From 1969 to 2018: Relocating historical narratives of displacement during ‘the Troubles’ through the European migrant crisis

Introduction

One of the major consequences of war and inter-communal violence is the mass displacement of civilians (Nafziger et al. 2000). From the outbreak of ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the internal displacement of civilians from across the sectarian divide became a familiar occurrence. So too were the instances of civilians in the north seeking sanctuary in the adjoining Republic of Ireland. Since the onset of the Northern Ireland peace process, issues pertaining to the legacy of the conflict and how best to address the complex needs of victims and survivors have dominated academic and practitioner discourse. Despite much innovative thinking, there has been an inability or reluctance to formally implement a comprehensive programme that addresses the diverse needs of those victims and survivors who were affected. The impact of the conflict was far reaching, with the Northern Ireland Commission for Victims and Survivors suggesting that almost one in three people were affected indirectly. However, within the myriad options for dealing with the past, including a vast array of scholarly work, there is little to no mention of those who were violently displaced, or, in everyday local parlance, ‘burnt out’. ¹ In fact, it is fair to say that the issue is almost completely absent from scholarly analysis of ‘the Troubles’. When we consider that anywhere between 45,000 and 60,000 civilian families were displaced as trouble erupted in 1968, an ‘enforced movement of population without parallel in Europe since the Second World War’ (Connolly & McIntosh 2012: 58), it is perhaps even more perplexing that there have not been more calls for proper acknowledgement of the impact of being displaced on victims and survivors or for their loss and suffering to be carefully considered within any future transitional justice framework.

In 2018, the legacy of this displacement remains pronounced with segregation and division a feature of the ‘post-conflict’ landscape (Shirlow 2006; Shirlow & Murtagh 2006). In 1999, around 98% of Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) estates were segregated according to religious designation (Shirlow & Murtagh 2006: 60) and in the intervening 20 years this number has only fallen marginally, standing at around 90% in 2011 according to the NIHE. The legacy of enforced displacement and subsequent entrenched segregation looms large in the ‘post-conflict’ era. Issues pertaining to a lack of youth social mobility, limited inter-communal contact and the sectarianising of space in urban centres across Northern Ireland remain. Furthermore, ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland continues to be a society whereby instances of forced displacement, the result of ongoing sectarian intimidation, continue to exist (as examined in more detail below).

The Northern Irish experience of mass displacement due to internal conflict, of course, is not unique. Moreover, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2017), an unprecedented global refugee crisis, the result of, inter alia, a hybrid mix of global interventionist politics and violent intra-group conflict (Yazgan et al. 2015), has erupted. This has, in turn, resulted in the forced displacement of some 65.6 million people. Of those displaced, 22.5 million refugees have subsequently sought asylum in a variety of countries. Approximately 55% of those seeking asylum come from three of the worlds most troubled regions: South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria. Of those displaced, a paltry 189,300 refugees have been resettled.

In 2015, Ireland – a country whose history suggests a bias towards migration as opposed to refugee assimilation – pledged to open its borders and resettle 4,000 men, women and children fleeing conflict and persecution. Since then, praise and criticism have been meted out to the presiding Irish government in equal measure; praise, for instance, came from ex-UK Foreign Minister David Milliband who used the Irish example as a weapon to chastise other foreign governments, most notably that of US President Donald Trump. Criticism came from within Ireland itself, including from Fianna Fáil foreign affairs spokesperson Darragh O’Brien who referred to the Irish response as ‘shameful’. ² Despite failing to problematise adequately issues around the violent displacement of its own civilians in the past, Northern Ireland pledged support when called upon to respond to the growing global refugee crisis and to act as a safe haven for those fleeing persecution and violent conflict. Belfast, perhaps somewhat ironically given the issues mentioned above, even received ‘city of sanctuary’ status, resulting in the establishment of a ‘city of sanctuary group’ on 22 June 2013. ³

Rather than critique the Irish response to the migrant crisis per se – such analysis has been usefully provided by others (Pestova 2017) – this article considers the current intellectual energy generated around responses to the present refugee crisis on the island, an appropriate moment for introspection on dealing with the past. As noted above, transitional justice discourse that has sought to deal with the past has been largely silent on the phenomenon of internal displacement across the island of Ireland as a whole. Despite it being accepted that widespread displacement was commonplace at the onset of the Northern Irish conflict, there has been next to no work done on the long-term impact that this had on the everyday lives of victims and survivors, and there has not been any meaningful attempt to situate the experience of these specific victims within a broader transitional justice framework. Unsatisfactorily, analysis of the legacy of conflict-related displacement in Northern Ireland has largely been relegated to the narrative form (Side 2015).

While the response to the refugee crisis across the island of Ireland as a whole has been limited, we would argue that this is perhaps not particularly surprising in a society that has yet to fully problematise, acknowledge and perhaps compensate victims and survivors of historical displacement during the conflict in and around Northern Ireland. If Northern Ireland remains a place where the displacement of local civilians continues to be a residual issue of the historical conflict, then it is more than naïve to suggest that Belfast (as the major urban centre) will be capable of living up to its billing as a city of sanctuary.

Transitional justice and dealing with the past in Northern Ireland

Primarily viewed as a set of processes for fragile societies to consider following the end of a period of sustained conflict, transitional justice includes the development of mechanisms designed to redress the legacy of violence (see Browne 2017; Stan 2009). These mechanisms have commonly included the creation of truth commissions (Hayner 2010), reform of corrupt institutions, reparations for victims and survivors, among other bespoke, context-specific processes. The result, as noted by Browne (2017), has been the development of an

expanding volume of transitional justice literature, a byproduct of an increasingly uncertain and warring world … focused on case study examples of specific mechanisms employed in post-conflict or transitional areas to stabilise and engrain a fragile peace. (p. 488)

Despite failing to address adequately the legacy of its violent past, Northern Ireland has been somewhat of a transitional justice laboratory. Since the signing of the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland’s transition – from seemingly intractable conflict to fragile peace – has been remarkable; yet, at times, the progress achieved has been undermined by legacy issues. Disagreements on this often politically charged obstacle regularly have plunged the fragile Northern Ireland executive into crisis. Whether these disagreements centre on findings revealed during state-led historical enquiries, problems surrounding the policing of culturally sensitive commemorations or the ongoing existence of paramilitarism in marginalised communities, the issue of the past in Northern Ireland has an ominous omnipresence.

The agreement embedded into legislation the development of a new form of consociational governance (at the time of writing, currently suspended) helped rebrand historically controversial incarnations of the state, including a more widely accepted Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), ⁴ and brought into play an equality agenda for all citizens, considered (rightly or wrongly) ⁵ to be unparalleled globally. While not calling into question the successes of the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, it could be argued that failing to set in place a framework for addressing the legacy of violence has, in some senses, been its downfall.

Attempts at dealing with the past in Northern Ireland, described by some as ‘piecemeal’ (Bell 2002: 1097), in fact pre-date the agreement itself, with discussions on issues pertaining to, inter alia, victimhood, reparations and justice, taking place before any political deal had been reached (Bloomfield 1998). In addition, grass-roots victims and survivors groups have played a prominent role in advancing the needs of those most directly impacted. From 1998 onwards, a seemingly endless flow of academic research (Bell 2002; Connolly 2006; McEvoy & McGregor 2008) on the residual issues that ought to be considered has ensured that a ‘dealing with the past’ industry has been maintained. ⁶ Lawther (2014, 2015) has noted the various approaches that have been adopted in Northern Ireland to date in an effort to deal with the legacy of the past. These include recourse through the court system (i.e. through judge-led historical enquiry), internal and external police enquiry (i.e. the re-opening of ‘cold-cases’ and the creation of a specific Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland to investigate alleged instances of state-led corruption), community-based projects aimed at safeguarding historical narratives and the generation of independent ‘victim’-specific commissions.

Since the Bloomfield Report (1998), a number of further attempts to deal with the past have been presented, including the Eames and Bradley (2009) Report of the Consultative Group on the Past, the Haass and O’Sullivan (2013) Draft Recommendations and, most recently, the Stormont House Agreement (2014). In addition, legislative attempts have been made to define the status of ‘victim’ and/or ‘survivor’, an issue that has become increasingly loaded. None of the documents have been met with the requisite cross-party support needed to implement recommendations. Despite the Stormont House Agreement providing what many believe to be the most palatable set of procedures for all concerned, the issue of dealing with Northern Ireland’s past remains very much alive.

Noteworthy in the context of the present argument is the fact that within the Haass and O’Sullivan (2013) Draft Recommendations and, more concretely, in the Stormont House Agreement (2014) is an implied acceptance that the impact of the conflict on a broad cross section of society in Northern Ireland was far reaching, much more so than the narrow definition adopted in the Victims and Survivors (NI) Order 2006. Greater emphasis has been placed on safeguarding and re-positioning the voices of the ‘everyday’ person who has a ‘story’ to share. The call for the establishment of an Oral History Archive, to ‘provide a central place for people from all backgrounds (and from throughout the UK and Ireland) to share experiences and narratives related to the Troubles’ (Stormont House Agreement, 2014: sec. 22) reflects this acknowledgement and is, thus, a welcome inclusion. This archive, it is proposed, will be an attempt to ensure that Troubles-related narratives are safeguarded and free from political interference. In coming forward to share one’s lived experience of the Troubles with a dedicated archivist, there is a further implied assumption that such an approach will demonstrate the commitment of those signatories to the agreement to recovering marginalised voices, and subsequently, could lead to a form of personal catharsis for those who were affected. Importantly, the recovering of narratives is not, however, directly linked to any formal reparations for victims or survivors.

When it comes to the issue of displacement, traumatic stories and narratives have thus far either been documented informally by leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Healing Through Remembering or been shoehorned into larger studies that seek to provide an overview of the residual issues in Northern Ireland more generally (Connolly & McIntosh 2012). When we consider, as noted above, the sheer number of people who were forced to leave their homes as a result of the outbreak (and continuation) of violence, much more work needs to be done to examine (a) the long-term impact of being ‘burnt out’ from one’s home, (b) the response of the state to such a vast movement of people across Northern Ireland (including those who crossed the Irish border) and (c) the views of victims and survivors in terms of their need for some form of reparatory justice.

Defining ‘displacement’ in the context of political conflict in Northern Ireland

The lack of definitional clarity in the literature, particularly in the burgeoning field of transitional justice, regarding those forcibly displaced as a result of the conflict is perhaps the clearest evidence that the subject has gone conspicuously unexamined. This gap may be explained, in part, by the inconsistency with which the formal designation of ‘being displaced’ has been applied by both the Northern Irish and Irish governments, despite the existence of international legal precedent. The United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees, adopted in 1951 by a conference of 26 states including the United Kingdom and later ratified by Ireland, established a language and protocol for responding to mass displacement of the kind produced by World War II – nearly two decades prior to the onset of ‘the Troubles’. And, while internal displacement such as that seen in Northern Ireland was a less commonly observed phenomenon at the time, these principles were formally extended to cover internally displaced persons (IDPs) through a UNHCR resolution adopted in the same year that the Good Friday Agreement was signed in Belfast (UNOCHA 1998).

These standards, however, have yet to be used for victim and survivor designation by politicians and indeed those interested in promoting transitional justice discourse in Northern Ireland. Moreover, they were only briefly utilised by Irish lawmakers responding to the arrival of refugees in the south (as we discuss in detail below). In turn, the academic study of movements in population in Northern Ireland, and indeed on the island of Ireland more generally, has most often focused on emigration and its contribution to the Irish diaspora (Akenson 1993; Trew 2010), with only cursory attention paid to the particular experience of those forcibly displaced during ‘the Troubles’. Here, our work argues for a centring of the experience of those displaced within and from Northern Ireland as a result of the conflict, utilising the definition of IDPs outlined by UNOCHA in 1998, within any future final agreement on how to deal with the past in Northern Ireland. The UNOCHA definition of IDPs reads:

… internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised state border.

It follows then that those forcibly ‘burnt out’ of their homes in Northern Ireland starting in 1969, as well as those who fled in fear of violence yet to come, were displaced by violent conflict, and any justice-oriented frameworks for dealing with the past that may be brought forward in the future should identify them as such. Accordingly, those who moved to other parts of the north were internally displaced, while those who crossed the Irish border may reasonably be considered refugees.

Northern refugees: contrasting responses to the crisis across the Irish border

When it comes to an examination of the state response to displaced persons fleeing south of the border, little has been written on the subject, whether in terms of the experience of the victims then and since, or the response of the Irish government at the time. This gap in the literature is highlighted prominently by the most significant report on the topic, All over the place, commissioned by the Combat Poverty Agency in 2005. Fortunately, together with a handful of news articles and a radio documentary from the Irish media, this report identifies several key differences in the response to the crisis of displacement in the south, most notably the formal (and brief) recognition of those arriving as ‘refugees’ and the subsequent protection and support that they were afforded. We argue that this designation and the civil and governmental developments that followed suggest that (a) recognition of displaced communities is both necessary and insufficient to achieving the goals of transitional justice in the north and (b) contemporary efforts to settle refugees on the island may well encounter ongoing obstacles revealed through the experience of ‘Northern Refugees’ in the south.

Of the 22,000 Northern Irish–born residents living in the three border counties of the south in 2002, the statistical analysis produced for All over the place estimates that roughly half of these were displaced due to violent conflict in the north from 1969 onwards (Conroy et al. 2005). The majority of these approximately 11,000 individuals arrived in the summers between 1969 and 1972, and were received as refugees by the Irish military and civil society organisations alike. As a Department of Defence memorandum from January 1973 demonstrates, Irish Army training camps close to the border became ‘Army Refugee Centres’ for receiving ‘Northern refugees’ until 1971, while churches and the Irish Red Cross Society led the effort to resettle the displaced in communities across the border region (National Archives of Ireland 1973; RTÉ Radio 1 2016). The coordination of this response across civil and military institutions of the Irish state in the first 3 years of the conflict, and, in particular, the recognition of the arriving civilians as ‘refugees’ consistent with the language of the UN Convention to which Ireland became party in 1954, was a reflection of the magnitude of the crisis, as well as the desire on the part of the southern government to project strength and humanitarian warmth in the face of instability on the island. Unfortunately for those displaced from the north, this formal attention would be short lived.

Analysis of the archives following the closing of the Army Refugee Centres in 1971 reveals a marked absence of references to the ‘Northern Refugees’. This decrease in attention to refugees from the north was likely in response to political developments such as the introduction of internment in the north in August that year, and public fears that the displaced were associated with paramilitary organisations such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The era of relative silence on the issue that followed would last until the reconciliation period at the turn of the century (Conroy et al. 2005: 33). Unsurprisingly, the reduction in public concern for the well-being of the displaced was met with a rise in resentment towards them, a trend that is reflected in government documents from the period that refer to some refugees as ‘demanding and ungrateful’ (National Archives of Ireland 1973). Failure to address issues surrounding the integration of Northern refugees publicly during this period produced unexpected division that persist today, with Northern Irish–born residents who had fled to the south interviewed for All over the place reporting an experience of social exclusion in local politics and the labour market (Holmquist 2005). Such long-term division indicates an inadequate and dysfunctional policy of integration and redress towards Northern refugees on the part of the Irish state. We would argue that this history does not augur well for the contemporary refugee crisis, and suggests a radically improved policy must be implemented in order to effectively receive non-Irish refugees in the south.

The NIHE and the emergence of Scheme for the Purchase of Evacuated Dwellings (SPED)

Rather than being viewed as ‘refugees’, those who moved within the six counties in the north were not afforded the same state-sponsored care one would have expected to receive had they chosen to move south of the border. Victims and survivors of displacement at this time (1968–1975), whom the authors have met, point to a dramatic change in living condition as their strongest memory of the trauma that befell their families. It was not uncommon for families to move from urban spaces in and around Belfast to perceived safer rural towns and villages, such as Downpatrick or Ardglass. In many cases (and across the sectarian divide), those who had been homeowners became dependent overnight on the state to provide social housing. At a time when the need for housing was a particularly sensitive issue anyway, more often than not, victims and survivors of displacement were left in the position of having to depend on their wider family network to rehouse them in the interim. It is, therefore, clear that the role of the NIHE at the time took on even greater importance.

In order to gain further insight into the response of the state at the time in terms of managing what was an unprecedented crisis, and to ascertain what, if any, steps were taken to provide redress for victims and survivors of displacement, the authors made repeated requests to meet senior officials in the NIHE. While no one individual person was made available for interview, our questions pertaining to the involvement of the NIHE at the time were considered, and the information that informs the following discussion comes from the answers received. In an effort to assist home owner/occupiers across Northern Ireland who had been forced to abandon their homes and were unable to sell them due to local adverse conditions arising from ‘the Troubles’, the SPED was introduced in 1973 by the NIHE. This extra-statutory scheme was designed to address the issue of vacant houses, the result of families being forced to abandon property due to real or perceived risk and to ensure that proper housing could be made available to those most in need. SPED was made statutory under Article 29 of the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1983, as inserted by Article 29 of the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1988. This legislation allowed the Housing Executive to submit a scheme, for approval by the Department for Communities (DfC), to acquire, by agreement, houses owned by persons who, in consequence of acts of violence, threats to commit such acts or other intimidation, were unable or unwilling to occupy those houses. At the time, it was the responsibility of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) to determine the nature and extent of the threat to the individual family in question, with the Housing Executive absolved from making any assessment as to whether or not such a threat would be considered ‘conflict related’.

When queried as to the existence of ‘official’ figures of people who were subsequently re-housed under the SPED scheme pre/post the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, it was noted that the Housing Executive’s computerised records for SPED cases only started in that year. However, the manual records up to 1998 indicate that there were approximately 4,700 SPED cases filed. The total number of SPED cases from 1998 to date is 1,612. While it is difficult to draw conclusions based on these figures alone, it would appear that there is a disparity between the number of those who were displaced as a result of the outbreak (and continuation) of violence and the number of applicants to the SPED scheme. When asked whether or not there had been an internal evaluation as to the overall effectiveness of the scheme, it was noted that such a process was not known to have taken place.

Furthermore, the question was posed as to whether or not the SPED scheme could be viewed, in the modern parlance of transitional justice, as an attempt to provide compensation for victims and survivors of displacement at the time, to which the response was that SPED was not to be viewed as any form of restitution. Rather, it was merely a way of ensuring that a willing buyer for the property could be discerned where it may have proven exceptionally difficult for a person who was facing intimidation to sell his or her home on the open market. This is important, particularly when we note below the divergent approach from across the border in terms of providing some form of compensation for those who had been displaced as a result of the conflict. In practical terms, those who were facing displacement were required to have their fears and apprehensions upheld by an RUC investigation at the time. Only then were they able to engage with the SPED initiative and have their property assessed by the Land and Property Services to determine its potential value. What was made clear to the authors was the fact that any damage a house may have incurred as a result of being attacked, or any other factor that may lead to depreciation in value, would not have been taken into consideration in the valuation of the property.

What all this tells us about the role of the state at the time when the mass displacement of its citizens was occurring remains difficult to summarise. However, it is reasonable, we argue, to question whether or not a more appropriate response of the state ought to have been to provide greater protection for its civilians who were being intimidated from their homes, rather than helping to facilitate population transfer, and the subsequent entrenchment of segregation through the drafting of policies designed to purchase toxic properties. Of course, such a position is only really reached with the benefit of hindsight. Moreover, with the onset of the peace process, the SPED scheme has evolved to focus more on providing support for members of the security forces whose homes are under threat. However, the scheme also continues to operate for instances of threats or perceived threats of sectarian intimidation. Ongoing tensions surrounding the introduction of a shared housing scheme and the subsequent forced displacement of Catholic families who opted to live in the scheme in an area of East Belfast (examined below) is perhaps one of the more high-profile cases of SPED being operationalised in recent times.

Reparations, restitution and dealing with the legacy of displacement

Within the myriad options proposed for dealing with the past in Northern Ireland (as outlined above), the question as to whether there should exist some form of reparation for those families who suffered displacement as a result of the outbreak of the conflict is notably absent and an issue that we argue requires consideration. Leading global transitional justice NGO, the International Centre for Transitional Justice, in its briefing note on displacement and transitional justice (Duthie & Seils 2016) argues that

State attempts to support the resolution of displacement through repatriation, resettlement, or local integration may have reparative value if they are undertaken as an expression of the state’s responsibility for generating, or failing to prevent, displacement crises. (p. 3)

While there has been nothing by way of formal restitution for those who remained displaced within Northern Ireland – noting again its absence from any of the major reports on dealing with the past in Northern Ireland – and accepting that the SPED scheme was not to be viewed as compensation as such, the southern government has adopted some form of redress for those who fled the conflict and who subsequently returned home. In 2003, under the Scheme of Acknowledgement, Remembrance, and Assistance for Victims in this Jurisdiction of the Conflict in Northern Ireland, the Irish Government established a Remembrance Commission and Fund in the Republic, towards restorative ends in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. In addition to offering payments for the families of those victims who had been killed as a result of the conflict in the north, on the condition that said victim was a resident of the 26 counties at the time, the scheme extended its reparatory scope to include a category of restitution for Northern refugees, detailed under the heading ‘Displacement from Northern Ireland’:

Payments of up to €15,000 may be made, subject to certain conditions, to a victim, or to the surviving family of such a victim, who had to flee from Northern Ireland to this jurisdiction as a direct consequence of the conflict in Northern Ireland and who now wishes to return to their original jurisdiction. (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2003: 4)

The particular emphasis on the displaced found in this component of the scheme is notable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is the only aspect of the Commission’s efforts explicitly aimed at citizens of the north. Crucially, the acknowledgement constitutes formal recognition of Northern-born displacement to the south caused by the conflict in language that was hitherto unseen since the early 1970s (as noted above, official documents referencing the ‘Northern refugees’ dried up almost immediately). Rather than sweeping the experiences of victims and survivors of displacement at the time under the carpet, the scheme acknowledges the issue explicitly. Finally, and most importantly, in terms of reparatory justice for victims and survivors, it represents the only meaningful form of restorative legislation designed with the discrete purpose of repatriating and providing restitution for those who were displaced.

Although a qualitative review of the scheme’s effect was never published, the Commission’s term of appointment was twice extended, running from 2003 to 2008 and distributing approximately €6.5 m of the €9 m allocated for victims and their families (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2008). While further auditing of the scheme’s effectiveness needs to be done in order to attempt to measure its restorative effects for victims and survivors, this reparative measure may provide a model for addressing the legacy of displacement on the island, which has otherwise gone unconsidered.

Contemporary displacement in Northern Ireland and the refugee experience

As noted above, the displacement of citizens and the violent movement of people in and around Northern Ireland continue to be critical issues in the present day. An alarming number of people, particularly those living at the sharp edge of the transition away from violence have experienced forced displacement as a result of being intimidated from their homes. Statistics released in 2017 in local and Irish national print media outlets highlight the role that paramilitaries assume in terms of forcibly evicting those considered undesirable residents and, thus, unwelcome in ‘their’ area. As recently as September 2017, it was reported that a small number of Catholic families who had opted to live in a ‘shared’ housing scheme in the predominantly Protestant Ravenhill Road area were forced to move out of fear of threat of attack (Hughes 2017). Far from being an isolated incident, the NIHE acknowledged 1,285 families were looking for homes due to housing intimidation between 2013 and 2015 (Wilson 2016: 40). Despite this, the Irish News reported that the issue of intimidation was no longer viewed as a pressing need in terms of allocation of social housing, noting that ‘[s]ocial housing tenants intimidated out of their homes will no longer receive special priority points for rehousing, under proposals to reform the allocation system’ (Hughes 2017; McConville 2017).

Internal displacement and intimidation, a legacy of ‘the Troubles’ very much alive in the ‘post-conflict’ north, persists at the same moment that the refugee crisis across Europe has brought renewed attention to the experience of asylum seekers in Northern Ireland. In response to an increase in the number of asylum applications filed in recent years, and the apparent lack of a formalised refugee integration strategy, a detailed report titled Asylum Seekers and Refugees’ Experiences of Life in Northern Ireland was completed by Murphy and Vieten and published at the end of 2017. Highlighting the gaps in service provision experienced by asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland, the report identifies several critical areas for improvement, including access to education, health care, secure housing, English language acquisition, employment and political participation. Among those areas identified, however, there are several which may apply not only to those displaced from other countries but also to the internally displaced in Northern Ireland.

In the first instance, a severe gap in the area of mental health was identified in the report. Specifically, it finds that new links between victim support groups and asylum seekers’ services should be established to fill this gap, noting that ‘[i]mproved mental health services for all is [sic] necessary in Northern Ireland’ (Murphy & Vieten 2017: vii). In its emphasis of the stresses on mental health experienced by asylum seekers as a result of their displacement, the report highlights at once both the need for a comprehensive refugee integration framework, and an approach to restorative justice that recognises the particular experience of the displaced. This connection is further underlined by data gathered on racism experienced by asylum seekers which notes that a connection between sectarianism and racism is widely perceived (Murphy & Vieten 2017: 96). Finally, the report finds that a lack of clear data detailing the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland severely limits the capacity for effective integration services to be established (Murphy & Vieten 2017: 69). As we have argued throughout this article, the lack of data collection on the experience of the internally displaced in Northern Ireland has prevented any suitable policy of restitution from being proposed, amounting to a crisis in governmental action on the issue of historical and contemporary displacement.

In order to address these gaps, the authors of the report propose ‘the implementation of an overarching support organisation resembling a refugee council that would be responsible for providing key supports and guidance to asylum seekers and refugees’ (Murphy & Vieten 2017: v). In support of their proposal, we argue that new linkages between services for refugees and IDPs must be created, and that the experience of historical displacement in Northern Ireland be given renewed attention. If the region is to be a place of sanctuary for those displaced from outside its borders, it must also reckon with the legacy of those displaced within.

Conclusion

The crisis as to how adequately to provide sanctuary in Northern Ireland for those vulnerable refugees fleeing theatres of war in the Middle East ought to have sharpened the focus of those interested in legacy issues surrounding the ‘Troubles’. When seeking to analyse the provisions that ought to be made for those who are arriving in Ireland, north and south, to ensure their smooth transition and successful integration, an opportunity to be more reflective in terms of critiquing how the state has historically responded to the issue of displacement, most notably as a result of the outbreak of the ‘Troubles’, has presented itself. We argue, within the context of providing blueprints for dealing with the past, greater attention to the specific needs of this particular group of victims and survivors is required, and a more prominent position for the issue of displacement is needed within transitional justice discourse. In sidelining the displacement experiences of those who were forced from their homes as political violence erupted on the island of Ireland from 1968 onwards, scholars in the field who have crafted a career from debates on issues pertaining to Northern Ireland’s transition away from conflict have perhaps unwittingly created their own hierarchy of victimhood (McDowell 2007).

In Northern Ireland, assumptions on who may or may not be considered worthy of victimhood status often prevail and can descend into unhelpful polarising debates. Some have been more vocal than others in suggesting that equivalence between victims must not be allowed to occur. They point to the fact that in suggesting that all victims be treated equally, then the impact of support services for those who need them most will be lessened (Breen-Smyth 2012). And, while we are inclined to agree on this point in principle, when conducting research with those across the sectarian divide who share harrowing narratives of violent displacement and the impact that being ‘burnt out’ had on their personal and family life, and given that ‘displacement is a concern of transitional justice because it is often integrally linked to human rights violations’ (Duthie & Seils 2016), it is hard not to be persuaded that their suffering warrants rather more than simply an oral archive or online platform. True, some families were able to cope with their displacement better than others. However, many suffered, among myriad other issues, a loss of labour, family breakdown and mental ill health. In bringing forward a call for greater acknowledgement of their suffering, it is not our intention to further delineate who or what may be considered valid/less valid narratives of suffering.

We accept that a field that has already been fraught with difficulty does not need further muddying of the waters. However, what we do argue strongly is for those engaged in transitional justice practices – from academics to practitioners – to be more cognisant of the significant difficulties that families who were ‘burnt out’ endured during a time of great upheaval in the late 1960s/early 1970s in Northern Ireland. In many cases, and perhaps not surprisingly, these difficulties map on to the findings revealed in the Murphy and Vieten (2017) report on refugees and asylum seekers. The impact of this mass eruption of displacement at the outset of the ‘Troubles’ has in many ways helped to shape the communal division that provides the modern-day backdrop to segregated Belfast and beyond. Attempting to integrate into these segregated communities as refugee fleeing theatres of war across the Middle East can, thus, prove an elusive task, as the Murphy and Vieten report has documented.

Of course, there are many ways to provide meaningful transitional justice for victims and survivors of displacement. The southern Irish government’s repatriation fund is but one attempt, and perhaps was more feasible to implement, given that the potential number of applicants to the fund was unquestionably lower than would have been the case had the scheme also been introduced north of the border. And, while it may be seen as desirable to provide financial restitution for those who experienced displacement as a result of the conflict in and around Northern Ireland, it may not always be feasible or in the interests of society broadly speaking. Practicalities may have to be taken into consideration, as noted by Duthie and Seils (2016):

The scope and complexity of displacement can also create resource and capacity constraints. Providing financial compensation to thousands … for instance, may be impossible in many, if not most, countries. (p. 5)

At present, narratives of being ‘burnt out’ are relegated to the status of storytelling, hidden in ‘live’ oral history projects, that seek to safeguard narratives rather than problematise them or to add additional layers of support for victims/survivors. Whereas an oral archive such as that proposed by the Stormont House Agreement would, in some sense, capture more formally the experiences of the displaced, the role played by the state and an appreciation of what more ought to have been done would perhaps fall by the wayside. If modern Ireland, both north and south, is to be seen as a truly hospitable place of sanctuary for victims and survivors fleeing violent conflict, it must seek to come to terms with and acknowledge that it has failed to address properly the legacy of displacement that was a key feature of the onset of ‘the Troubles’. Transitional justice practices can help in that regard, and, should a more widely accepted understanding of the impact of historical displacement be devised, more suitable and appropriate responses to the refugee crisis can be provided.