Political actors and grassroots practitioners: Perspectives on peacebuilding with young people in Northern Ireland’s contested society

Twenty-five years after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement the residue of conflict still permeates Northern Irish society. In the aftermath of protracted violent conflict youth work can play a transformative role. Applying democratic informal learning processes of conversation, relationship building, experiential learning, and participation, youth workers are well positioned to support young people to take their place as essential co-creators of a sustainable peace. However, peace policy has tended to position youth as recipients of peacebuilding programmes rather than active participants. Within contested societies there are a plethora of perspectives and methodological approaches to peacebuilding. Our study took place with 43 qualified youth workers in the north of Ireland who provided their views on the most important approaches to peacebuilding. The paper focuses on four major approaches to peacebuilding that came from the research utilizing Q methodology. These perspectives are influenced by the mainstream policy and practice context. As such youth work with young people on the far side of conflict is not always oriented towards igniting and harnessing young people’s political agency as peace actors. Reflecting on the case of Northern Ireland, we consider how youth workers variously embrace, accommodate, or resist a predominantly ‘de-politicised’ landscape of youth peace policy. Such policies gravitate towards contact initiatives focused on reducing prejudice and building positive relationships between socially, culturally, politically, and religiously segregated groups. Through a Bourdieusian lens, we analyse the extent to which each peacebuilding approach found in our research tends towards either harmonizing or a more radical politicizing practice.