Divided Youth

There is hardly any other country in Europe where a past conflict is still as present in daily life as Northern Ireland. Not only by physical barriers as walls and fences but also through a psychologically divided society. I have been documenting what it means for young people, all of whom were born after the peace agreement was signed, to grow up under this inter-generational tension – in both, Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods.

If I had been born at the top of my street, behind the corrugated-iron border, I would have been British. Incredible to think. My whole idea of myself, the attachments made to a culture, heritage, religion, nationalism and politics are all an accident of birth. I was one street away from being born my ‘enemy’«. Paul McVeigh, Belfast-born novelist.

I have been documenting the daily life of teenagers in British working-class communities for two decades. After the Brexit referendum I focused this work on Belfast where Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists who live in homogeneous neighborhoods that are divided by walls till today. These two communities in Belfast who seem to have irreconcilable differences, are more similar than they’d both like to admit. While they still stick to their own symbols of their identity and tradition, they wear the same clothes, have the same haircuts, listen to the same music, drink the same beer, take the same drugs and often the same worries such as violence, unemployment, social discrimination and therefore, lack of prospects. Old hardliners with links to the paramilitary groups tried to maintain their idea of culture and tradition by putting pressure on the communities. Enemy stereotypes were cultivated instead of being dismantled, ideas of how one should be were given to the children. Especially for teenagers in search of identity, this exerts a lot of pressure.