Some in Northern Ireland see themselves as British through and through \u2013 but on the mainland, we find we\u2019re just \u2018Irish\u2019 <\/p>\n
The polarisation and politicisation of identity in Northern Ireland, particularly within unionism today, is giving rise to the misperception that you can only be Irish or British \u2013 not both. Northern Ireland was constructed as a Protestant state for Protestant people, with an inbuilt Protestant majority to maintain its place in the UK. \u201cLoyal Ulster\u201d, as it became known, was proudly British. But many of the citizens who had spent considerable time on the so-called mainland would find their perception of British identity challenged, at odds with Britishness within the wider UK. As one woman who was born and grew up in Northern Ireland told me: \u201cI moved to England, and everyone thought I was Irish.\u201d<\/p>\n
I recently interviewed a number of people about the question of shifting identities in Northern Ireland. Mark McKechnie, a 48-year-old IT specialist from Bangor, said he would have considered himself \u201cvery strongly Protestant, even loyalist\u201d into his 20s. That changed when he moved to England. \u201cI went and told English people that I was British, and I found a very different reaction,\u201d he said. Today, he associates British identity with \u201cthe island [of] Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n
Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some in Northern Ireland see themselves as British through and through \u2013 but on the mainland, we find we\u2019re just \u2018Irish\u2019 The polarisation and politicisation of identity in Northern Ireland, particularly within unionism today, is giving rise to the misperception that you can only be Irish or British \u2013 not both. Northern Ireland was constructed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}