics (or co-religionists), but remain disconnected to other individuals

in the host society. To borrow terminology from the social capital literature, sojourners are those

who might invest a great deal in bonding forms of social capital within their own groups, but very

little in bridging forms of social capital that cut across different populations (Putnam, 2000).

Sojourners take advantage of their ambiguous location and identity to move easily throughout

society, never aligning themselves with particular groups or interests other than their own

communities and economic priorities. Sojourners, in other words, prefer to remain outside of the

main conflict/identity axis in divided societies, deriving advantages from being able to slip across

contested public spaces relatively costlessly and without much scrutiny from other members of

society.

However, middlemen minorities can also become “settlers”—individuals who became tied

to their host societies, choosing to incorporate themselves in lifestyle and values. Settlers tend to

adopt the customs and habits of the majority, mixing with and marrying individuals outside of

their own communities and taking part in the activities and institutions of the places they live.

Where sojourners avoid engagement with local societies, settlers embrace it; where sojourners

extract advantage from their ability to move relatively easily in an otherwise polarized society,

settlers extract advantage from locating themselves, “giving voice,” and using that voice to access

scarce resources in a competitive environment (Sanders, 2002).

Neither the sojourner nor the settler strategy is inherently superior to the other. Settlers

profit from their enhanced ability to compete for rents and other social and political goods that

flow to individuals who possess the social capital and organizational resources to demand them.

However, settlers can be vulnerable targeting by others who might feel displeased or threatened

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by the added competition for already scarce resources. In divided societies, retaliation may be

limited as the energies of the majority are diverted into disputes involving dominant identity

groups. However, as settlers increase in number or as resources decrease in amount, conflicts are

more likely to emerge. And if they do, settler minorities are particularly vulnerable given their

relative size and visibility in society. Sojourners, on the other hand, are less likely to attract

attention from individuals who feel threatened by their claims on scarce resources. But their

elusive nature can also marginalize them, making it harder to access needed services or aid while

not fully insulating them from the possibility of being cast as future scapegoats in times of crisis.

Given the various costs and benefits of either strategy, what predicts whether minorities in

divided societies are likely to be settlers or sojourners? And which is the dominant response of

minorities in Northern Ireland? I turn next to these issues.

Minorities in Northern Ireland

Though Northern Ireland is best known for its sectarian conflict between Protestants and

Catholics, it, like many divided societies, comprises many communities, many of which have

lived in the province for multiple generations. The 2001 census found that .85% of the

population (14,279 individuals)iii belonged to ethnic minority communities, with Irish Travellers

(12% of the minority population), Indians (11% of the minority population), and Chinese (29% of

the minority population) comprising the three largest groups. All three have had a long-standing

presence in the province: the Indian community first arrived in the 1920s in the Derry area,

Chinese migration started in the 1960s, and Travellers are indigenous to the island (Hainsworth,

1998). Since the 2001 census, the diversification of society has accelerated, with substantial

influxes of migrant workers from the A8 accession countries in Eastern Europe as well as new

immigrants from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Though the

number of these new entrants is difficult to pinpoint, one study by the Northern Ireland Council

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for Ethnic Minorities found that between 2004 and 2009, some 20,000-35,000 new migrants from

Poland applied for worker’s permits and national insurance numbers in Northern Ireland

(McVeigh & McAfee, 2009). That this represents the population inflow from just one country

underscores the dramatic and consequential shift in Northern Ireland’s demographic composition.

Incorporation of Minorities—An Empirical Test

To get a better sense of minorities’ incorporation strategies in deeply divided societies like

Northern Ireland, I carried out a field survey with members of different minority communities in

Northern Ireland between August and December 2009. Almost 250 individuals from 9 different

communities took part, and 149 questionnaires were ultimately returned. The primary survey

instrument consisted of 107 closed- and open-ended questions covering a range of political and

social topics, along with questions about respondents’ demographic and socio-economic

characteristics. The instrument was pre-tested in August 2009 with a group of 15 volunteers from

different minority communities in Northern Ireland and then revised. The final survey was made

available in English, Chinese, and Polish in order to reach more participants.

Individuals were selected using a snowball sampling method, an approach that was

adopted after extensive consultations with community leaders and others with experience working

with minority populations in Northern Ireland. Normally, random sampling techniques are

preferable to snowball sampling because they make it possible to make inferences with a known

margin of error from the study sample to the larger population. However, in this instance,

random sampling was judged to be a costly, and ultimately inefficient method for two primary

reasons. First, random sampling based on property or telephone records would yield very few

ethnic minority participants given their proportion within the general public. Snowball sampling,

in which initial respondents help identify additional respondents, can be a more efficient way of

locating individuals who might be otherwise hard to identify or reach. Second, because members

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of minority communities can be reluctant to participate in surveys because of language barriers

and lack of trust, random sampling techniques can produce high non-response rates that can bias

the results. In snowball sampling, initial respondents provide the researcher with referrals to

additional contacts—referrals that make it easier for the researcher to establish basic trust and

encourage participation.

The snowball sample was developed using several steps. An initial group of “seed”

respondents was recruited from membership and staff lists of several community organizations

that work closely with ethnic minority communities. Because not all (or perhaps most) ethnic

minorities are members of such organizations, additional “seed” respondents were recruited at

community events with widespread participation and involvement (i.e., Indian Diwali

celebrations, a visa renewal event co-sponsored with the Chinese consulate, a multi-cultural arts

festival). Participants were also recruited via appeals to minority student and professional groups

and notices in minority-targeted publications, websites, and businesses. Where possible, these

initial respondents provided suggestions for additional participants who were then approached

directly and recruited into the study. In the final sample, 60% of respondents indicated they were

formal members of these initial seed organizations, while 40% did not have formal membership,

suggesting that this approach was successful in broadening the sample beyond just those

individuals associated with partner organizations. Table 1 provides additional summary statistics

about the survey sample.

<< Table 1 about here >>

Snowball sampling is not without its drawbacks, chief of which is the possibility of bias

and that the individuals who participate in the study are in some systematic way unlike the larger

population of ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, because snowball sampling is a

nonprobability sampling technique, conventional estimates of confidence in the validity of the

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results, including margins of error, cannot be calculated. Because bias from sampling techniques

cannot be ruled out, the findings from this survey should be interpreted cautiously and taken as a

snapshot—but not the definitive view—of engagement and participation patterns among minority

ethnic communities. However, given the lack of data on this topic and for these populations, even

a snapshot provides valuable information and insight that we might otherwise miss.

The survey itself was administered in one of three ways. Individuals were interviewed

personally, filled out a paper copy of the survey, or filled out an on-line version of the

questionnaire. Multiple modes were used to increase the reach of the survey as well as overall

response rates (Dillman et al., 2009). Multi-mode surveys also made it possible for individuals

who work non-traditional hours (common among Northern Ireland’s minority communities) to

participate since they were able to fill out a questionnaire when it was most convenient for them.

Interviews, paper questionnaires, and web questionnaires were distributed simultaneously, with

roughly one-third of the final sample coming from each mode. To minimize the possibility of

mode-specific measurement effects, the questionnaire employed uni-mode construction (e.g., the

same wording, answer choices, and question order). Even so, combining responses from different

modes into one collective group is a possibly contentious move. This paper does so in part

because pooling the responses provides additional analytic leverage that would be lost with the

smaller numbers of respondents within each mode. In addition, because the three modes are

roughly equal in terms of their contribution to the overall sample, the risk that measurement

effects from one particular mode will skew the overall results is limited.

Patterns of Political and Civic Engagement

The survey asks three types of questions that attempt to measure different dimensions of

engagement and, by extension, minorities’ inclusion strategies in the Northern Ireland context.

The first asks respondents to evaluate how close they feel to different groups of people with

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whom they might interact, including their neighbors, co-workers, and the people of Northern

Ireland in general. Sojourner strategies would point to relatively weak ties to individuals who are

not part of the minorities’ own ethnic group; settler strategies, by contrast would demonstrate

closer ties to a more diverse collection of individuals. Figure 1 highlights the results when

respondents were asked to evaluate if they felt extremely close, close, somewhat close, or not that

close to different populations.

<< Figure 1 about here >>

The above figure suggests that on average, study participants reported feeling the closest to those

who shared similar hobbies or leisure interests as themselves (median: 2.8 out of 4) and the least

close to those who shared similar political beliefs as themselves (median: 1.9 out of 4).

Respondents also were more likely to indicate feeling close to people they worked or went to

school with (2.6 out of 4) and those who shared a common ethnic background (2.7 out of 4).

While people were not strongly alienated from their neighbors or the people of Northern Ireland

in general (median: 2.1 and 2.3, respectively), physical proximity by itself made for weaker bonds

of affinity than shared interests and activities—though political interests and affiliations do not

generate much solidarity. From these data alone, it seems that minorities are not simple

sojourners, as individuals report feeling just as close to individuals who share their leisure

interests or those they see at work and school (unlikely to be solely co-ethnics) as they are to

members of their own ethnic communities.

The picture changes, however, when the results are disaggregated by ethnic group. Figure

2, for example, illustrates the group-level responses to the closeness-to-neighbors question.

<< Figure 2 about here >>

The difference between Indian respondents and all other ethnic groups is noteworthy in this

instance. While 33.8% of all participants indicated they felt close or extremely close to the

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people who lived in their immediate neighborhood, 54.2% of Indian respondents indicated feeling

close or extremely close to such individuals whereas only 28% of Polish respondents and just

16.3% of Chinese respondents reported feeling close or extremely close to their neighbors — a

pattern that repeats when asked about closeness to the people of Northern Ireland more generally.

In terms of rootedness to local communities, this divergence suggests that Indian

respondents, on average, feel much more embedded than members of other ethnic groups. Part of

this divergence might stem from varying lengths of residence in particular places; individuals

who live in one place for many years might know more people living around them and feel more

connected to those neighbors. But in this instance, length of time at a particular residence is not

wholly satisfactory as an explanation for the above closeness scores. While residence length is

positively correlated with closeness to neighbors (Spearman’s rho=.30), it is, at best, a fairly

moderate correlation; length of time in Northern Ireland is an even weaker predictor of closeness

(Spearman’s rho=.20). Moreover, while Indian respondents have lived at their current residence

an average of 10.3 years—the highest of any ethnic group in the study—Polish respondents

reported living at their current residences an average of 2.6 years, which is substantially less than

the 7.2 year average for Chinese respondents, even though Polish respondents reported feeling

closer to their neighbors than Chinese study participants. Indeed, feelings of connection and

closeness – in a sense, proxies for a sense of belonging – are not simplistically driven only by the

length of time individuals have lived in a particular place. Rather, it suggests that how rooted

minority ethnic communities feel in Northern Ireland is a product of more complex forces. It also

suggests that there may not be one singular adaptive response to living in a deeply divided

society, but that different communities adopt settler or sojourner responses for varied reasons.

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A second set of questions on the survey asked respondents to indicate their level of

involvement in various voluntary and civic organizations. Figure 3 summarizes the number of

civic organizations to which individuals reported belonging.

<< Figure 3 about here >>

In contrast to the conventional wisdom that minorities are highly disengaged and do not take part

in public life, the answers to this question suggest otherwise. Taking the study sample as a whole,

people said they were involved in 3-4 groups on average (mean: 3.7). Polish respondents were

involved in slightly fewer groups on average (mean: 2.8), while Chinese and Indian respondents

were involved in slightly more groups on average (mean: 3.8). Only 16 individuals (11.5% of the

sample) did not belong to any civic associations at all, a finding that compares very favorably to

the larger population, where one study found that 47.5% of Protestants and 65.8% of Catholics

indicated they did not belong to any organization or club.iv Certainly, these data do not allow a

nuanced analysis of the quality of participation. Still, these data paint a hopeful picture, even in

the absence of information that can allow us to tease out intensity of engagement.

The final set of indicators of participation involve different mechanisms through which

individuals might communicate their social and political preferences more publicly, including

voting, contacting elected representatives, and signing petitions. The survey asked about fifteen

specific activities, which range from low-stakes, low-risk activities (donating money to a

charitable group), to the more time-intensive and public (signing a petition, contacting an elective

representative), to those that required considerable commitment (participating in a strike or

demonstration). Individuals were simply asked if they had engaged in any of these activities at

least once in the past five years. Figure 4 summarizes the number of activities individuals report.

<< Figure 4 about here >>

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Across the sample as a whole, individuals reported taking part in an average of between four and

five activities (mean: 4.4). Indian respondents engaged in an average of 4.4 activities; Chinese

respondents engaged in an average of 3.4 activities; Polish respondents were slightly higher than

the average, with 5.7 activities, indicating a more varied and possibly robust civic/political

engagement among the study participants. As before, this figure suggests that study participants

are anything but disengaged. Most are involved in at least one kind of activity, with the vast

majority (75%) taking part in two or more forms of activity that provide some kind of “voice.”

Not all activities are equally popular, however. The most common forms of civic/political

activity are relatively low-cost, low-stakes options, including donating money to charitable causes

(the most popular, with 75.7% of respondents having donated at least once in the past five years)

and voting (53.6% having voted in the past five years). On the other hand, high-cost and time-

intensive activities were rare, with the fewest number taking part in sit-ins or disruptive protests

(1.4% of respondents) and strikes (4.3% of respondents). What is also telling is that while there

are group-specific variations in the particular form of “voice” chosen, in general, minorities direct

their energies away from forms that are more visible and marked by sectarian divisions and

legacies (i.e., electioneering, donating money to parties) towards activities that are more

institutionalized and have weaker sectarian dimensions.

These outcomes suggest that in some respects, minorities follow both a sojourner strategy

(strategic uninvolvement, remaining non-committal on potentially divisive activities) and a settler

strategy (interacting with authorities, using routine and institutional channels of interest

mediation). While different minority communities might still be more or less inclined to one

option or the other, they also seem to combine elements of both adaptive mechanisms in an

eclectic manner in order to maximize their ability to derive benefits from their location while

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retaining some amount of liminality to minimize possible risk and exposure from being perceived

as taking sides in Northern Ireland’s divided landscape.

A Deeper Look at Political and Civic Engagement

The above discussion paints a picture of minority communities more engaged and

involved in Northern Ireland’s public life than conventional wisdom would predict. However, it

is still unclear what drives variations in that engagement within the survey sample—if

engagement might be correlated with factors like age, income, level of educational attainment, or

other demographic and social traits (Wolfinger & Rosenstone, 1980; La Due Lake & Huckfeldt,

1998). To explore this point more fully, I next use the data from the survey to develop a more

complete regression model that allows me to partial out the effects of multiple variables at the

same time and get a more nuanced sense of factors that might drive participation.

Dependent Variables

The survey instrument contains a number of different indicators for participation,

including participation in civic associations, “voice” activities, amount of volunteer work

performed, and level of interest in politics. Each one measures engagement in some fashion,

i Data from the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2008. Available online at

http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2008/. Accessed April 2, 2010.

ii From the 2004 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, the last year this question was asked.

iii This figure has subsequently been criticized for severely undercounting minorities, particularly

the Chinese population which is commonly thought to be at least double the official census count

(Holder 2003).

iv Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (2006). “Social Capital in Northern

Ireland: An Analysis of the 2003/04 Continuous Household Survey.” Available at

http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/capitalni.pdf. Accessed on 15 June 2010.

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though treating a particular indicator as the dependent variable limits us to a fairly narrow

operationalization of engagement, which is itself a far more abstract and multi-faceted concept.

Ideally, we would want to combine the various indicators to create a more robust dependent

variable that captures a fuller sense of what we mean by engagement and participation. Factor

analysis, which takes a collection of measurements and identifies a smaller number of underlying,

latent constructs is one such technique. In this particular application, factor analysis allows us to

take a number of different observed behaviors like voting, or volunteering, or joining a sports

league, and extracting the variation they have in common to arrive at the unobserved variables

they represent (Basilevsky, 1994; Child, 2006).

Accordingly, I factor analyzed 20 different indicators using principal component factor

analysis in Stata. The initial analysis returned 17 different factors with Eigenvalues ranging from

5.53 to .07. I then used Velicer’s MAP test (Velicer, 1976) to determine the number of factors to

extract. I extracted two factors, which together account of 48.9% of the common variation among

the 20 indicators. I then rotated the factor loadings using the oblique promax method and

discarded any loadings less than .3. The results of the rotation are reported in Table 2.

<<Table 2 about here>>

The rotated matrix suggested a fairly clear division between the two chief factors: the first factor

loaded highly on measures of engagement in civic and community associations while the second

factor loaded highly on activities that represent the interests or needs of individuals to public

authorities, including government officials and politicians. Accordingly, these two factors

capture “engagement” and a “voice” dimensions of participation, which I treat as alternative

dependent variables. Finally, I used Cronbach’s alpha to check the reliability and validity of the

factor analysis results (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994).

Independent Variables

20

Conceptually, a number of possibilities exist that might influence the level of minority

participation in deeply divided societies. First, studies of engagement suggest there are a cluster

of individual-level variables that are strongly linked to involvement in the public sphere because

they influence how available individuals are for participation, especially given competing

pressures of family and wage-earning activities: age, income, education, marital status, and

gender. In general, we might expect individuals who are considered biographically available—

the young or the old, the economically secure, those without family obligations—to participate in

civic and political activities in higher numbers (McAdam, 1986, p. 70). In addition, I added

controls for the individual’s length of residence in Northern Ireland.

Participation might also be contingent on an individual’s relationship to her minority

community. Groups that are close-knit are thought to be able to mobilize members more easily in

terms of political and civic action (Verba, Schlozman, Brady, & Nie, 1993; Uslaner & Conley,

2003), while also providing important organizational resources to help individuals overcome

possible collective action problems preventing engagement (Olson, 1971; McCarthy & Zald,

1977; Calhoun-Brown, 1996). Accordingly, I include two variables to capture this dimension:

respondents’ assessment of how close their co-ethnics are, and a count of the number of cleavages

that respondents considered significant for their own communities. For example, if an individual

indicated that his minority community had significant internal divisions based on gender and

education, the number of cleavages for this respondent would be two. Individuals from

communities that are internally divided are expected to participate less than individuals from

more cohesive communities; individuals who are from close communities are expected to

participate more those from communities that are not tightly bonded.

A third category of variable that might influence participation includes

experiential and attitudinal factors, including general interest in politics and sense of personal

21

efficacy (Teixeira, 1992; Aldrich, 1993; Tam Cho, Gimpel, & Wu, 2006). To capture the

experiential component, I include individuals’ responses to a question about the level of racism or

discrimination they personally have experienced. It is plausible that individuals who have

experienced low levels of intimidation will be more willing to venture out into the public sphere

compared to those who feel victimized, though the inverse logic—feeling compelled to speak out

—might also hold true. I additionally include measures of empowerment, general interest in

politics, and whether individuals believe it is important to have more minorities involved in the

public sphere.

The final category of variable includes environmental and neighborhood effects. Given

that minorities in deeply divided societies must operate in a setting that is often physically divided

among communities and where there are tangible reminders of past conflict (as in Northern

Ireland), it seems reasonable to test whether the physical space itself has some kind of impact on

patterns of participation. Moreover, the social norms of participation or disengagement of

proximate individuals can have powerful conditioning effects on behavior (Stoll, 2001; Marschall

& Stolle, 2004; McClurg, 2006). Accordingly, I also am interested in neighborhood-level

participation trends as a possible predictor of individual participation. I focus on four particular

variables in this category: an individual’s proximity to a peaceline, a physical barrier separating

Protestant and Catholic enclaves that exist in the most unstable and violence-prone areas of

Northern Ireland; the average number of conflict-related deaths in an individual’s immediate

neighborhood (defined as the individual’s census output area),v the concentration of ethnic

minorities as a percent of the total population for each census output area, and the voter turnout in

v Census output areas are the smallest geographic units for which data are collected. Each one

contains approximately 200-250 individuals and are intended to be as internally homogenous as

possible in terms of socio-economic and demographic characteristics.

22

the 2005 local district elections for each local government district. Table 3 provides summary

statistics for all of the independent and dependent variables in the analysis.

<< Table 3 about here >>

I ran two different regression models using the engagement index and voice index as separate

dependent variables. I also included the engagement index as an independent variable for the

voice regression and vice versa in order to test whether individuals who are engaged in civic life

are more likely to also engage in voice, and whether those who give voice also are involved in

associational life. Both regressions are GLS with random effects. Residuals were examined to

rule out heteroskedasticity (further confirmed by a Breush-Pagan LM test). The results of the

regression are given in Table 4.

<< Table 4 about here >>

Taking the engagement model first, the above results suggest a reasonably good model fit

accounting for 67.8% of the overall variation in the data. Overall, ten variables emerged as

statistically significant at or above the .05 level, including demographic factors (education,

marital status), group cohesion (closeness, cleavages), experiential/attitudinal factors (experience

of racism, feeling of empowerment, value placed on minority participation, and level of interest in

politics), and neighborhood effects (proximity to a peaceline). All of these variables also

generate coefficients that point in the expected direction with one exception: those who felt

empowered to change Northern Ireland society were less likely to score highly on the engagement

index, as empowered feelings might lead individuals to eschew civic associations in favor of

other forms of activity that might be perceived as having a more immediate and significant

impact.

What are we to conclude from the engagement model? First, that patterns of civic

engagement are not driven by any one dominant factor, but rather, are conditioned by forces at

23

the individual, group, and neighborhood levels. Indeed, when standardized coefficients are

produced for this model, the variables that have the single biggest impact on engagement seem to

come from all four categories of independent variables: interest in politics (beta=.452), education

(beta=.300), community closeness (beta=.245), and proximity to a peaceline (beta=-.213), which

further underscores the complexity of motivating factors. Finally, voice is statistically significant

in the engagement model, such that a one-point increase in the voice index is predicted to increase

the engagement index by .092 points, all else being equal. What this suggests is that there is a

modest “spillover” effect insofar as individuals who are engaged in voice activities are also more

likely to engage in civic associational life. For such individuals, participation in these two

domains is connected and complementary, not rival or exclusive.

The picture is quite different for the voice model. I use the same independent variables,

only substituting engagement for the voice index. The lower R2 of .378 indicates that the factors

that predict a fairly high proportion of the variation in engagement are far less able to account for

the variation in voice. The results also indicate that fewer variables are statistically significant at

the .05 level or beyond: only education, age, closeness to the community, value on minorities in

public office, and voter turnout turn out to be relevant. Though variables from each of the four

core categories are represented in this final model, apart from education, closeness to the

community and value on minorities in office, the variables in the voice model are different from

the engagement model. Turning to standardized coefficients, the variables that seem to have the

most leverage in terms of the voice index are neighborhood turnout (beta=-.332), education and

age (both betas= -.254), and closeness of the community (beta=.252). The coefficients on all of

these variables are consistent with our expectations, although surprisingly, high levels of turnout

in one’s local district actually seems to depress voice, not encourage it. Rather than creating

social pressure for more participation, high levels of neighborhood turnout actually might create

24

excuses to not participate since minorities might feel compelled to strike a more explicitly neutral

stance in order to avoid potentially troublesome interactions with neighbors over charged political

matters. Finally, the engagement index is not a statistically significant predictor of voice,

suggesting that any “spillover” dynamics flow only in one direction: individuals who are

engaged in voice activities are also more likely to take part in civic associational life. However,

the inverse is not true: those who are civically active are no more likely to engage in voice

activities. The more visible and perhaps costly nature of voice activities might be the reason for

this pattern: those engaging in voice activities may find civic engagement a relatively easy add-

on, whereas those who take part in associations may not consider voice activities to be a natural

or desired extension of their current activities.

Conclusion

What do the above results tell us about minority participation in deeply divided societies?

First, the results suggest that participation in political and associational life is hardly absent

among minorities in Northern Ireland. They do participate, more than minimally, and in multiple

ways. However, this participation has limits: arenas that are more directly tainted by lingering

sectarian divisions are almost universally avoided by minorities in favor of activities that are

neutral or have some possibility of cross-community appeal.

Second, both engagement and voice are affected by individual-, group-, attitudinal-, and

neighborhood-level factors, though in different ways. This underscores the complexity of

triggering mechanisms and possibly, the value in looking for different mechanisms or pathways

that “activate” minorities and get them to participate more. While this analysis highlights

possible variables, further analysis—perhaps combining qualitative and QCA techniques—would

be able to uncover concatenations of factors that produce high or low levels of participation. At

the same time, such analysis should be sensitive to the fact that the same variables may not play a

25

role in voice activities and associational engagement. Indeed, if this analysis is anything to go by,

these two forms of participation emerge from somewhat distinct processes.

Third, the results of the study suggest that minorities in deeply divided societies in

Northern Ireland have more than a simple choice between being sojourners or settlers. Hybrid

strategies are also possible. In this particular instance, minorities do engage in public life, which

undermines a pure sojourner approach. At the same time, minorities seemingly pick and choose

very carefully from possible civic and political activities in order to balance both the benefits of

being involved and the benefits of preserving their liminality in a society where there are distinct

advantages to being able to move across the central identity conflict without real penalty.

Minorities in Northern Ireland are the only ones in society really able to do so, and this flexibility

has certain economic and social advantages that these communities no doubt want to protect. As

a result, minorities are neither settlers nor sojourners, but something in-between, privileging one

strategy or the other depending on the situation at hand and the demands of their own social and

economic well-being.

What does this mean for identity and the possibility of more inclusive cleavage structures

in deeply divided societies? Though Northern Ireland is only one case, the above analysis

supports some tentative propositions that can be further tested in other settings. First, the hybrid

adaptive strategy of minorities is beneficial for expanding the number of voices and interests

represented in public space. However, because minorities have a vested interest in confining their

participation to the least divisive domains, they are likely to have a minimal presence in the most

contested spaces and institutions—the very places that would benefit most from a re-imagining

and broadening of participation. In Northern Ireland, therefore, civic society and certain forms of

political action may be welcoming homes for minorities who wish to take part in public life.

26

However, formal politics seems largely unaffected by the energies and involvement of minority

communities.vi

This exclusion of formal politics might, therefore, generate a different kind of division in

society: one that de-links formal politics from more informal types of participation. This is, I

submit, a potential danger in a place like Northern Ireland where politics is already treated with

some suspicion by the public, and members of the political elite are considered largely

disconnected from the dynamics of society. To the extent that formal politics continues to

organize itself along old, sectarian lines and does not reflect changing demographic and social

realities on the ground, it will continue to relegate itself to marginal status, which has potentially

grave consequences for the quality of legislation, as well as broader issues of democratic

legitimacy and support. There is, ultimately, a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem with minorities

and formal politics in places like Northern Ireland: they do not participate in large numbers

because the space itself is unwelcoming. Because they do not participate, they abdicate any role

they might otherwise play in helping reform that space to something more accommodating.

Sadly, this analysis does not provide any solutions for this dilemma, but in better understanding

the empirical dynamics at work and the relationship that minorities have to majorities and public

spaces in deeply divided societies, we might be better able to move beyond static cleavages to

ones more fluid and inclusive.

vi One member of the Northern Ireland Assembly is from the Chinese community, though this has

had limited impact in terms of encouraging other minorities to run for office or otherwise get

more deeply involved in party politics

27

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of survey sample

Political and Civic Engagement SurveyAll

(n=149)Indians(n=59)

Chinese(n=43)

Polish(n=26)

Men 41.6% 55.2% 29.3% 30.8%Women 58.4% 44.8% 70.3% 69.2%

18-34 years 45.9% 31% 39% 83.3%35-65 years 46.6% 55.2% 56.1% 16.7%65+ years 7.5% 13.8% 4.9% 0%

Less than university degree 23% 11.9% 51.2% 4.2%University degree or more 77% 88.1% 48.8% 95.8%

Catholic 15.1%Protestant 8.6%

Orthodox Christian 2.9%Christian, other 8.6%

Hindu 27.3%Muslim 2.2%

Sikh 5.8%Other 3.6%

Not religious 25.9%

Less than £10,000/year 20.7%Between £10,000-£19,999 24.3%Between £20,000-£29,999 16.4%Between £30,000-£39,999 14.3%Between £40,000-£49,999 6.4%

Over £50,000 4.3%Prefer not to answer 13.6%

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Table 2: Rotated factor loadings for participation indices

Factor 1 Factor 2Voting .5564 Member, religious group .5837

Writing letter to press .7209 Member, arts/culture group .6507Protesting .4622 Member, political party .7660

Contacting official .7533 Member, youth group .7721Donating to charity .7407 Member, women’s group .8402

Signing petition .623 Member, leisure/sports group

.6802

Contacting police .5961 Member, parents group .7399Member, ethnic group .4666 Member, ethnic group .3647Visiting advice center .6555

Visiting community group .5649Attending community

meeting.6302

Talking politics with family .4641Talking politics with friends .4738

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Table 3: Summary statistics of regression variables

Variable N Mean Standard Deviation

Minimum Maximum

Voice 147 0.51 0.7 -0.41 3.15Engagement 147 0.91 0.48 -0.15 2.22Education level(1=primary school or less, 5=postgraduate)

144 3.65 1.21 1 5

Age 137 40.53 14.6 19 75Marital status(0=married, 1=other) 145 0.28 0.45 0 1

Gender(0=male, 1=female) 146 0.58 0.49 0 1

Income 128 2.7 1.45 1 6Community closeness(1=not close, 7=very close) 139 4.45 1.72 1 7

Number of community cleavages 148 5.45 2.59 0 9Experience of racism(0=never, 4=constant) 148 1.39 1.1 0 4

Value on minorities in public(1=not important, 7=very important) 148 5.24 1.77 1 7

Empowerment(0=no power, 4=very powerful) 130 0.88 0.86 0 3

Interest in politics(1=no interest, 7=strong interest) 148 3.09 1.84 1 7

Proximity to peaceline 139 0.01 0.12 0 1Neighborhood conflict deaths 139 210.97 189.64 14 663Voter turnout 139 61.15 3.52 53.46 73.06Neighborhood ethnic concentration 139 3.03 4.05 0 21.63

30

Table 4: Regression results

ENGAGEMENT MODEL

VOICE MODEL

Variable Coefficient Standard Error

Coefficient Standard Error

Education 0.127*** 0.032 -0.159* 0.082Age -0.007* 0.003 -0.014 0.007Marital status -0.193* 0.080 -0.226 0.193Gender 0.029 0.069 -0.003 0.161Income 0.045 0.027 -0.036 0.065Community closeness 0.068 0.022 0.111* 0.052Number of community cleavages -0.035** 0.013 0.055 0.032Experience of racism -0.094** 0.034 -0.023 0.085Value on minorities in public 0.037** 0.020 -0.085 0.047Empowerment -0.090 0.042 0.161 0.099Interest in politics 0.108* 0.019 -0.084 0.052Proximity to peaceline -0.637*** 0.223 0.252 0.552Neighborhood conflict deaths 0.000** 0.000 0.000 0.001Turnout -0.024 0.013 -0.073** 0.029Neighborhood ethnic concentration -0.018 0.009 0.024 0.021Voice 0.092* 0.050Engagement 0.505 0.275Constant 1.630* 0.838 5.542*** 1.900

N 86 N 86Wald Χ2 146.2*** Wald Χ2 41.9***Total R2 .6778 Total R2 .3779

GLS regression with random effects* = p≤.05; ** = p≤.01; *** p ≤.001; two-tailed significance tests

31

Figure 1: Feelings of closeness to different populations

32

Figure 2: Feelings of closeness to neighbors, by ethnic group

33

Figure 3: Number of civic organizations joined

34

Figure 4: Number of “voice” activities performed in past five years

35

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