ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Race Relations policy and practices in the specific, and quite unusual, governing structures of post-Agreement Northern Ireland. It draws on interviews with civil servants and analyses of institutional structures, public policy and government statements to interrogate the nature, and limits, of Race Relations policy in Northern Ireland. The chapter demonstrates how the politics of Race Relations' is compromised by a complex, fragmented institutional structure which hinders its effective implementation. It was clearly evidenced that Race Relations, and the management of race, is conceived of as part of this process of normalisation. The fragmentation and diffusion of powers described in this chapter are direct products of a political settlement which sought to temper sectarian division by privileging the recognition of Nationalist and Unionist political identities. The analysis of the process of reallocating census data into sectarian categories highlights the contradiction between a commitment to Good Relations and a set of structures and social practices which reproduce sectarian division.
