Belfast anti-immigration riots expose enduring sectarian fault lines decades after the Troubles

A spark in long-simmering tensions

Days of anti-immigration violence that erupted this week in Belfast have laid bare how three decades of sectarian conflict, known as the Troubles, still shape daily life in Northern Ireland. A graphic video circulated on Monday showing a man being brutally stabbed, and a Sudanese national was subsequently charged. By Tuesday night, riots had broken out in predominantly unionist, working-class districts, where agitators – many of them masked young men – set cars and houses alight and singled out homes belonging to ethnic minorities.

“We still have a legacy of conflict, of sectarian conflict here.”

Geography of segregation

The violence unfolded largely in so-called interface areas, where fences and signage still separate Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods. In Tiger’s Bay, a unionist stronghold, four immigrant houses were attacked and some residents opposed to the riots refused to speak to journalists for fear of being identified. At Newtownards Road in the east of the city, charred car wrecks and blackened walls were the only remaining traces of the unrest.

The long shadow of paramilitaries

In the aftermath, local residents and pro-Irish politicians pointed at loyalist paramilitary groups, which retain influence over boys and young men in Protestant areas. Seán Óg Ó Murchú, a Belfast-based author and republican, described that influence as a direct inheritance of the Troubles. The Belfast Telegraph quoted a loyalist source who said the groups were neither orchestrating nor encouraging the violence, but were deliberately standing back and refusing to intervene to stop it.

“There is an influence from paramilitary organisations on the unionist side. They’re sort of the hangover from the Troubles.”

A social crisis behind the anger

Researchers link the riots to deep-seated economic grievances. Many in depressed communities blame immigrants for poor access to housing, healthcare and education. Government figures published last month showed that the proportion of 16- to 24-year‑olds out of work and not in education or training in Northern Ireland had reached 11.6 percent, up 1.9 percentage points from the previous quarter.

“I suspect that most of those who are involved in these riots and violent protests feel marginalised and lack hope.”

Echoes of the past

For scholars like Joanne Hughes of Queen’s University Belfast, who studies education in divided societies, the riots are a reminder that the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement did not erase communal segregation. She notes that high levels of community division persist, especially in the most deprived areas. Until 1998, the region was torn by violence between largely Catholic republicans seeking reunification with Ireland and Protestant unionists defending the province’s place in the United Kingdom.