Contested borders: Globalization and ethno-national conflict in Ireland

The Irish state border provides an interesting case study of interrelationships between the sharpened borders of ethno-national conflict and the more permeable borders of the European Single Market. It highlights the interplay of state and ethno-national borders. It links questions often associated with the violent proliferation of borders in Eastern Europe with questions concerning the impact of European integration and other forms of globalization on borders in western Europe. The paper is divided into three main sections: (1) an outline of the origins and characteristics of a border which was imposed by an alliance between an imperial state and a cohesive ethno-national bloc in 1921, and subsequently consolidated by state building in Ireland, and by the growing significance of European state borders between the 1920s and the 1960s; (2) an analysis of how globalization and ethno-national division have interacted over the last 30 years to pose a major challenge to the 1921 border settlement; and (3) an assessment of how the recent Belfast Agreement (1998) has sought to utilize new opportunities afforded by globalization, including European integration, to underpin an accommodation between the two ethno-national groups and their conflicting territorial claims. The paper concludes by assessing how the Irish case illuminates the interactions between globalization and national conflict, and how these interactions are reshaping state borders. It considers the conditions under which the reconfiguration of state borders might help resolve or moderate national conflicts and the opposing territorial claims associated with them.