Voices from the Shadows: Intergenerational Conflict Memory and Second-Generation Northern Irish Identity in England

Liam Harte (), Jack Crangle, Graham Dawson, Barry Hazley and Fearghus Roulston
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Liam Harte: School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
Jack Crangle: Department of History, Maynooth University, W23 F2H6 Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
Graham Dawson: School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton, Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 4AT, UK
Barry Hazley: Institute of Irish Studies, 1 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7WY, UK
Fearghus Roulston: Department of Humanities, University of Strathclyde, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH, UK

Societies, 2024, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-28

Abstract: Recent scholarship has highlighted the heterogeneity of second-generation Irish identities in Great Britain, yet the varieties of self-identification espoused by the English-raised children of Northern Irish parents remain almost wholly unexplored. This article redresses this neglect by examining the relationship between parentally transmitted memories of the Northern Ireland Troubles ( c .1969–1998) and the forms of identity and self-understanding that such children develop during their lives in England. Drawing on original oral history testimony and using the concepts of narrative inheritance and postmemory as interpretive tools, it demonstrates the complex correlation that exists between parents’ diverse approaches to memory-sharing and their children’s negotiation of inherited conflict memory as they position themselves discursively within contemporary English society. Based on a close reading of five oral history interviews, the analysis reveals a spectrum of creative postmemory practices and identity enactments, whereby narrators agentively define themselves in relation to the meanings they attribute to inherited memories, or the dearth thereof, as they navigate their tangled transnational affinities and allegiances. The article also explores how these practices and enactments are subtly responsive to narrators’ changing relationships to their narrative inheritances as their experience and awareness of their own and their parents’ lives deepen over the life course.

Keywords: Northern Ireland Troubles; England; conflict; migration; identity; second generation; intergenerational memory; postmemory; narrative inheritance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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