ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the specific experiences and practices of borderland life in period were shaped by the ways in which the border was officially regulated. But also by how its existence in an everyday sense intersected with the wider economic context of the 1950s and 1960s in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and their different patterns of economic development. During the 1950s and 1960s, cross-border mobility was affected significantly by the presence of the customs frontier. The chapter explores four distinctive regions Clones, southwest Monaghan and south-east Fermanagh; south Armagh, north Louth and east Monaghan; east Donegal and west Tyrone; and south Fermanagh and north Cavan. These locales reflect the geographies of the borderland experiences. The chapter defines the themes of economic hardship and the border; the customs system and smuggling; border mobilities, identities and divisions; and the IRA border campaign.
