Riots are uncomplicated things, practically speaking. A pretty blunt, ugly form of violence. Bricks thrown through windows or at police. Cars or homes set alight. Mobs targeting the vulnerable.
Unravelling the reasons behind rioting is much more difficult – and perhaps nowhere more so than in Northern Ireland.
The resentment and rage that has manifested itself in violent disturbances across the UK has an added complexity in Northern Ireland, interwoven with its long history of conflict.
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“The one thing that marks this out as different from the rest of Britain and Ireland is that you have on the walls a celebration of past violence, of status, that was achieved by using violence – and young people look at that and say, ‘it's my turn now',†says Professor Peter Shirlow from the University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies.
Taking their “turn†saw hundreds of men, masked and dressed in black, throwing stones, smashing houses and burning migrants – essentially Black and brown people – out of their homes in days of rioting and violence in early June.
The rioting was triggered by a stabbing in North Belfast. Video of a Black man pinning a white one to the floor quickly went viral.
But if that was the spark, parts of Belfast were easily ignited, primed and ready to go.
The rioters were marshalled quickly. Calls to take to the streets on social media were amplified by Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson.
Northern Ireland Children's Commissioner, Chris Quinn, pictured above, saw his own area catch alight. He says young people were clearly being forced to take part by agitators including paramilitaries. One in five arrested for rioting were children.
“I witnessed with my own eyes children, young people, teenagers being transported in and out of my community, a community they don't live in,†the Commissioner said. “That's coercion, that's trafficking.â€
There were several reports of children being paid to join the disorder or forced to turn up to pay off a drug debt.
The Commissioner spoke to something else we heard again and again – fear. He received two death threats online after speaking out publicly against the violence.
Perhaps the most afraid were the families we spoke to who were directly targeted during the run of nights of rioting.
Qasim, not his real name, fled the war in Yemen for the safety of Belfast. He works as a delivery driver while also studying for a Masters.
A gang of five men came to his door, shouting to get in, as he watched football. His wife and three children, the youngest just two months' old, had been sleeping upstairs.
Qasim is unfailingly polite as he explains how he was terrified for their lives, apologising as he starts to cry.
He says there is no doubt they were targeted. The men, he says, came not just to his street but directly and deliberately to his home, as if they knew a migrant family lived there.
“We didn't come here because we want to take their jobs or benefits,†he explains quietly. “We came because our country is in danger, in a war.â€
When I ask him if Northern Ireland is now also dangerous for them, he says: “I hate to say it. I didn't want to say that – but yes.â€
On the streets of loyalist communities where migrants were forced out, we speak to neighbours unashamedly pleased that they are gone. But there is fear here, too.
We're told repeatedly that “they†get the best houses, phones, even cars. Neighbours tell us some paramilitaries were involved in the violence, but they daren't talk to us about any of it on camera, because they still “control these areasâ€.
In North Belfast, we meet local Democratic Unionist politician, Brian Kingston.
He is painfully aware of treading a difficult path deciphering what are legitimate concerns within his own community – and what is out and out racism.
“People see change happening which is challenging, and it feeds into the whole issue around housing,†he tells me.
“It is indisputable that immigration is a hot topic throughout the UK and Ireland and throughout Europe, so people have concerns when they see abuse of the asylum system, when they see uncontrolled immigration.
“People see the boats crossing the English Channel …it gets more and more difficult to get social housing here, what would be council housing in England. Private rental properties, there's a high level of demand from migrant families for those.â€
But he adds repeatedly, “that doesn't justify violent attacksâ€.
Mr Kingston, pictured above, too has received threats for publicly condemning the violence.
That violence is perpetrated by a relatively small group within Northern Ireland – dwarfed by the thousands who turned out to support migrants and asylum seekers just days after the rioting.
But the harm – certainly the fear – that small group has caused is significant and dangerous.
And the reason for that is, many argue, rooted in Northern Ireland's legacy of conflict – a place where the ability to orchestrate and organise confrontation is well practised and where the spark of confrontation is easily lit.
Michaela Rafferty, pictured above, runs Anaka, which supports migrant and asylum-seeking women in Belfast.
“I think we can't ignore just how significant segregating our communities is. Whenever we have a school system that is completely segregated, we have a housing system that is completely segregated, this becomes the water that people swim in, and so they hold close to this identity.
“And if part of your community identity is telling you we are now targeting Black and brown people, there is a lack of critical thinking for people to stop and interrogate that and wonder why that may be.â€
For Professor Shirlow, it is a dangerous moment but one that has been coming.
Scores of peace walls still divide Belfast, but while sectarian violence has declined since the Good Friday Agreement, race-related crimes are at a record high. He says politicians across Northern Ireland cannot keep ignoring how the supposed post-conflict world is still not a peaceful one for everyone.
“These people here are connected to global networks of racism… and that adds to, especially among vulnerable young men, seeking status – which of course is also on the other side of the wall where young men are seeking status by taking on the police.
“So you've got this history of, you stand up, you take on the state, you take on the other. And why wouldn't that filter down into a different generation – even though, ironically, you stop the type of violence that at one time was common.â€
