Spatial segregation and labour market processes in Belfast

This article examines the nature of labour market exclusion in Belfast and policy responses to the dilemmas of ethnic space. It highlights the value of an area-based approach to understanding the way in which social and ethno-sectarian segregation mediates access to production sites and job opportunities in the wider urban economy. Research from the Belfast metropolitan labour market is used to identify the importance of employment in neutral areas, which can stimulate access from ethnically and socially polarised communities. The article argues for a spatial approach to understanding the structuring of labour market opportunities and constraints and it concludes by highlighting the implications for policy and practice in ethnically territorialised spaces.

Indigenous rights in Chile: National identity and majority group support for multicultural policies

We examine support for policies affecting indigenous ethnic minorities in Chile. Specifically, we examine the role of national group definitions that include the largest indigenous group—the Mapuche—in different ways. Based on questionnaire data from nonindigenous Chilean students (N = 338), we empirically distinguish iconic inclusion, whereby the Mapuche are seen as an important part of Chile's history and identity on the one hand, from egalitarian inclusion, which represents the Mapuche as citizens of equal importance to the nonindigenous majority on the other. Both forms of inclusion positively predict support for indigenous rights, independent of participants' political affiliation, strength of national identification, and social distance. A second study (N = 277) replicates this finding whilst controlling for right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, blind patriotism, and constructive patriotism. It also finds iconic inclusion to be predictive of a pro-Mapuche position regarding the unrest over the issue of ancestral land in 2009. We conclude that understanding how national identity affects attitudes about minority rights necessitates appreciating the importance of particular meanings of nationality, and not only the strength of identification.

How different are the correlates of onset and continuation of civil wars?

It is very common to analyse the factors associated with the onset and continuation of civil wars entirely separately, as if there were likely to be no similarity between them. This is an overstatement of the theoretical position, which has established only that they may be different (i.e. less than perfectly correlated). The hypothesis that the explanatory variables are the same is not theoretically excludable and is empirically testable, both for individual variables and for combinations of them. Starting from this approach yields a rather different picture of the factors associated with the continuation of civil wars, because the relatively small sample size means that confidence intervals on individual coefficients are wide in this case. It is shown here that country size, mountainous terrain and (in most datasets) ethnic diversity seem significant for the continuation of civil wars, starting from the null hypothesis that variables affect onset and continuation probabilities identically, rather than entirely independently. One variable that affects onset and continuation significantly differently is anocracy, which we find to matter only for onset. Civil war is more likely if it occurred two years previously, as well as one year previously, which indicates that wars are more likely to restart after only one year of peace, and also more likely to stop in their first year. The combined model strengthens the result that ethnic diversity matters (it is consistently significant across datasets, whereas it is not when onset is analysed separately), although in the UCD/PRIO dataset it is significant only for onset. By contrast, if continuation is analysed independently, virtually nothing is significant except a pre-1991 dummy and a dummy for civil war two years previously.

Discourses of Demonisation: Chechens, Russians, and the Stavropol’ Riots of 2007

In the summer of 2007, the geopolitics of Russo-North Caucasian relations were once again manifest in inter-ethnic violence. During the course of six weeks of rioting between ethnic Russian (russkii) and non-ethnic Russian (rossiiskii) citizens, three students were killed (one Chechen and two Russians) and pogroms were conducted widely. This article addresses these events through a focus on the nature and politics of the riots and those involved. I argue that a range of tensions came together to form a localised geopolitics, and that this contributes to an understanding of why these events took place. Ultimately, the riots are important as an event which reveals much about the complexity of power, space, and identity in contemporary Russia.

Are separate schools divisive? A case study from Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, where the majority of children are educated at schools attended mainly by coreligionists, the debate concerning the role of schools in perpetuating intergroup hostilities has recently been reignited. Against questions regarding the efficacy of community relations policy in education, the research reported in this paper employs qualitative methods to examine social identity and intergroup attitudes amongst children attending a state controlled Protestant school and the school's response to dealing with issues of diversity and difference. Findings suggest a relationship between ethnic isolation experienced by children and negative intergroup social attitudes and the discussion focuses on issues germane to the separateness of the school that are likely to contribute to strong ‘own’ group bias, stereotyping and prejudice. The implication of the school's separate status for its engagement with a policy framework for relationship building is also considered. The paper concludes with some policy reflections that are likely to have resonance beyond Northern Ireland.

Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: a qualitative study of three mixed communities

In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to ‘hunker down’ and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on
qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consistent with the contact hypothesis. There is also some support for Putnam’s theory that mixed environments can induce ‘hunkering down’ and that inter-group trust may be compromised. However, our data challenge Putnam’s argument that these responses are a consequence of ‘anomie’ or ‘social malaise’. Rather, we find that withdrawal from social activity in the neighbourhoods we observed was a calculated response at times of threat, often aimed at protecting existent positive inter-ethnic relations.

Racism and young girls' peer group relations: the experiences of South Asian girls

This article draws upon data from an indepth ethnographic study of five- and six-year-old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner city primary school. It focuses on the significance of ‘race’ within young girls’ peer group relations and the ways in which the social dynamics that underlie those relations provide the context for understanding the particular nature and form that racism takes among the girls. This is done through a focus on the experiences of South Asian girls within the group. Within this, the article has two main aims. First, it aims to contribute to the literature within the sociology of education by extending the existing research focus on racism within teacher/pupil interactions to include an understanding of racism as it manifests itself among the children’s peer-group relations. Second, in adapting and applying Pierre Boudieu’s concepts of capital and field, the article also offers a contribution to the literature within the sociology of ‘race’ and ethnicity by suggesting one potentially fruitful way in which racism can be understood within specific social contexts.

What now for the contact hypothesis? Towards a new research agenda

This article begins with a review of recent research on the Contact Hypothesis. It will be shown that the literature in this area has become essentially closed and self-referential where the core political and theoretical premises that underpin the Hypothesis have been taken for granted and the debates have therefore become restricted simply to how best to measure the influence of inter-group contact. One of the key reasons for this is the lack of critical engagement with the Contact Hypothesis from those of a more structuralist and/or ‘radical’ perspective. This may be because the individualistic focus of the Hypothesis is seen from such a perspective as largely irrelevant to addressing racial and ethnic divisions and/or because it may be felt that to engage with the concept is to give it undue legitimacy. It will be argued in this article, however, that the wholesale dismissal of the Contact Hypothesis is a little premature. Just as recent research on racial and ethnic divisions has drawn attention to the way in which such divisions exist at a number of layers within the social formation – from the structural, political and ideological through to the sub-cultural, interactional and biographical – so must any initiatives aimed at addressing these divisions be similarly ‘multi-layered’ in their approach. However, it will be argued that for research to help inform specific strategies at the interactional level, there needs to be a significant change in the way that inter-group contact, and the Contact Hypothesis more generally, is studied. The article will ‘model out’ one potentially fruitful way in which such research can develop through the use of an ethnographic case study involving a cross-community scheme arranged for Protestant and Catholic children in Northern Ireland.

Seen but never heard: rethinking approaches to researching racism and young children

This paper is concerned with the methodology underlying attempts to understand the nature and impact of racism among young children. In drawing upon data gathered from a year-long ethnographic study of five- and six-year-old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner-city primary school, the paper provides a critique of traditional approaches to the study of racial attitudes among young children. It is argued that such research has been conceived through the articulation of two, inter-related discourses on children and on 'race'; the former couched in traditional socialisation and developmental models of childhood with their tendency to neglect the agency and social competency of young children and the latter being embedded within essentialist notions of 'race' and ethnicity that tend to deny the contingent and context-specific nature of racialised identities. The paper argues that the result of this has been that while children have often been the objects of research they have rarely been the subjects; in other words they are often seen but never heard. The paper argues for the need to move beyond the methodological confines set by these discourses and rethink alternative approaches that begin with the assumption that young children are socially competent. One such approach, drawing upon ethnographic methods and fore-grounding the importance of largely unstructured small group interviews with young children, is illustrated. Through the use of a number of examples, it is shown how this approach can help to emphasise the ability of children as young as five and six to respond to and negotiate their social worlds and more specifically within this the competency with which they are able to appropriate, rework and reproduce a number of discourses on 'race' to make sense of their own social experiences. In doing this the paper also illustrates the way in which it provides a methodology able to draw out and highlight the contradictions, contingency and complexity of racialised identities among young children. Ultimately, it is an approach concerned with placing the children themselves central within the research processes and foregrounding their voices and experiences.