What Do We Know and What Should We Do about the Irish Border? - Hardcover

by Katy Hayward (Author)

The Irish border is a manifestation of the relationship between Britain and Ireland. When that relationship has been tense, we have seen the worst effects at the Irish border in the form of violence, controls and barriers. When the relationship has been good, the Irish border has become - to all intents and purposes - open, invisible and criss-crossed with connections. Throughout its short existence, the symbolism of the border has remained just as important as its practical impact.

With the UK's exit from the European Union, the challenge of managing the Irish border as a source and a symbol of British-Irish difference became an international concern. The solution found in the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement gives the Irish border a globally unique status.

A century after partition, and as we enter the post-Brexit era, this book considers what we should know and do about this highly complex and ever-contested boundary line.

Written by leading social scientists, the What Do We Know and What Should We Do About...? series offers concise, up-to-date overviews of issues often oversimplified, misrepresented or misunderstood and shows you how to enact change.

"Short, sharp and compelling." - Alex Preston, The Observer

"If you want to learn a lot about what matters most, in as short a time as possible, this is the series for you."- Danny Dorling, 1971 Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

Author Biography

Katy Hayward is Professor of Political Sociology at Queen's University Belfast and a Senior Fellow of the ESRC-funded UK in a Changing Europe initiative, working full-time on the topic of Brexit and Northern Ireland/the Irish border.

She is an Eisenhower Fellow (2019) and a Fellow in the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen′s University. She is also a member of the Centre for International Borders Research and on the Steering Group of the Institute of Irish Studies in Queen′s. Outside the University, she is a non-executive Board member of the Centre for Cross Border Studies. The author of over 300 publications, including academic articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Regional & Federal Studies, and Political Quarterly, she has (co)authored several books including Dynamics of Political Change in Ireland (Routledge, 2017) and Northern Ireland a Generation after Good Friday (MUP, forthcoming).

She has also published many research reports, including one (with Prof David Phinnemore) for the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee and three on the impact of Brexit in the Irish border region for the Irish Central Border Area Network. Katy was lead author on a report on Anticipating and Meeting New Multilevel Governance Challenges for Northern Ireland After Brexit (2020) focusing specifically on ways that governance, scrutiny and accountability might be managed under the NI/Ireland Protocol. Professor Hayward has written and presented widely on the topic of Brexit to media, policy, civic and academic audiences. In recognition of her use of Twitter [@hayward_katy] as a means of sharing publically-accessible analysis on Brexit, Katy was given a special award from the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize (2020) and the title of 'Political Communicator of the Year' from the Political Studies Association (UK, 2019). She was appointed to the technical expert panel of the UK government's Alternative Arrangements Advisory Group on Brexit (2019) and has given written and oral evidence before several parliamentary committees in the UK, Ireland and EU.