In some parts of Belfast, defending a street or an estate has been a way of life for decades.
Like the rest of the UK, issues over housing, community cohesion and crime have brought tensions over migration to a boiling point.
Only, in Belfast, anger can very quickly turn into something else. Something darker.
Violence.
And community leaders are desperately trying to prevent another “cycle” of chaos from erupting in Northern Ireland after the horrific knife attack on Stephen Ogilvie.
A Sudanese migrant has been accused of repeatedly stabbing Mr Ogilvie in the head and face.
Ron McDowell, the deputy leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, pleaded with masked protesters not to plunge the Shankill Road into turmoil.
But hours later houses were ablaze, cars were torched and people were being evacuated to safety by police.
Mr McDowell, who took the Daily Express round the Shankill Road, said: “They were saying it’s a line in the sand and ‘send them back’. They don’t want the trouble that immigration is bringing.
“There’s a small school in the area. It wasn’t doing so well, and migrant families coming into Belfast through the backdoor of Dublin, which is a sore point round here as they don’t like Dublin, but families were placed in hotels all around the city and they were bussed to the school.
“The migrant families get uniforms bought for them. This is not the families’ fault. It is the politicians’ fault.
“There’s a special menu for cultural reasons. There’s a ‘them and us’. People are sick of it.
“People are seeing migrants getting houses in an area they can’t get a house in.
“They just don’t believe in the political answer anymore.
“There’s always been a siege mentality here. The Shankill has never truly lost it and it is certainly back now and it’s back with a vengeance.
“It really is a case of ‘what we have, we hold’.”
Asked about the term, which is traditionally used by military personnel, Cllr McDowell said: “These are militant people and they always have been.
“But they can’t get sucked into a cycle of violence. Then our argument doesn’t win.
“The situation is being exploited by people in the shadows.
“I was calling for peaceful protest, and I was basically told ‘peace doesn’t work … peace doesn’t get us anything’.
“It was really clear people were angry. They wanted to vent. I was personally devastated by the violence.”
Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said “law and order will be coming” for those engaged in disorder in Northern Ireland in recent days.
He added: “We cannot have citizens of the United Kingdom, residents of Northern Ireland, being put in fear by this kind of mindless thuggery.”
Dorothy Evitt, 42, told the Daily Express of the chaos she saw on Tuesday night. She said: “She [a woman in a house approached by rioters] is shouting, ‘I’ve got my kids in here, I’m white’. And I was like, what the… People were actually clarifying [that they weren’t migrants]. Then we saw the doors going ‘boom, boom, boom’.”
Ms Evitt added: “They were saying ‘you’re alright, you’re alright’ [to white families]. They knew what they were looking for. They had an agenda.
“They knew exactly where they were going.
“I could hear people shouting ‘close your doors, you are alright’. I thought they were heading to a road with a lot of HMOs.
“I didn’t support the violence. But the protests, I was happy.
“Migration has put such a strain on this area. It’s so bad. So bad. I have an eight-year-old daughter and she’s not allowed to play outside.”
Riots have also broken out elsewhere in Northern Ireland.
On Wednesday night, police used water cannons as officers were pelted with bricks and petrol bombs by balaclava-clad rioters in County Antrim.
Footage showed dozens of men dressed all in black and wearing face coverings gathering on Antrim Road, where they could be seen tearing bricks from properties and smashing paving stones with sledgehammers to create projectiles to throw at police.
Pensioner Derek Waters, who has lived on the street for 30 years, told the Daily Express: “It was a normal protest, but it turned violent, it turned nasty.
“They were rioting down the roundabout, but the police came up to try and prevent them reaching the motorway. They destroyed people’s properties.
“Then the house opposite got set alight. They broke into it and took the old vehicle from out the back and brought it up onto the road. We saw smoke rising from the building. They ignited that as well.
“That belongs to the man next door. He’s 91 years old. It’s a good job there was no-one living in it.”
His wife, Lorna, added: “We were scared they’d take our car as well.
“We were really scared as they were quite slow to move them back and we were worried about our house.
“It was getting very scary.
“We don’t mind the protesting but not the violence, it’s not on.”