Projects per year
Abstract
Making use of archival sources, this article reconstructs the decision-making process behind the addition of an Irish language question to the 1991 Northern Ireland census. It highlights a distinctive feature of the case: whereas such decisions usually result from state-society interactions, the question was rather suggested by the Irish government, using the role granted to it by the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement to act as a kin state to promote the cultural interests of nationalists in Northern Ireland. Officials in Belfast were initially reluctant to accede to this request, though feared refusal might result in a repeat of nationalist boycotts of previous censuses. Ultimately, the precedent set by language questions employed in Wales and Scotland made exclusion hard to justify and officials reluctantly agreed to the question, coming to see the precedent as a useful argument with which to fend off potential unionist opposition, which they feared might have resulted in a rival boycott. The inclusion of the question has subsequently had significant consequences for political claims-making about the status of the Irish language in Northern Ireland.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 269-289 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Nationalism and Ethnic Politics |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 24 Mar 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Aug 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council grant ES/N01684X/1.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Keywords
- census
- language rights
- Northern Ireland
- Irish language
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Political Science and International Relations
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Dive into the research topics of '"It will do no more than annoy the Protestants": the 1991 Northern Ireland census and the Irish language'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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The contentious politics of the census in consociational democracies
Cooley, L. (Principal Investigator)
Economic & Social Research Council
1/02/17 → 31/01/19
Project: Research Councils