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Paper short abstract

This paper will examine how Irish borderland farmers are mobile through the routine and necessary movement of animals and commodities, yet are simultaneously rendered immobile through delays, regulatory checks, paperwork, and changes to agricultural subsidies.

Paper long abstract

On June 23rd, 2016, the United Kingdom voted, by a thin majority, to exit the European Union, leading to an event known as Brexit (Wilson 2020, 23). For areas such as Northern Ireland and its borderlands with the Republic of Ireland, this was a life-threatening matter as a long and complex road to peace had been achieved after decades of ethnoreligious conflict. Brexit threatened to reduce agricultural subsidies and the movements of goods, people, and livestock between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Since the end of “the Troubles” and the ratification of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998, the governments of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and the EU have removed barriers, walls, checkpoints, surveillance towers, and promoted cross-border cooperation at the Irish border, the only land border shared between the UK and the EU following Brexit. After several rounds of negotiations, the Irish border has remained open to the movement of people, but new regulations have been introduced for the movement of livestock, food products, and goods. In this paper, I will focus on how Irish borderland farmers are mobile through the routine and necessary movement of animals and commodities, yet are simultaneously rendered immobile through delays, regulatory checks, paperwork, and changes to agricultural subsidies. By centering (im)mobilities through cross-border farming strategies, this paper reframes the Irish border as an agricultural landscape shaped less by securitization than by the uneven governance of everyday movement.