Contested Space: Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border

• In Event: The macro and the micro: Holistic Approaches to Criminal Policy and their connection with local environments

Abstract

This presentation lays out the framework and preliminary findings of CONSPACE, an Irish Research Council-funded project which takes the Northern Irish border as an organising concept. The work investigates successive phases of penal nationalism, each of which has been distinguished by the centrality of the Northern Irish border – a border which has been a locus of security, penality and crime control since its inception a century ago and which achieves an urgent timeliness post-Brexit.

Commenced in September 2022, CONSPACE takes a multi-strand approach to the research, joining historical and contemporary perspectives through focus groups, oral histories, interviews, photovoice, archival and historical press anlaysis, and contemporary media and political documentary. This presentation will address one central strand of the work, exploring questions of border living.

The border living strand investigates the ways in which ordinary people have lived and continue to live under border security regimes, the experiences of those who have and continue to police the region, and the operation of border policing and penality in the social and legal constructions of identity. The work employs the field of border criminology and the concept of penal nationalism, turning the analytic capacity of these lenses to an under-studied region.

Author

• Danielle C. Jefferis, Maynooth University - School of Law & Criminology