Performing Identities: Post-Brexit Northern Ireland and the Reshaping of 21st-Century Governance, 2019-2020

Transcripts from interviews completed in the course of this ESRC-funded project. Participant Action Research (PAR) is a methodology frequently employed to assess the extent to which law is a culturally constructed phenomenon, an approach rooted in critical and feminist evaluations of rules governing personal relations (Sachs, 1992). This is an innovative methodology in the context of researching the interaction between novel constitutional arrangements and identity. Understandings of how identity can reshape legal constructs of citizenship are best forged when these legal arrangements are fluid, enhancing the value of participant action research in the context of post-Brexit NI (Kymlicka, 2003). Our participants, drawn from across a range of the new categories of rights holder created by the Withdrawal Agreement, engaged with the project team to reflect upon how the administrative actions which they are obliged to undertake are shaping their identities. The combination of in-depth interviews and workshops allowed us to explore identity as both individual and relational.