Éamonn Ó Ciardha and Micheal Ó Siochrú, “A Laboratory for Empire,” History Ireland 17, no. 6 (2009): 10–11.
Settlements in Northern Ireland can be distinctly characterised as Protestant or Catholic by the majority community in their population. This was used to inform the creation of the border of Northern Ireland itself, which was established as a “Protestant-majority” polity.
Michael MacMahon, “Units of Land Measurement,” Clare County Library, February 28, 2003, ➝.
Conor Mulvagh, “How Was the Irish Border Drawn in the First Place?” The Irish Times, February 11, 2019, ➝.
In the context of Northern Ireland, the Protestant population corresponds loosely (though not necessarily) to a unionist political stance in favor of remaining part of the UK (unionism), and likewise the Catholic population loosely to a nationalist stance supporting Irish reunification (nationalism).
In Northern Ireland, the equivalent institutions are instead called Health & Social Care and Public Prosecution Service, which omit references to a nation or head of state.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1973), 296.
See: Northern Ireland Office, “The Belfast Agreement,” Constitutional Issues, 1(ii), 1998; Ian Paisley, quoted in Cormac Ó Gráda and Brendan Walsh, “Fertility and Population in Ireland, North and South,” Population Studies 49, no. 2 (1995): 259.
Patrick McGregor and Patricia McKee, “Religion and Fertility in Contemporary Northern Ireland,” European Journal of Population/Revue Européenne de Démographie 32, no. 4 (2016): 618.
An ironic fate for a territory predicated on its population’s Protestant faith, but spatially fixed and inert in response to population changes. Paul Nolan, quoted in Gareth Gordon, “‘Catholic Majority Possible’ in NI by 2021,” BBC News, April 19, 2018, ➝.
After the Good Friday Agreement, bodies in Northern Ireland are subject to the influences of the governments of the UK and Republic of Ireland through its provisions for east-west cooperation. Many matters, including marriage, abortions, and legal gender recognition, are devolved by the UK to the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland’s own state institutions. Northern Ireland’s government in its own capacity also works with the Republic of Ireland on certain matters under north-south cooperation.
After crossing, her right to public healthcare was still determined by her territory of residence, making her (until recently) reliant on private funding for her treatment. The cost barriers of childcare, pay during work leave, and financial dependency remain unacknowledged. In 2017, judges on the UK’s Supreme Court narrowly rejected a case that would have entitled Northern Irish women to free abortions through the NHS in England; since then, England, Wales and Scotland have gradually offered NHS-funded abortions to women traveling from Northern Ireland, while treatment in the Republic of Ireland may carry fees, and only permits abortions up to 12 weeks (rather than 24 weeks in Great Britain). Amelia Gentleman, “Supreme Court Narrowly Rejects Northern Ireland Free Abortions Appeal,” The Guardian, June 14, 2017, ➝.
UK Supreme Court, “In the matter of an application by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland),” Reference by the Court Of Appeal in Northern Ireland Pursuant to Paragraph 33 of Schedule 10 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (Abortion) (Northern Ireland), 2018, UKSC 27, ➝; Rory Carroll, “Northern Ireland Abortion Law Ruled To Breach Human Rights,” The Guardian, October 3, 2019, ➝.
Gareth Cross, “DUP Will Use Veto To Block Abortion Rights In Northern Ireland Says Jim Wells,” The Belfast Telegraph, May 28, 2018, ➝. Under the Good Friday Agreement, legislators sitting in the Assembly must be designated as “unionist,” “nationalist,” or “other.”
One perverse consequence is that up until 2019, a woman’s taxes paid to the UK government were used to directly fund the Police Service of Northern Ireland that would have arrested her for unlawful termination, while simultaneously, through a loophole of the UK government’s Government Equalities Office, would have reimbursed her travel, accommodation and abortion cost elsewhere in the UK, all within the same state.
Amanda Ferguson, “Northern Irish Women Told to Sail to England for Abortions despite Pandemic,” Reuters, April 7, 2020, ➝.
Ireland served as Britain’s main migrant labor source from the 1800s until the 1950s, and this colonial dynamic of extraction, of both economic productivity and labor force, continues to shape the borders in the migrant body. Colonialism and Irish migration to Britain was notably used as an example by Marx to illustrate his law of capitalist accumulation in Chapter 25 of Capital, volume 1. See also: Sean Glynn, “Irish Immigration to Britain, 1911–1951: Patterns and Policy,” Irish Economic and Social History 8, no. 1 (1981): 50.
See: “Irish Famine: How Ulster Was Devastated by Its Impact,” BBC News, September 26, 2015, ➝; James H. Johnson, “Harvest Migration from Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41 (1967): 99.
Kenneth H. Connell, “The Potato in Ireland,” Past & Present 23 (1962): 57–71.
Phelim P. Boyle and Cormac Ó Gráda, “Fertility Trends, Excess Mortality, and the Great Irish Famine,” Demography 23, no. 4 (1986): 543.
See: Richard T. Schaefer, Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society (London: SAGE Publications, 2008), 205; Edward E. McKenna, “Marriage and Fertility in Postfamine Ireland: A Multivariate Analysis,” American Journal of Sociology 80, no. 3 (1974): 689.
See: Robert E. Kennedy, “Emigration and Agricultural Labor-Saving Techniques,” in The Irish: Emigration, Marriage, and Fertility (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 86–109; Glynn, “Irish Immigration to Britain,” 69.
Bernard Ryan, “The Common Travel Area between Britain and Ireland,” Modern Law Review 64, no. 6 (2001): 870.
Under the 1949 Ireland Act, c. 41, s. 2(1).
British citizens in Ireland are exempt from immigration law and deportation, under the Aliens (Exemption) Order, 1999. PBC Deb (Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill), c. 170, February 26, 2019.
Simon Carswell, “Explainer: What Is the Emma DeSouza Case about?” The Irish Times, October 15, 2019, ➝; Simon Cox, “Brexit and Irish citizens in the UK: How to safeguard the rights of Irish citizens in an uncertain future,” The Traveller Movement, December 2017, 15.
Ryan, “The Common Travel Area,” 858.
Some nationals (e.g. Emaswati, Namibian) may have visa-free access in only one country but not the other, and they risk committing an immigration offence when crossing the (uncontrolled) Irish borders. See Nazia Latif and Agnieszka Martynowicz, “Our Hidden Borders: The UK Border Agency’s Powers of Detention,” Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, 2009, 62. ➝.
Paul Preciado, “My body doesn’t exist,” in Documenta 14 Reader (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2017), 124.
This is because the Agreement’s principle of consent recognizes the sovereignty of the UK over Northern Ireland as the status quo. See: Ellen Murray, “Re: Response to the public consultation on changes to the Gender Recognition Act in England and Wales,” TransgenderNI, October 15, 2018, 3, ➝.
“The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas.” Ireland, Constitution of Ireland, “The Nation,” Article 2, 1937 (until 1998). After the Good Friday Agreement, this was amended in 1999 to: “It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish Nation. That is also the entitlement of all persons otherwise qualified in accordance with law to be citizens of Ireland. Furthermore, the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.” Ireland, Constitution of Ireland, “The Nation,” Article 2, amended 1999.