6.4.1 Identity Salience and Social and Political Attitudes

There is wide-ranging evidence, then, from surveys and in real-world settings that highlight division making identity salient can influence people’s support for political positions. In the United States, an important literature has developed showing that messages used to win the support of white voters, by casting non-whites as others (Brown, Reference Brown2016), can prime support for particular political candidates. These divisive appeals do not mention race explicitly. Explicit reference to race can undermine beliefs in equality, which is integral to American national identity, and so the relevance of race must be made more covertly. An early prototype of such an appeal was used in the 1988 presidential campaign by George W. Bush, which became known as the Willie Horton ad. The ad oriented to the problem of violent crime in the United States. Though race was never mentioned, a picture of William Horton, an African American guilty of murder and imprisoned for life, was presented during the ad, which emphasised Republicans’ strong approach to crime, and Democrats’ overly liberal one. Similarly, divisive messaging was used during the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom. Advertisements depicting lax immigration control, overseen by the EU, depicted vast queues of non-whites at UK borders. In this way, those campaigning for Britain’s departure from the EU made racial identities salient in the minds of voters even though EU membership allowed its disproportionately white population free movement between member states.

Evidence shows that divisive appeals of this sort influence political behaviour (Mendelberg, Reference Mendelberg2008; Tesler, Reference Tesler2012). The effect of the Bush’s Horton ad is well documented. It increased support for Bush amongst white conservatives (Mendelberg, Reference Mendelberg2008). In later research, commercials framing a Black person counting money, while a narrator stated that “Democrats want to spend your tax dollars on wasteful government programs” (p. 79), were also found to increase support for Bush (Valentino et al., Reference Valentino, Hutchings and White2002). Equally, making race relevant by using incidental pictures of non-whites in stories that emphasised the costs rather than the benefits of immigration was associated with increased opposition to migration. This effect was stronger amongst respondents of European rather than Latinx descent, further emphasising the role of identity salience. This framing mattered for political reasons too. Forty-five per cent of the respondents who viewed the anti-immigrant story were willing to send a message to Congress asking for reductions in immigration. Similarly, a recently published analysis predicting support for presidential candidates using the American National Election studies explored the effect of white identity salience on 859 white Americans during the 2016 presidential election. This analysis indicated that white identity salience was associated with greater support for Donald Trump (Levchak & Levchak, Reference Levchak and Levchak2020).

These effects have also been observed outside the United States. In an experimental study, Fischer et al. (Reference Fischer, Haslam and Smith2010) experimentally manipulated the identity salience. In one condition, participants’ gender identity was made salient, and in the other British identity was. Participants were then presented with photographs and statements relating to the 7 July 2005 London bombings (a threat to national identity) or with photographs and statements about the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan (a threat to gender identity). For some participants, then, there was a fit between identity salience and identity threat (Britishness and the London bombing, for example) and for others there was not (Britishness and treatment of women in Afghanistan). Fischer et al. (Reference Fischer, Haslam and Smith2010) found that the impact of threat depends on the interplay between social identity salience and the social identity–related significance of the threat. Concretely, they found that where identity was salient and higher levels of threat were experienced, support for military retaliation and aggression was highest.

Another study in a North American sample considered the effects of making religious identities salient. In this study that comprised Muslim, Christian and Jewish respondents, tolerance of other religious groups was examined. Comparison was made between those whose religious identity was salient versus those in a control condition where their religious identity was not made salient during the study protocol. All participants were presented with a threat to their respective religious identity through a newspaper clipping that described an ideologically motivated and physical attack on members of their respective religions. In the high salience condition, a more aggressive response was apparent. This hostile response to other religious groups was evident across all three groups (Wright & Young, Reference Wright and Young2017). Even though all of the religious identities are routinely aligned with positive and caring characteristics by believers, these findings support the notion that when confronting a threat, religious identity salience drives both anger and hostility to other religious groups.

In another study, Ginges et al. (Reference Ginges, Hansen and Norenzayan2009) assessed the effect of religious identity salience on Israeli Jews’ support for suicide attacks against Palestinian Muslims. In one group, participants were primed by asking them about their prayer frequency. A second group was primed by asking them about their synagogue attendance. These results were compared against a no-prime group. Those in the synagogue-prime group reported greater support for suicide attacks. These researchers interpreted their findings as a social identity salience effect (Ginges et al., Reference Ginges, Hansen and Norenzayan2010). In Northern Ireland, we conducted a similar study and presented images of the British and Irish flags (Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Trew and Devine2020). Flags remain actively contested in Northern Ireland and are symbolic of the issue at the heart of the political violence. They make the political differences between Irish nationalist and British unionist identities salient. In this study, we found that when people’s ingroup flags were presented, there was a clear pattern of positive emotions apparent. However, when outgroup flags were presented, people showed high levels of uneasiness and annoyance. And it was those who were most highly identified who showed the most negative emotions when their nationality was made salient in this way.

Taken together, these studies highlight how cues and contexts are centrally relevant to how we feel about outgroups because of their role in making social identities salient. Making an identity salient is a relatively simple task. Social identities can be very easily primed implicitly and unknowingly with visual cues such as pictures, symbols, and flags. They can also be made relevant intentionally and explicitly. So, it can be inadvertent, but it can also be purposeful. Because of this, situational and environmental, and social and political cues frame people’s responses to trauma and, in particular, can drive hostile and angry reactions to others perceived as responsible or even complicit. In the next section we consider social and political contexts where identities can become chronically salient, and therefore are often if not always relevant to understanding how traumatic experience plays out.

6.5.1 Polar Opposites? Oppositional and Interdependent Identity Contexts

The quotation at the start of this chapter is only a short excerpt from June Jordan’s poem ‘About My Rights’. The poem speaks to the anger she feels because of the constraints she regularly places on her own behaviour to minimise her risk of rape and assault as a Black woman: she wants a simple pleasure: to go out ‘alone in the evening’. In the full poem she represents this as not being able to do what she wants with her own body, which she links directly to her risk of rape as a young Black woman. It is the experience of having to manage this risk and being labelled as ‘the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin’ that brings her to the realisation and indeed a position where she rejects that idea that she is ‘wrong’. In rejecting the idea that her experience of violence and risk of future violence can be attributed to being alone, ‘alone not being the point’, her anger becomes apparent. The last line of the poem reads as though she is calling herself to arms. Those who impede her right to self-determination will pay a price that ‘may very well cost you your life’. Her intention is resistance.

Implicit in Jordan’s analysis is that there are architects of this system who confine and restrict her. These people are not named; indeed, she cannot ‘tell you who the hell set things up like this’. If she is the ‘wrong’ sex, skin and age, it is safe to assume there are others for whom it is safe to be out alone. So, though she is not explicit in naming any specific demographic as the architects of the system that constrains young Black women, as readers we are prompted to think about ‘who the hell’ these people might be. Because linguistically, we can make this assumption that if she is the ‘wrong’ sex, others are the ‘right’ sex. Indeed, there is an implicit suggestion that these architects of the system must be the right sex, the right age, the right skin. Jordan then offers us a bifurcation: she creates binary groups, polar opposites, right and wrong.

We know from available research on oppositional and negatively interdependent thinking that when someone is right and another is wrong, when their win is our loss, that anger and political action as is evident in Jordan’s poem often ensues. Binary assumptions about group memberships are often made even if they are equally as often false. Race and ethnicity, for example, are such crude categorisations that researchers are not entirely clear what they refer to (Harawa & Ford, Reference Harawa and Ford2009; Helms et al., Reference Helms, Jernigan and Mascher2005). Race has little basis in biology, is not fixed, and in reality people frequently self-identify with multiple racial or ethnic categories (Schwartz, Reference Schwartz2001). The vast majority of studies that use race do so in simplistic ways (e.g., as white versus Black or ethnic minorities). Indeed, the simplistic ways that race and ethnicity are inserted into analyses and designs can reify racial categories and reproduce difference and prejudice (Proctor et al., Reference Proctor, Krumeich and Meershoek2011). You can see similar factors at play when you look at how ethnoreligious categories are dealt with in Northern Ireland. Identities that underlie conflict are perceived as polarised and oppositional (e.g., Catholic and Protestant; Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, McLaughlin and Trew2007), though they are only one dimension of any conflict. Other identities and categories co-exist even where there are highly pervasive social divisions. Practically, academics and commentators alike have been criticised for their emphasis on singular category differences, particularly where such emphases serve to reify and embed these group distinctions.

In recent years we can see the same debate has emerged in public consciousness around sex and gender. Indeed, non-binary gender identification can be seen as a reaction to this ever-increasing polarisation of sex and gender categorisations. And many of the major political cleavages and debates of our time are marked by these types of binaries. The construction of gender, political, racial or any group difference as binary amplifies already tense situations. This type of identity construction gives rise to divisions that are consistent, substantive and increasing. Although systematic cross-country evidence is rare, one analysis has classified 233 politicised groups in 93 countries according to political, economic, and ecological differences (Gurr, Reference Gurr1993). This analysis found that group-based inequalities often lead those who are adversely affected by the situation to direct political action.

Traumatic experience is also relevant. Sharp inequalities in economic, social and political dimensions or status between culturally defined groups are always relevant to the development of conflict (Stewart, Reference Stewart2008). Clear binary status differentials, as well as offering a relevant context to understand people’s risk of traumatic experience, further divide people into meaningful and distinct cultural groups on the basis of distinctive experiences. When these distinctions are linked to binary categories such as gender, inequalities in access to sociopolitical and economic resources not only make it difficult for minorities to deal with their trauma but also mean that the majority group can be insensitive to the challenges the minority face (Cederman et al., Reference Cederman, Gleditsch and Buhaug2013). So, for instance, men may be oblivious to the challenges women face within the justice system as they negotiate gender-based violence (Naughton et al., Reference Naughton, O’Donnell, Greenwood and Muldoon2015), compounding distress. These polarising differences or inequalities do not have to be large. They just have to be clear (Kelman, Reference Kelman1999). Over time, this social division, together with people’s direct experiences and response to trauma, exacerbates group-based division and amplifies social polarisation further.

Social identity theory can help us understand why this is the case. When we categorise ourselves on one side of a boundary, this influences how we see ourselves as well as how we see ‘others’ on the far side of that line. Those we share an identity with, our ingroup, are thought about differently to those we see as being in a different category: the outgroup. There is wide-ranging evidence that even in the most banal of circumstances we tend to be kinder, more accepting and generous towards similar others because of our sense of identification with our ingroup. This bias can give rise to the type of solidarity that helps people to cope with trauma (see Chapter 5) and is referred to in social identity parlance as ingroup favouritism. So, people for the most part tend not to be wilfully hostile towards others; it is just that they are kinder to those they see as similar to themselves (see Section 6.3). However, polarised contexts with their associated strong patterns of division offer an exception. In these contexts, zero-sum thinking can arise. In these situations, ingroup members can come to view their relationship with the outgroup as oppositional and negatively interdependent (Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, McLaughlin, Rougier and Trew2008). This zero-sum mentality is reflected in beliefs that if ‘they’ are winning, ‘we’ must be losing. Not only that, but in these contexts, because the rising fortunes of the outgroup are tied to the falling stocks of the ingroup, looking after ‘them’ is presumed to damage ‘us’.

This thinking can arise in both majority/dominant group members as well as minoritised/subordinate group members. For majority group members, when a traumatic experience is attributed to minority action, zero-sum thinking can result in group protectionism and suspicion of minorities. Because the majority have both power and privilege, this can reinforce the protections afforded within the system to those who are already advantaged. For minoritised group members, traumatic experiences that are attributed to actions of the dominant or majority group action are likely to result in calls for social change. June Jordan articulates this response to her minoritisation arising from this perceived negative interdependence: her ‘resistance / [her] simple and daily and nightly self-determination / may very well cost you your life’. Her resistance, then, her right to act against the system, will undermine your privileged way of life.

Hostile intergroup dynamics arise, then, when the fortunes of one group are tied to the sorrows of another. So, if my right to ‘to take a walk and clear my head’ is perceived to interfere with men’s rights, this is likely to make progress on women’s nighttime safety problematic. Recently, in Ireland and the United Kingdom, in the wake of the murder of two white women, the ensuing outcry led to calls for a curfew on men at night. It is hard to know whether the calls were meant as meaningful; however, they are a useful illustration of how an action to protect women can quickly be seen as both hostile and antagonistic by men. This call for curfews clearly threatens some, though not all, men’s gender-based identity as protective and respectful men, husbands or fathers. This framing of violence against women as a product of men’s behaviour, along with the feelings of identity threat, results in negatively interdependent interpretations of gender relations.

There are many examples here where sociopolitical contexts have given rise to growing intergroup divisions. It is apparent with regard to Brexit where political differences in the United Kingdom have amplified considerably since the 2016 referendum. What was previously a voting choice is now clearly transformed into polarised social identities of ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’. In the United States we can also see increasing polarisation between Democrats and Republicans. Again, forced political choices and the ongoing tensions between these two polarised opinion groups have led to increasingly harsh partisan politics and positions in that country (Mason, Reference Mason2018). Whilst these tensions are often linked to battles over power and resources, in tandem there tends to be symbolic identity struggles that are just as important to understanding the hostilities (Kelman, Reference Kelman1999). Identification gives rise to in group favouritism first and foremost, because we are more likely to look after ‘our own’ than ‘others’ (see Section 6.2 above). Additionally, where identity groups are constructed as oppositional – for example, a win for Republicans is a loss for Democrats – the preference for our own can quickly become a basis for antagonistic relations. Overall, then, where people identify strongly, and groups are locked in oppositional relations, hostility and aggression towards the other group is more easily endorsed (Halperin et al., Reference Halperin, Canetti‐Nisim and Hirsch‐Hoefler2009). Protecting ‘us’ becomes the basis for justifying aggressive action towards ‘them’. And when this happens it really matters who wields power. It is to this issue we now turn.

6.5.2 Social Identity Salience, Minoritised Identities and Political Action

June Jordan’s (Reference Jordan2005) poem reflects the intersection of her multiply minoritised position. She isn’t just the wrong sex, she is also ‘the wrong skin’. This intersection, or multiple minoritisation, is central to her story and indeed likely to be linked to her declared anger. As well as the two highly publicised deaths of white women in Britain and Ireland, there were two other, less publicised murders in both countries at the same time. These two murders of women of colour garnered far less attention in the news media. Like the deaths of the Irish Traveller families mentioned earlier (see Section 6.3), they got far fewer column inches. This reflects the relative privilege and protection white women have that is often not available to women of colour, which Jordan alludes to in her poem. Not only are the deaths of women of colour less remarkable (MacDorman et al., Reference MacDorman, Thoma, Declcerq and Howell2021), but women and girls of colour are more likely to be trafficked for sex work, raped and sexually assaulted than their white counterparts (Keys, Reference Keys2021). Constructions of women of colour as sexually compliant are frequently used to dismiss women of colour when they come forward. And the likelihood that their complaints of assault are taken seriously, or acted upon by the police and judicial system, are greatly reduced.

Identity salience is increased when a group is repeatedly affected by major and minor aggressions (see Section 3.4). Because of this even in multicultural and relatively equal societies, a minority or subordinate identity can be chronically salient (Palomares, Reference Palomares2004; Schaffner, Reference Schaffner2011; Wang & Dovidio, Reference Wang and Dovidio2017). A wealth of research demonstrates that adversity as a consequence of minority and subordinate group membership, including race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, is common (Branscombe et al., Reference Branscombe, Schmitt and Harvey1999). Certainly, being ‘the wrong skin’ is central to how June Jordan defines herself in this poem and her experience of life. In this vein, Branscombe and colleagues’ wide-ranging programme of research has articulated a path through which social identities are made salient and are consolidated because of the poor treatment people receive on the basis of their group characteristics. They have labelled this process the rejection identification hypothesis (Branscombe et al., Reference Branscombe, Schmitt and Harvey1999; Jetten et al., Reference Jetten, Branscombe, Schmitt and Spears2001). The core argument of the rejection identification model is that being treated differently by others based on a group characteristic heightens feelings of identification with the group. Extending this idea further, we found that in those who have lived through the political violence in Northern Ireland, feelings of threat amplified participants’ identification with their national group. We labelled this process the threat identification hypothesis (Schimd & Muldoon, Reference Schmid and Muldoon2015). Amongst minority group members, in particular, both feelings of threat and direct experience of violence, then, can result in chronically relevant identities.

Experimental studies have mimicked these findings. In an experimental study, Jetten et al. (Reference Jetten, Branscombe, Schmitt and Spears2001) presented some evidence of discrimination against those with body piercings to those who had piercings. Participants identified more strongly with those who had piercings where evidence of discrimination was available (Jetten et al., Reference Jetten, Branscombe, Schmitt and Spears2001). When the researchers made clear that this discrimination was meted out by the (unpierced) majority population, these feelings of identification were even more pronounced. So, this experiment shows that it is being treated differently because of a group attribute as well as group status that increases people’s sense of belonging and identification.

As a result of this increased identification, an individual’s personal fate becomes psychologically tied to that of other ingroup members (Drury, Reference Drury, Jetten, Haslam and Haslam2012). Majority and minority group members are more likely to encode their own group information more fully. So, highly identified minority group members are more aware of their own increased risk of adversity and trauma and are more sensitive to news of traumas visited upon fellow ingroup members. These events are experienced as identity-relevant; they may make the identity salient; they may also be perceived as triggering.

For minority groups, then, new events can give rise to feelings of political déjà vu. This is a phenomenon that appears to be memory-based. It is derived from the detection of the familiar. A new traumatic event can feel familiar, the latest in a long sequence of similar events. As such, Chayinska and McGarty (Reference Chayinska and McGarty2021) argue that political déjà vu, where an analogy between past and present traumatic events is perceived, is an identity-based phenomenon. In a field study in Argentina, they show that connecting two events from different time periods had important implications for people’s identification, including support for political leaders. Not only that, but making the connection between the disappearance of an activist in the present to the mass disappearance in Argentina’s history had important implications for people’s political attitudes and political engagement.

Similarly, in a study of Aboriginal people in Canada whose parents had survived institutional abuse, Bombay et al. (Reference Bombay, Matheson and Anisman2014) found that social identities were an important driver of intergroup attitudes across time. More specifically, adult children of survivors of the Indian Residential Schools system who saw their ethnocidal identity as central to who they were were more likely to interpret subsequent negative intergroup scenarios as arising from discrimination. The authors interpreted their findings as evidence for mutually reinforcing relationships between identity and adversity and discrimination. Appraisals of discrimination that were linked to distress of intergenerational trauma can in this way be seen to damage interactions between victims of race-based trauma and wider mainstream society.

Group members use strong and salient minority identities to make sense of adversity and trauma they experience. We have seen how this helps minority group members adjust to traumatic experience and allows trauma to be viewed as something to be endured (see Chapter 5) because it reflects and embodies a higher commitment to a political cause (Acharya et al., Reference Acharya, Muldoon and Chauhan2020). A strong identity impacts on the stereotypical expectations of intergroup dynamics (Başoğlu et al., Reference Başoğlu, Mineka, Paker, Aker, Livanou and Gök1997), and so minority group members are alive to the idea that majority group members and culture are oppressive. This not only reduces trust in majority group members (Acharya & Muldoon, Reference Acharya and Muldoon2017), but also can give rise to a sense of injustice. This combination of perceived injustice, social identification and the sense that the group has the power to act (known as collective efficacy) has been shown to drive political protest and collective action. So identities, as well as offering a sense of meaning to interpret traumatic experiences, also drive minority group members and supporters to action (Acharya et al., Reference Acharya, Muldoon and Chauhan2020). In this way, trauma experiences of some with whom we share a sense of identity can have a ripple effect on the wider group (Muldoon & Lowe, Reference Muldoon and Lowe2012).

6.5.3 ‘A Bad Age’: Trauma and the Salience of Trauma and Divisions for Young People

In Ireland, there is an expression, mostly used by adults, where a young person is referred to as being at ‘a bad age’. It is used to cover both challenging behaviour and challenging circumstances. It is interesting, too, amongst her other ‘wrongs’, that June Jordan says she is the ‘wrong age’. There is no question that age or, as psychologists prefer, developmental stage is centrally important to both experience of trauma and the development of social identities. It is to this issue we now turn.

During childhood and adolescence, traumatic experiences, adversity and disadvantages offer a set of circumstances that can give rise to strong patterns of identity and also particular identity meanings. Betancourt and Khan (Reference Betancourt and Khan2008), in their wide-ranging review of the studies of children affected by war and political violence, point to the importance of meaning making for children and young people growing up in chronically traumatic contexts. Available empirical studies speak to this issue. We know from a large meta-analytic review (Schmitt et al., Reference Schmitt, Branscombe, Postmes and Garcia2014) that a key factor that amplifies the impact of negative discriminatory experiences at the hands of others is the age at which they occur. Daniel Bar-Tal, in a range of studies, has examined the emergence of identity-based ideology in young people (Bar-Tal, Reference Bar-Tal, Salomon and Nevo2002, Reference Bar-Tal2007; Oren & Bar-Tal, Reference Oren and Bar-Tal2007). This research in Israel suggests that identity-based views are often passed through the education system, facilitating the interpretation of conflict-related experiences and embedding identity positions (Bar-Tal, Reference Bar-Tal, Salomon and Nevo2002). Subsequent narrative and ethnographic work with youth in Israel, Palestine, Bosnia and Croatia also points to appraisal and interpretation of traumatic experience as a basis for development of strong patterns of identification relevant to the ongoing conflict (Barber, Reference Barber and Barber2009; Daiute & Turniski, Reference Daiute and Turniski2005; Hammack, Reference Hammack2010). Youth turn to their relevant identities to make meaning of the adversity and trauma that they encounter as a consequence of the unforgiving context of their lives.

The invocation of identity in this way is not without its problems (Kelman, Reference Kelman1999), though the consequences are inherently related to the sociopolitical context (Urdal, Reference Urdal2005). In a survey of adolescents in Northern Ireland, violence against outgroups was perceived as more acceptable and justifiable by those who identified highly with their own group and its cause (Muldoon & Wilson, Reference Muldoon and Wilson2001). Muldoon and Wilson (Reference Muldoon and Wilson2001) demonstrated that youth in Northern Ireland with the strongest ideological commitment who were thought to be the most psychologically resilient were also the group that viewed violence as most acceptable. Similarly, in a later study, Muldoon et al. (Reference Muldoon, McLaughlin, Rougier and Trew2008) found that young people in Northern Ireland presented social identification with one’s own group as an explanation for paramilitary violence. Young people made sense of their own side’s aggressive action in identity terms. This is no doubt embedded in the oppositional and negatively interdependent nature of the context in which they lived. Ultimately, however, the use of identities in this way as meaning-making vehicles can contribute to the cycles of violence.

This use of identities to make sense of traumatic experiences and in particular violence also has implications for young people’s understanding of justice and morality. In developmental terms, it is clear that concerns about morality and justice are key concerns for young people. Both concepts, however, are highly malleable, and our definitions of both are linked to social identities and group life (Clayton & Opotow, Reference Clayton and Opotow2003). Social identities and, more specifically, who we perceive as being deserving of our care, or indeed our hostility, limits the scope of our morality. In June Jordan’s poem quoted at the start of this chapter, her anger is clear. She is angry enough to threaten violence: ‘it may very well cost you your life’. It is unclear if she sees a threat to others’ mortality or cultural life; however, she invokes an identity-based logic about who is deserving and entitled to her concern. It is certainly not ‘who the hell set things up like this’. The boundaries of her concern and entitlement to rights does not include this group who created the system (Opotow, Reference Opotow1996). Indeed, the perceived injustice of her own experience is used to justify her lack of concern and potentially immoral treatment towards the group who set up the system. This poem, then, can be seen to reflect exposure to trauma and violence, particularly in those who are ‘the wrong age’. This seems to alter the normative acceptability of violence, contributing to identity-based validation of aggression we see in empirical studies in violent contexts (Muldoon & Wilson, Reference Muldoon and Wilson2001; Punamäki, Reference Punamäki2009).

It is important too to remember that young people are often not in the mind’s eye of those who ‘set things up’. Returning to where we started this chapter, this was patently self-evident during the pandemic. In many societies the front-line work that kept societies going was undertaken by young people who staffed medical, educational, retail and service industries. In addition, young people often have more precarious housing, are more likely to share housing and be reliant on public transport than adults aged over twenty-five. All of these factors, together with the fact that COVID-19 was perceived and in reality was often less threatening for young people, meant that the rates in this age group were higher. In Ireland, this often gave rise to a perception of young people as a problem in the spread of the virus (Breslin et al., Reference Breslin, Galvin, Foran and Muldoon2023). In my own university, senior management took to patrolling areas where university accommodation predominated to minimise the lockdown breaches, which were seen as having a negative effect on both the university and young people’s reputations. In India, Arabaghatta et al. (Reference Arabaghatta Basavaraj, Saikia, Varughese, Semetko and Kumar2021) found that the attribution of responsibility for the spread of the virus was more strongly polarising than the government response to outbreaks. Highlighting and apportioning blame for the spread of the virus inadvertently amplified existing political divisions. This treatment of young people has had its own social and political cost across Europe, reducing political trust in institutions in societies where treatment was less equitable (Bottasso et al., Reference Bottasso, Cerruti and Conti2022).

Ignoring the diversity of who we are, and how we ought to keep us all safe, resulted in more difficult experiences during COVID-19 for some. At one end of life, there was the pain caused by the inability to secure care for my family in their last days. Added to this, families like mine could not mourn our loss in the usual and culturally appropriate way, amplifying the pain of loss and the stress of the pandemic. People like my father-in-law admitted to hospital were not allowed companionship to support them when confused, ill and dying. Even those receiving end-of-life hospice care, like my much-loved aunt, endured heavily restricted visiting in her final days. All of this prevents those around the sick from enacting important familial, national and religious identities.

At the other end of life, the young also faced serious and often unnecessary challenging pandemic experiences. In Ireland, parents could not buy shoes for young children for almost nine months. Children, my lovely nephew included, who needed first shoes were literally barefoot. Amongst young people the spread of COVID-19 was often attributed to their failure to adhere to public health guidelines in their social and sporting lives. It routinely ignored the fact that many young people were working in front-line roles (Breslin et al., Reference Breslin, Galvin, Foran and Muldoon2023; Kinsella et al., Reference Kinsella, Muldoon, Lemon, Stonebridge, Hughes and Sumner2022). The mental health costs of lockdowns for young people for whom the establishment of peer networks is a central developmental task was not considered (Crawford, Reference Crawford2021). Nor was the social cost of the disproportionate fining of young people for lockdown breaches (Moloney Reference Moloney2021). And whilst the policing and the disproportionately negative experiences of young people in comparison to older adults (Muldoon, Reference Muldoon2013) during times of crisis and adversity is not something that is restricted to COVID-19 times, the unfairness of a system, set up by older adults, can be seen as part of the process that foments feelings of injustice, anger and intergenerational tensions.