Invisible and frictionless? Gender, race, and control on the UK-Irish border since the Troubles

The ‘bi-communal’ resolution of the ‘constitutional question’ underlying the 1998 Good Friday Agreement rendered the UK-Irish border as politically and symbolically less important. The subsequent ‘demilitarisation’ of state border infrastructure from 2004 onwards gave way to a set of prevailing narratives suggesting that not only the near total end of policing of the border, but that the border itself ceased to be a political and social relevance in the everyday lives of people. The propagation of the ‘borderless’ narrative on the island of Ireland is underpinned by an assumption that the ending of traditional forms of border control and surveillance synonymous with the Troubles and the political accord between nationalism and unionism on the constitutional question erased the UK-Irish border as a significant factor in the lives of those who cross it, are policed by it or live in its shadow.

Using a ‘walking methods’ approach, our research explores women’s relationship with the border during the Troubles and since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. This paper, in particular, uses an intersectional framework to reconceptualise the UK-Irish border from the perspective of women, including racialised/and migrant women and offer a rich account of their daily negotiations along the border. These accounts help us contest what we consider to be the androcentric and ethnocentric construction of the UK-Irish border as invisible by drawing on women’s embodied experiences of the border and the ways in which it has served to restrict mobility and police women’s daily life.