The making and shaping of Belfast: an emplaced approach

This chapter outlines the segregated nature of housing and education in Belfast and its impact on young people who grow up in segregated localities. These territorial and educational divisions mask the extent to which each community is internally heterogeneous by allowing sectarian identities to flourish and mingle with other identities so that being a Catholic or a Protestant teenager still fundamentally matters and impacts on spatial practices. The chapter critically unpacks policy attempts to deal with ongoing geographically specific territorial divisions through attempts to reimage the city through the concept of shared space and outlines the durability of divisions in that when young people leave and access areas outside immediate localities, they often do so in pre-established groups.

Researching young people’s perceptions and experiences of place

This chapter presents an overview and reflection of the range of methods involved in researching teenagers’ spatial practices in a divided city. The research draws on the ‘new sociology of childhood’ as its theoretical framework. This involves seeing young people as competent social actors in their own right. It involves recognising that young people do not simply reflect adult assumptions about the everyday world but develop their own ways of seeing and knowing. It prioritises young people’s points of views and uses methodologies which encourage young people’s voices to be heard. The study utilised a range of methods including questionnaires, focus group discussions, essays and photo prompts and the chapter outlines how each method contributed to the aims and objectives of the research.

City centre: same city but a different place?

Visually the city centre of Belfast epitomises Belfast’s status as a ‘post conflict’ city. How do young people from divided localities perceive, manage and negotiate their way through city centre space? How do they view and experience the reimaging of Belfast’s city centre? This chapter explores these questions by outlining how young people use and experience city centre space and assesses the extent to which their experiences impact on their varying emerging identities. As teenagers from segregated areas move across different spaces, they interact with a broad range of people adding complexity to their everyday, localised spatial experiences. The chapter outlines additional boundaries and practices of exclusion and inclusion based on generation and teen subcultures but also reveals the ways in which ethno-national identities continue to simmer beneath the surface when teenagers visit city centre spaces.

Marking and engaging bodies: everyday life in interface areas

This chapter turns attention to teenagers’ social relations within and between the localities in which they reside. The chapter commences by discussing young people’s perceptions and experiences of sectarianism including how, for some, telling who is a Catholic and who is a Protestant remains a practice engaged in by some teenagers from both communities. At times, these expressions of difference result in ‘recreational rioting’ at the boundaries of segregated areas and teenagers’ attitudes to and experiences of such rioting will be outlined. Teenagers’ knowledge of the ‘Troubles’ and how this knowledge is linked to the inter-generational transfer of memory is also outlined. The chapter concludes by examining young people’s experiences of boundary crossing.

It’s just another brick in the wall: teens’ perceptions and experiences of peace walls, flags and murals

This chapter focuses on the physical landscape enclosing interface areas and the impact that this physical landscape has on the perceptions and actions of young people living in segregated areas. This involves a recognition that the physical landscape plays an important role in structuring how individuals feel and behave as attitudes and actions are grounded, situated, performed and experienced within specific environments. How teenagers’ manage, reproduce and challenge the spatially visible and physical divisions such as peace walls, flags and murals that surround the localities in which they live their daily lives is illuminated. The chapter demonstrates how young people’s perceptions of these physical markers of ethno-national identity are multiple and contradictory. They evaluate, assess, manage and negotiate these symbols in multiple ways at times supporting and at times challenging the perspectives of significant others.

Place and identity

This chapter outlines the importance of space and place in ‘post conflict’ Belfast by critically unpacking how territory and division remain important for certain groups. Through outlining important links between place and identity, the book calls into question Northern Ireland’s status as one of the most successful ‘post conflict’ societies in the world. This sets the scene for the book’s primary purpose which is to illuminate the everyday spatial practices of teenagers who grow up in divided localities. By redressing the relative lack of research on the lives of young people who grow up in estranged and declining communities, the book illuminates what young people’s everyday spatial movements can tell us about the visible and invisible borders of politically contested cities.

Conclusions: moving beyond segregated localities

This chapter brings together the core themes of the book which is to understand and illuminate how teenagers growing up in Belfast construct, produce, perceive and experience place. Rather than considering place as an inert opaque backdrop to daily interaction, place is considered vital to creating landscapes of meaning. The chapter articulates how social relationships are inherently spatial and how identities while multiple and shifting are influenced by and impact on place. The chapter advocates the importance of understanding and incorporating young people’s perceptions and experiences of collective identity categories as a crucial starting point to finding ways in which more cohesive cross-community local and public spaces can be identified and supported.