Ambiguities of Segregation and Spatial Reconciliation: Reflections from Belfast

Abstract

This article provides a reflection on the ambiguities that sit at the crux of contemporary efforts to forge spatial reconciliation in Belfast. It takes as a departure point, a modest spatial initiative taken by a local community group in Belfast to celebrate peacebuilding progress between the historically contentious Catholic Falls Road and Protestant Shankill Road areas of the city. Referred to here as a place of dual territory, the article describes what is a unique space in Belfast that unabashedly celebrates Catholic and Protestant culture side-by-side. By moving on to then consider the seemingly unrelated efforts of formal government policies to foster wider spatial reconciliation, the article demonstrates how this otherwise unremarkable space inadvertently shines a light on a delicate conundrum that sits at the heart of these formal spatial reconciliation efforts. Central to this argument is a true Foucauldian subjectification where the fostering of the cross-community consensus that is so essential to spatial reconciliation policies also paradoxically organises the participants into opposing Catholic and Protestant groups, inherently reproducing the very forces of conflict that they are trying to ameliorate. The article concludes by reflecting on how these processes serve a greater political rationale where the conservation of this spatially divisive status quo helps to maintain a governing duopoly that is preserved by the predicable voting patterns that such territorial boundaries can inspire.