THE BORDER ISSUE AND IRELAN- NORTHERN IRELAND RELATIONS

Abstract

When Ireland was partitioned in 1920, it was a long time before geography and geopolitics took an interest in it. It was only with the peace process in the 1990s that a real scholarly debate emerged on the politico-territorial aspects of the Northern Ireland problem. However, the partition that was supposed to solve the Irish question actually created an even more complex Northern Irish problem, perhaps. Among the multiple dimensions of this problem (social, economic, religious, cultural), the territorial dimension has a central place. Since the 1920s, border antagonisms have played a major role in political tensions in Northern Ireland, but also between Dublin and Belfast, and between Dublin and London. Borders and divisions were also important factors in the forced displacement of Northern Ireland from 1969. However, this border issue should not be reduced to a simple binary opposition between nationalism, anti-partisanship, on the one hand, and unionism, partisanship, on the other. If the border question was so serious and complex in Ireland, it is because, identity is fatefully connected and determined in relation to the territory. Hence the importance of questioning the scope of the political compromise reached in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. Although this agreement appeased Northern Ireland, many doubted that a definitive final solution had actually been found. Some analysts call this period the post-national effect? With BREXIT, this process risked being jeopardized, but as time passes, no more dramatic changes are visible, except for infection. It seems that the EU, the United Kingdom and Ireland have managed to find an effective multilateral agreement on the future of Northern Ireland.