'When the walls come tumbling down': The role of intergroup proximity, threat, and contact in shaping attitudes towards the removal of Northern Ireland's peace walls.
Northern Ireland
conflict
intergroup contact
peace walls
proximity
segregation
territoriality
threat
Journal
The British journal of social psychology
ISSN: 2044-8309
Titre abrégé: Br J Soc Psychol
Pays: England
ID NLM: 8105534
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Oct 2020
Oct 2020
Historique:
received:
16
07
2019
revised:
17
01
2020
pubmed:
18
2
2020
medline:
24
7
2021
entrez:
18
2
2020
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Institutional structures of segregation typically entrench social inequality and sustain wider patterns of intergroup conflict and discrimination. However, initiatives to dismantle such structures may provoke resistance. Executive proposals to dismantle Northern Ireland's peace walls by 2023 provide a compelling case study of the nature of such resistance and may thus provide important clues about how it might be overcome. Drawing on a field survey conducted in north Belfast (n = 488), this research explored the role of physical proximity, realistic and symbolic threat, and past experiences of positive and negative cross-community contact on Catholic and Protestant residents' support for removing the walls. Structural equation modelling suggested that both forms of contact and proximity were significantly related to such support and that these relationships were partially mediated by realistic threat. It also suggested that positive contact moderated the effects of proximity. That is, for residents who had more frequent positive interactions with members of the other community, proximity to a peace wall had a weaker relationship with resistance to their removal than residents who had less frequent contact.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
922-944Informations de copyright
© 2020 The British Psychological Society.
Références
Aberson, C. L. (2015). Positive intergroup contact, negative intergroup contact and threat as predictors of cognitive and affective dimensions of prejudice. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 18, 743-760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430214556699
Allport, G. A. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Bairner, A., & Shirlow, P. (2003). When leisure turns to fear: Fear, mobility, and ethno-sectarianism in Belfast. Leisure Studies, 22, 203-221. https://doi.org/10.1080/026143603200075470
Barack Obamadescribes Northern Ireland as 'blueprint' for peace. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global/2013/jun/17/barack-obama-g8-belfast-blueprint-peace
Barlow, F. K., Paolini, S., Pedersen, A., Hornsey, M. J., Radke, H. R. M., Harwood, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2012). The contact caveat negative contact predicts increased prejudice more than positive contact predicts reduced prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1629-1643. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212457953
Belfast Interface Project (2012). Belfast interfaces: Security barriers and the defence of space. Belfast, UK: Belfast Interface Project.
Belfast Interface Project (2017a). Interface barriers, peace lines and defensive architecture. Belfast, UK: Belfast Interface Project.
Belfast Interface Project (2017b). Vision, mission, aims and values. Retrieved from https://www.belfastinterfaceproject.org/vision-mission-aims-values
Blomkvist, J. (2016). Peace walls and barrier removal: Building sustainable communities. Belfast, UK: Belfast Conflict Resolution Consortium.
Boal, F. W. (1969). Territoriality on the Shankill-Falls divide, Belfast. Irish Geography, 6(1), 30-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/00750776909555645
Boal, F. W. (2002). Belfast: Walls within. Political Geography, 21, 687-694. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0962-6298(02)00013-6
Boulton, J. (2014). Frontier wars: Violence and space in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Totem: The University of West Ontario Journal of Anthropology, 22, 100-113.
Bryan, D., & Stevenson, C. (2009). Flagging peace: Struggles over symbolic landscape in the new Northern Ireland. In M. H.Ross (Ed.), Culture and belonging in divided societies: Contestation and symbolic landscapes (pp.68-84). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Byrne, J., Gormley-Heenan, C., Morrow, D., & Sturgeon, B. (2015). Public attitudes to peace walls. Research report to Department of Justice.
Byrne, J., Gormley-Heenan, C., & Robinson, G. (2012). Attitudes to Peace Walls in Belfast. Research report to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.
Cheung, G. W., & Rensvold, R. B. (2002). Evaluating Goodness-of-Fit indexes for testing measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 9, 233-255. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328007sem0902_5
Department of Justice Interface Programme. Retrieved from https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/articles/department-justice-interface-programme
Dixon, J. A. (2001). Contact and boundaries: 'Locating' the social psychology of intergroup relations. Theory and Psychology, 11, 587-608. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354301115001
Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., & Tredoux, C. (2007). Intergroup contact and attitudes towards the principle and practice of racial equality. Psychological Science, 18, 867-872. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01993.x
Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., Tredoux, C. G., Tropp, L. R., Clack, B., & Eaton, L. (2010). A paradox of integration? Interracial contact, prejudice reduction and blacks’ perceptions of racial discrimination. Journal of Social Issues, 66, 401-416. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2010.01652.x
Dixon, J., Tredoux, C., Davies, G., Huck, J., Hocking, B., Sturgeon, B., … Bryan, D. (2019). Parallel lives: Intergroup contact, threat and the segregation of everyday activity spaces. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Early online. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000191
Donnan, H., & Jarman, N. (2017). Ordinary everyday walls: Normalising exception in segregated Belfast. In A.Gasparini & E. Ben-Rafael (Eds.), The walls between conflict and peace (pp.238-260). Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill.
Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2005). Racial encounter: The social psychology of contact and desegregation. London, UK: Psychology Press.
Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1959). Social pressures in informal groups. London, UK: Tavistock.
Gormley-Heenan, C., Morrow, D., & Byrne, J. (2015). Removing peace walls and public policy brief (1): the challenge of definition and design.
Hayward, L. (2016). Investigating positive and negative intergroup contact in majority and minority groups (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Queensland. https://doi.org/10.14264/uql.2016.807
Hewstone, M., Cairns, E., Voci, A., Hamberger, J., & Niens, U. (2006). Intergroup contact, forgiveness, and experience of the troubles in Northern Ireland. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 99-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00441.x
Hocking, B., Sturgeon, B., Dixon, J., Jarman, N., Bryan, D., Huck, J., … Davies, G. (2019). Place-identity and urban policy: Sharing leisure spaces in the ‘post-conflict’ city. In R. Piazza (Ed.), Discourses of identity in liminal places and spaces (pp. 166-192). London, UK: Routledge.
Jarman, N. (2006). Policing, policy and practice: Responding to disorder in north Belfast. Anthropology in Action, 13, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2006.131204
Jarman, N., & O’Halloran, C. (2001). Recreational rioting: Young people, interface areas and violence. Child Care in Practice, 7, 2-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13575270108413230
Jorgensen, T. D., Pornprasertmanit, S., Schoemann, A. M., & Rosseel, Y. (2018). semTools: Useful tool for structural equation modeling.
Kline, R. B. (2015). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (4th ed.). New York, NY: Guilford publications.
Lenth, R. (2019). emmeans: Estimated Marginal Means, aka Least-Squares Means. R package version 1.4.3.01. Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans
Leonard, M. (2018). Teens and territory in post-conflict Belfast: If walls could talk. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Mähönen, T. A., & Jasinskaja-Laht, I. (2016). Ramifications of positive and negative contact experiences among re-migrants from Russia to Finland. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 22, 247-255. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000059
Massey, D. S., & Fischer, M. J. (2000). How segregation concentrates poverty. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23, 670-691. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870050033676
McAtackney, L. (2018). The many forms and meaning of (peace) walls in contemporary Northern Ireland. Review of International American Studies, 11, 39-61.
McKeown, S., & Taylor, L. K. (2017). Beyond the irony of intergroup contact: The effects of contact and threat on political participation and support for political violence in Northern Ireland. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 21(4), 234-244. https://doi.org/10.1037/gdn0000074
McKittrick, D., Kelters, S., Feeney, B., & Thornton, C. (2001). Lost lives: The stories of men, women and children who dies as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles. Bath, UK: Bath Press.
Meleady, R., & Forder, L. (2018). When contact goes wrong: Negative intergroup contact promotes generalized outgroup avoidance. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 22, 688-707. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430218761568
Mesev, V., Shirlow, P., & Downs, J. (2009). The geography of conflict and death in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99, 893-903. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045600903260556
Northern Ireland Executive Office (2013). Together: Building a United Community Strategy. Retrieved from https://www.executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/publications/together-building-united-community-strategy
Northern Ireland Foundation (2019). Peace walls. Retrieved from https://northernireland.foundation/projects/sharedfuture/peace-walls
Northern Irish Assembly (2013). Constituency profile - Belfast North. Northern Ireland: Belfast.
Orfield, G., & Lee, C. (2005). Why segregation matters: Poverty and educational inequality. Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
Paolini, S., Hewstone, M., Cairns, E., & Voci, A. (2004). Effects of direct and indirect cross-group friendships on judgments of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: The mediating role of an anxiety-reduction mechanism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 770-786. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167203262848
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2011). When groups meet: The dynamics of intergroup contact. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
R packageversion 0.5-1. Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=semTools
Riek, B. M., Mania, E. W., & Gaertner, S. L. (2006). Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 336-353. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1004_4
Robinson, J. L. (1980). Physical distance and racial attitudes: A further examination of the contact hypothesis. Phylon, 41, 325-332.
Rosseel, Y. (2012). Lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling and more. Version 0.5-12 (BETA). Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1-36.
Schmid, K., & Muldoon, O. T. (2013). Perceived threat, social identification, and psychological well-being: The effects of political conflict exposure. Political Psychology, 36(1), 75-92. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12073
Schmid, K., Tausch, N., Hewstone, M., Hughes, J., & Cairns, E. (2008). The effects of living in segregated vs. mixed areas in Northern Ireland: A simultaneous analysis of contact and threat effects in the context of micro-level neighbourhoods. International Journal of Conflict and violence, 2, 56-71.
Shirlow, P. (2003). Ethno-sectarianism and the reproduction of fear in Belfast. Capital and Class, 27, 77-93. https://doi.org/10.1177/030981680308000106
Sibley, D. (1995). Geographies of exclusion: Society and difference in the West. London, UK: Routledge.
Star, S. A., Williams, R. M., & Stouffer, S. A. (1949/1958). Negro infantry platoons in white companies. In E. E. Maccoby, T. Newcomb, & E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in social psychology. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Stephan, C. W., Stephan, W. G., Demitrakis, K. M., Yamada, A. M., & Clason, D. L. (2000). Women’s attitudes toward men: An integrated threat theory approach. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24(1), 63-73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb01022.x
Stephan, W. G., Boniecki, K. A., Ybarra, O., Bettencourt, A., Ervin, K. S., Jackson, L. A., & Renfro, C. L. (2002). The role of threats in racial attitudes of Blacks and Whites. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1242-1254.
Stephan, W. G., & Renfro, C. L. (2016). The role of threat in intergroup relations. In D. M. Mackie & E. R. Smith (Eds.), From prejudice to intergroup emotions: Differentiated reactions to social groups (pp. 191-207). New York, NY: Routledge.
Stephan, W. G., Ybarra, O., & Morrison, K. R. (2009). Intergroup threat theory. In T. D. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 43-59). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Taylor and Francis Group.
Vezzali, L., & Stathi, S. (Eds.) (2017). Intergroup contact theory: Recent developments and future directions. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wilner, D. M., Walkley, R. P., & Cook, S. W. (1952). Residential proximity and intergroup relations in public housing projects. Journal of Social Issues, 8(1), 45-69. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1952.tb015