Report: Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland Community Cohesion, Political Trust, and Economic Hardship

SCI is delighted to be publishing new insights into social attitudes in Northern Ireland.

It comes at a time when opinion and noise are everywhere - and evidence is harder to find.

Economic pressure, political frustration and rising intolerance and hate are the backdrop to this work.  Northern Ireland, like many other places, knows this dynamic well and has witnessed unprecedented levels of racist attacks.

Drawing on the World Values Survey (2022) and the Hope not Hate Survey (2024/25), SCI turned to the data to ask: what signals are we getting about cohesion, trust and economic security, what gives grounds for hope, and what should concern us?

Our key observation is that cohesion, democratic trust, and economic security are mutually reinforcing - weakness in any one domain introduces strains in the others.

Here is what people in our network thought

Anki Deo, Senior Policy Officer, Hope not Hate

The finding that there is microlevel cohesion and a strong desire for government and politicians to do more to foster positive community relations is encouraging. There is hope that an engaged community can hold strong in the face of division and disinformation. It is important that efforts to build this community resilience continue.

Dawn Shackles, Community Foundation for Northern Ireland

As faith in systems, fairness and the future ebbs away, everything feels more precarious. The scale and speed of the economic strain we are experiencing has become the lens through which immigration, politics and cohesion are now understood and must be a warning signal to us all. I was struck — and unsettled — by the education divide, which suggests we’re not just disagreeing but living in parallel political realities with very different assumptions about democracy, diversity and the role of the state. Yet there are still grounds for reassurance. Everyday coexistence is largely holding, and support for ‘strong leaders’ seems rooted more in frustration with delivery than in a rejection of democratic values. We’re not polarised yet, but we are exposed — and that means there is still time to act.

Eric Ward, Executive Vice President, Race Forward

Do not allow the far right to hijack people’s perceived and legitimate grievances. Government has to still the fire by providing that housing — not 15 years from now, not 10 years from now — now, in ways that people understand that government will show up and stand by them in their hour of need.

Professor Joanne Hughes, Queen’s University Belfast

The report provides a careful and timely analysis of social attitudes in Northern Ireland, reinforcing the importance of distinguishing between vulnerability and outright polarisation. It shows convincingly that strong local cohesion and continued commitment to democracy coexist with deep anxieties about economic security and political effectiveness. Particularly persuasive is the identification of education as a consistent line of attitudinal differentiation, pointing to structural inequalities rather than transient discontent. The analysis usefully shifts attention away from cultural extremism towards material conditions and institutional performance. Overall, the report cautions against complacency: while democratic commitment and everyday coexistence remain robust, the interaction of economic strain, political frustration and service pressures poses clear risks for societal unrest unless addressed through coordinated, material-oriented policy responses.

Eleni Takou, European expert on migration and hate crime

Across our societies, the need to communicate effectively with the anxious, silent middle — those who feel left behind on polarised issues — has been well established. In Northern Ireland, this could mean navigating the tension between the grounded experience of local cohesion and the fear of inter-ethnic or inter-religious violence. In Greece, it means holding together the demand for control over external borders and the genuine compassion many feel towards newly arrived refugees. In every case, across every society, shifting the dominant narrative by addressing the concerns of the anxious majority is at the core of our role in advocacy.

Yet narrative change requires data, polling, and resources — and resources across our sector are increasingly constrained. Within this context, the new Social Change Initiative research leads the way, demonstrating how existing datasets and surveys can be harnessed to generate meaningful insights into the drivers of fear and division. It also confirms something important: that people are capable of holding multiple, context-dependent views simultaneously — recognising, for instance, concerns about resource competition while also acknowledging the significant economic contributions of immigration. This is a powerful model, and one we hope to replicate in other national contexts.

Read the report and share your views

We’d love to know what you think.  Read the full report and please do share it with others in your networks who are working on these issues.

Join us in June

We are hosting a Zoom meeting in June to go deeper into the report and to think together about what it means for your own context and work.

Details will be published soon.