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Queen's University Belfast

Poverty, social exclusion and the Northern Ireland conflict

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The thesis aims to identify causal pathways which exist between poverty, social exclusion and the Northern Ireland conflict. This subject is approached through a case study focus on the modern day inner-city area of Belfast. The evidence reviewed is quantitative and qualitative, spanning a period from around the 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion to the early 2010s. The thesis asks how poverty, social exclusion and the Northern Ireland conflict were connected throughout the violent conflict period of 1968-1998, and how this changed following the 1998 Good Friday Belfast Agreement. The period from around 1798 to 1968 is reviewed to identify causal pathways which may exist; pathways which are then analysed for the 1968-1998 period and the post-1998 period by utilising empirical data from the ‘Conflict Archive on the Internet’ archive at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk and the study ‘Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles’ (McKittrick et al, 2006 edition), along with the 2001 and 2010 Northern Ireland Indices of Multiple Deprivation (NIIMD), and the 2001 and 2011 UK censuses. ‘Lost Lives’ estimated that 3,720 people were killed as a result of the Northern Ireland conflict between 1966 and 2006, of which 3,635 were killed from 1969 to 1998. Following this, five principal<br/>causal pathways are identified as follows: urban development and conflict; grievances and dysfunctional governance; globalisation and the workplace; paramilitarism and political exclusion; and, locked-in segregation and deprivation. Within each there are sub-pathways which demonstrate the relationships between poverty, social exclusion and the Northern Ireland conflict.

Degree

thesis:*
Name dc:type.qualificationname
Doctor of Philosophy
Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral Thesis
Grantor dc:publisher.institution
Queen's University Belfast
Year dc:date.issued
2020

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Smyth, Ronan
Advisors dc:contributor.advisor
  • Schubotz, Dirk
  • Duffy, Joseph
  • Tomlinson, Michael

Subjects

dc:subject × 3

Rights

Language dc:language
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Identifier
oai:pure.qub.ac.uk/portal:studenttheses/949a0860-c089-465f-924d-c306c65b0766
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:pure.qub.ac.uk/portal:studenttheses/949a0860-c089-465f-924d-c306c65b0766

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Queen's University Belfast
Base URL
pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/oai
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Smyth, Ronan. Poverty, social exclusion and the Northern Ireland conflict. Doctoral Thesis thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2020. https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/949a0860-c089-465f-924d-c306c65b0766