The ethnic tensions in Belfast have increased in step with the extremely rapid growth of the foreign-born population in Northern Ireland in recent years—almost twice as fast as in the rest of the United Kingdom. The immigration wave had already led to tensions during the previous two summers before Monday’s horrific knife attack, reports The Telegraph.

From 2021 to 2024, 52,570 immigrants arrived in Northern Ireland, whereas during a period of the same length ten years earlier, 3,801 had arrived.

In 2021, 6.5 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population was foreign-born—an increase from 4.4 per cent in 2011 and 1.8 per cent in 2001.

The growth rate of the foreign-born population was 45 per cent, compared with 11.9 per cent in England and Wales over the same period.

As almost everywhere else in Europe, immigrants are not evenly distributed geographically:

The foreign-born population is highly concentrated: half of the foreign-born population lives in 74 of the country’s 462 electoral wards.

If one excludes immigrants to Northern Ireland from both the Republic of Ireland (on the same island) and from England, Wales and Scotland (on the island of Great Britain), immigrants now account for 30.6 per cent of the population in the Central Belfast electoral ward, most of them from the Middle East.

In the electoral wards of Woodstock, Windsor and Blackstaff, more than 20 per cent of the population is foreign-born.

In Water Works, where the knife attack took place, they account for 11.4 per cent of the population.

Belfast has also become a key location for housing asylum seekers, ranking 10th out of 361 local authorities for migrants dispersed around the country by the Home Office.

With that, friction has also increased.

Racist offences reached a record high in the year to March—rising to 2,367 from 1,806 the previous year.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland was therefore not unprepared for riots following Hadi Alodid’s bestial assault on Stephen Ogilvie on Monday.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Jack Crangle, a social historian at Queen’s University Belfast, says that the Northern Irish “us versus them” mentality that prevailed during the bitterest divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland has now been replaced by tensions between the losers of globalisation among the native population on the one hand and Muslims, refugees and asylum seekers on the other.