Early August 2024 saw an anti-immigration protest rally at the City Hall of Belfast and the rioting in South Belfast in subsequent days. In the immediate surroundings of the Queen’s University Belfast and along Botanic Avenue, ‘Belfast’s most multi-cultural street’,  the shops of  ‘minority ethnic’ people were vandalised. Over several days, race hate attacks were directed against homes and businesses belonging to black and minority ethnic people across Northern Ireland. While on this occasion the riots took off after the nativist British nationalists had mobilised racist elements in society, the sectarian structure of Northern Ireland society - on both sides of the ethnopolitical divide – maintains intolerance of central relevance in the province.

The tacit acceptance of racist attitudes in politics, society and the university has profound relevance for the instability of intergroup relations in NI. We identify absent engagement with racist attitudes, practices and conduct as one of the key effects of the privileged focus on accommodation of nationalist/unionist identities in the province. Sensitivities about the concerns of the two major groups in NI normalises presence of racism in the everyday; commitment to social and political stability in its current form additionally perpetuates blindness to other identity groups and to the plurality of peoples’ lived experience. Where discussions about racism take place, these too are often presented as a zero-sum game between the dominant groups: nationalists/unionists, locals/newcomers, “whites”/”people of colour”. “Misery research” is often times the result. However - as copious studies and reports on Northern Ireland societies highlight - problems, challenges and concerns are widely shared across groups, affecting each and every individual in the society

The absence of engagement with what “racism” does to society as a whole is the theme we would like to centre. We invite contributions that engage with one or several issues during this two day workshop:

• Everyday racism and consequences of it being glossed over
• Misrecognition of diversity in the NI society and challenges this poses for appreciation of individual equality
• Dangers of neglecting alternative vectors of group-ward organisation
• Effects of rhetoric/policies that naturalise/ essentialise protestant and catholic identity groups
• Cost of ignoring the continuities of interests, values, assumptions and traditions
• Opportunities to devise and implement solutions, such as Bill of Rights, and why these are needed, what benefit would these bring, what might these constrain etc
• Finally, the role of anti-racism education in a deeply divided society; risks to academic freedom/thought and scope for action within the ‘post-race’ university

Our workshop invites contributions from academics, practitioners and community activists to join in the discussion on the impact that the oversight of everyday and explicit racism has in contemporary Northern Ireland. We invite proposals for individual paper contributions and/or panels that engage empirically, conceptually and normatively with racism in Northern Ireland, and welcome comparative research including that on societies in the Republic of Ireland and the Great Britain. The workshop will be in-person and will take place on the afternoon April 1 and throughout April 2.

Our aim is to bring the best of contemporary research on racism, “race” relations and identity-centred politics, the impact of deep and/or growing divisions between groups, and factors facilitating evolution of outgroup enmity on the island of Ireland and in Great Britain. We welcome new research by practitioners and community groups, established academics as well as by early career scholars. We also welcome people working in and interested in practicalities of the absent discussion on racism to join in the audience.

Please submit expression of your interest under this link https://forms.office.com/e/KGjnB4z4dX by January 12, 2025 If you have any questions, please contact rc14.ipsa@gmail.com.