Description
To mobilise communities in conflict towards dialogue is an ongoing challenge in many conflict and post-conflict settings. Increasingly, we see the supposed solution of walls and fences to keep people apart and thus keep an appearance of peace. As we know, however, increasing segregation only tends to further feelings of distance towards the other side and leads to an increasing stereotyping of ‘the enemy’.
Cross-community dialogue is a central means of counteracting these tendencies in segregated and divided communities. In this paper I would like to discuss the relevance of liminality, and particularly, of liminal spaces for cross community dialogue. The paper uses the example of two organisations involved in cross-community projects, one in Belfast, Northern Ireland and one in Nicosia, Cyprus, and how the use the in-between of the border to create neutral zones of gathering where both communities can come together without losing face and without putting themselves into harm’s way.
I argue for the central relevance of the physical position of those space in or on the border and the symbolic power that lies in a repurposing of the material reality of security infrastructure for projects of mental de-bordering.
