The Belfast Mobility Project: Intergroup contact, segregation and the time-geography of sectarian relations in Belfast

This research develops a new approach to segregation between groups, taking sectarian relations in Belfast as a case study. In so doing, it proposes a theoretical and methodological framework that can be applied to other historically divided cities. Previous research has focused on (relatively) stable patterns of division entrenched within global institutions of residence, employment or education. We hold that such work may be enriched by research that treats segregation as the dynamic outcome of individuals' routine movements as they travel the city, using its pathways, amenities and activity spaces and coming into contact with certain kinds of people, while avoiding others.

Our project entails closely related work of theoretical, methodological and empirical innovation. Theoretically, we will integrate work on the psychology of intergroup contact with work on the time-geography of everyday behaviour. That is, we will show how time-geographic concepts (e.g. 'space-time path') can explain how segregation is reproduced through the day-by-day timing and spacing of individuals' movements and activities and, by implication, through the temporal and spatial 'constraints' to which they are subject. Correspondingly, we will show how such movements and activities express psychological processes. We will focus specifically on the role of different forms of perceived intergroup threat (e.g. symbolic, realistic and environmental threat), exploring how such threats interact with other social and psychological factors in order to sustain or undermine a 'behavioural ecology' of separation. Methodologically, our research will capitalize on new techniques for tracking and analyzing individuals' movements through urban areas. By implementing a novel combination of GPS technology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), interviews, and standard questionnaire techniques, we will show how segregation may arise through the timing and spacing of everyday behaviour and how this process is shaped by social and psychological factors.

Empirically, our project will entail the collection of new kinds of data on sectarian divisions in North Belfast. Initially, we will use a combination of 'walking interview' and GIS methods to map how Catholic and Protestant residents use and make sense of everyday activity spaces, exploring how their understanding of those spaces and pathways are territorially organised. Then, we will conduct a questionnaire survey with a representative sample of people living in North Belfast (n = 500), designed to tap their perceptions of intergroup threat along with a range of other social psychological variables. Finally, using a combination of GPS tracking and GIS methods, we will track the mobility patterns and activity space use over time of the same respondents who completed the questionnaire phase. Our analysis will explore the degree to which residents use activity spaces located in areas of varying sectarian compositions and pass along time-space pathways that increase or reduce their exposure to other communities. It will also explore how social, psychological and environmental factors predict resulting practices of segregation and integration.

Our research will help to develop a new approach to studying, evidencing and explaining segregation, which can be transferred to other contexts in which the problem of segregation arises. It will also inform interventions to combat sectarian polarization in Belfast at a time when the government is investing heavily in this ideal. Evidence on mobility patterns in the city, for instance, may enrich knowledge about the nature of the real or imagined constraints placed on residents' routine movements and pathways, the accessibility of public facilities, and the use of public transport. As important, it may reveal emerging spaces of integration and help to identify the kinds of people, social practices and environmental factors that are breaking down boundaries to contact.

Like other cities marked by a history of conflict and inequality, segregation causes many problems in Belfast. The polarization of Catholic and Protestant communities, for example, has concentrated poverty in certain areas, intensified sectarian prejudices, and diminished access to, and use of, public spaces and facilities. A PWC (2007) report estimated that governing ethnopolitical divisions costs Northern Ireland around £1.5 billion per year. Understanding the forms that it takes, the reasons it persists, and how it can be changed is thus a core concern of the Belfast City Council, who has implemented various initiatives to reduce segregation. As our letters of support illustrate, both the Council and other key agencies and community groups endorse the Belfast Mobility Project.

The BMP will inform interventions to promote change in Belfast and elsewhere by:

1. Providing new information about how ordinary citizens use, move through and avoid everyday public spaces in the city, giving a far richer picture than currently exists of how, when and where segregation occurs, and who it affects most severely.

2. Allowing policy makers, such as the Belfast City Council, the Community Relations Council, and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, to target interventions to promote 'shared' spaces more effectively and to identify 'contested' spaces as sites of potential intervention. Similarly, the BMP will allow local NGO's and community groups, such as the Belfast Interface Project, to engage more effectively with local communities in ways that promote social change.

3. Identifying areas where 'shared' spaces are already emerging, as expressed, for instance, via the existence of activity spaces where the pathways of members of different communities are routinely 'bundled' together, e.g. common use of spaces of entertainment in Belfast's city centre by young people at weekends. As the latter example demonstrates, our data may well reveal a more positive and nuanced picture of community relations in north Belfast and its relationship with the city centre, than that generally presented in the literature on residential segregation.

4. Generating policy-relevant information about more specific problems of human mobility in north and central Belfast. To take just one example, our data will evidence how different groups use public transport facilities and how such usage is (or is not) affected by factors such as intergroup contact and threat (or proxies of such threat, such as the routes taken by given buses at particular times).

5. Engaging ordinary Belfast citizens and broader audiences who are interested in its human geography. To this end, we will create a project website that will include an 'outreach' section designed to engage local communities. It will also include an interactive and 'immersive' digital environment targeted at general users, which will combine GIS information in the form of interactive maps, audio tracks from the 'walking interviews', still images, and textual information.

6. Disseminating a novel methodological and conceptual framework that can be more widely applied, offering the possibility of drawing comparisons both within different areas of Belfast and of extending the BMP's policy impacts beyond Belfast to other historically divided cities. The tools necessary for extending our research will be housed on the BMP website, including links to our bespoke mobile phone app, GIS procedures, walking interview protocols, and statistical methods of analysis.

The BMP may thus ultimately construct a powerful and generalizable framework for shaping urban policy on the problem of segregation.