The Brexit crisis of the past few years turned the status of Northern Ireland into a vital matter for British and European politics. Negotiations over Britain’s departure from the EU hinged on the question of how the region should relate to its southern neighbor and the rest of the United Kingdom. After Theresa May lost her majority in the 2017 general election, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) kept her in power at Westminster.

In the end, Boris Johnson signed up to a deal that contained the Northern Ireland Protocol, which created trade barriers in the Irish Sea to avoid the return of a hard border between the two parts of Ireland. The DUP was furious, but its efforts to overturn the Protocol have proved fruitless. The DUP recently brought down the regional power-sharing government in what seems like a last-ditch attempt to avoid being overtaken by Sinn Féin in the Assembly election due to be held this May.

Despite receiving more attention in the wider world over the past five years than at any point in living memory, Northern Irish unionism remains poorly understood as a social and political force. What are its internal dynamics, and how does it relate to a changing society where the safety of the union with Britain can no longer be taken for granted?