ABOVE, BELOW, OR BETWEEN DIVISIONS? POLISH IMMIGRANTS IN THE POLARIZED SOCIETY OF NORTHERN IRELAND

In spite of the passage of over a dozen years since the signing of the peace treaty in 1998, the divisions between Catholic and Protestant societies in Northern Ireland are still sharply drawn. The segregation of the Northern Irish population can be observed at various levels: not only in areas of residence, the labor market, and the education sector, but also in the sphere of consumption or in patterns of spending free time. Beginning on 1 May 2004, a rapidly growing group of immigrants, of which the largest percentage was constituted by Poles, began to enter this polarized reality. The aim of the article is to portray the local social reaction to the appearance of immigrants from Poland, who - although generally viewed as Catholics - can not be easily written into the social and symbolic boundaries produced by the conflic