Contestation, Memory, and Territoriality: Young People Encounters of Spatial Contact in Northern Ireland Divided Communities

Territoriality profoundly impacts people’s encounters of contact and social identity driven by political contestation. A culture of amnesia is often enacted to support the political transition as was the case in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. On the other hand, rival ethnic groups burgeon their commemorative practices, which they perform daily, as part of their ethnicized memory and nostalgia. Such duality – ethnicized memory and amnesia – become regularly entrenched in the city’s reconstruction, particularly in public spaces where the relevant spatial practices are maximized. This research uses semi-structured interviews with youth in Northern Ireland to reveal how people formulate their contact strategies painted by heavily ‘mythologized’ memories of the conflict. They experience territoriality as a form of ‘cultural capital’ handed to them from preceding generations. The paper questions the growing cultural diversification of societies in Northern Ireland that could develop transformative social relations of integration and belonging beyond groups defined by their memory, identity, and use of space.