Bordered Youth: Analysing Citizenship and Identities in Post-Brexit Northern Ireland

This project analyses how young people negotiate the complex and overlapping identities and citizenships produced by living in borderland regions in times of fraught political change. Our geographical focus is the 'borderless border' between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, a physical, cultural, economic and emotional boundary that is being renegotiated in the aftermath of Brexit. This research builds an understanding of how border crossings and wider relationships with this unique place underpin young peoples' values and belief systems. More critically, it explores a) how these interactions may shape future constitutional change within Northern Ireland (and by extension the political makeup of the UK and/or the Republic of Ireland) and b) what this border could look like in future.

Those living alongside the Irish Border - and within Northern Ireland - have unique overlapping claims to citizenship, and protected freedom of movement across the border through the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. However, uncertainties produced by Brexit threaten to derail this, presenting unique challenges for the Border's material, symbolic and geopolitical contexts. We will work alongside young people aged 16 to 24, a demographic excluded from voting in the Brexit referendum, to map, document and interrogate mobility, citizenship and identity. Our participants include sixth form students and young people engaged in youth projects in Belfast, Derry-Londonderry, Newry, Armagh and Enniskillen. We will use participatory research methods (digital ethnography and filmmaking) to document their experiences; and digital and archival methods to analyse citizenship and mobility.

Young people are often absent from or overlooked by political debate, consultation and input due to their status as 'apprentice citizens' and this is the case for the Irish Border and the implications of Brexit for the Northern Irish constitution. To change this, this project includes knowledge exchange pathways between the participants and policy makers within the Northern Irish Executive. To make this a reality we are liaising with our project partners, the Nerve Centre in Derry (a project collaborator and Northern Ireland's leading creative media arts centre) and partnering with the Department of Education in Northern Ireland. The participants will co-curate a film-screening and exhibition, bringing together young people and key political decisionmakers.

This project offers two critical pathways for impact. First, participants will receive creative media skills in either digital ethnography or filmmaking and maintain copyright for any project materials they produce for university portfolios, CVs etc. They will be partners in the knowledge exchange partnership through the co-curation of a film-screening and exhibition for policymakers, politicians and key organisations (e.g. the Community Relations Council and Youth Action) to show how young people conceptualise the Border and their citizenship. Second, the project engages with political organisations with an interest in a) decision-making around the constitutional issue in Northern Ireland and b) what future relationships will look like with the EU. These actors will benefit from having young people directly inform policy and will be engaged by the film-screening and exhibition, policy briefs, engagement opportunities (e.g. the KESS seminar series) and our existing networks (the investigators have a track record of working alongside policymakers in NI). We will produce a minimum of four peer-reviewed articles, host a symposium on Brexit, youth and young people, and attend relevant academic conferences. While this project is focused on border dynamics alongside the Irish Border, it will have broader resonance for those living in contested border spaces elsewhere, encouraging the use of participatory research methods to showcase voices often side-lined in political debate.