The sociology of ‘Brexit’

A research seminar series funded by The Sociological Review Foundation and supported by the ESRC Centre for Population Change

Overview

This seminar series attempts to ‘think sociologically’ about the already observable and (un)expected consequences of the process by which the United Kingdom exits the European Union. The aim of the seminars is to bring together social scientists, civil society actors and members of the public, whose joint contributions outline the theoretical and empirical possibilities of a ‘sociology of Brexit’.

The narrower context of the seminar series is defined by identifying those sociological subgroups that are most directly exposed to the effects of ‘Brexit’: EU citizens living in Britain and British citizens living in another EU country. The academic presentations and public discussions occasioned by the seminar series focus chiefly on the experiences of such ‘mobile citizens’, and citizenship will be the core sociological concept to be addressed in the context of the anticipation and outcome of the referendum on EU membership. The academic contributions have the double aim of (1) proposing social theoretical explanations of how uncertainty and change affect understandings and practices of citizenship, belonging and mobility, and (2) providing detailed empirical descriptions of how these processes are being experienced by social actors. The public engagement elements of the seminars will provide an opportunity to reconstitute, reinterpret or challenge these sociological narratives and constructs, while also carrying out a clear informative task aligned with the aims of ‘public sociology’.

In answering the broader post-disciplinary aims of the series, the seminars wish to resensitise sociological epistemologies to the ‘fringes’ surrounding ‘every word and every sentence’ uttered by social actors, the ineffable ‘halo of emotional values and irrational implications’ which ‘are the stuff poetry is made of; they are capable of being set to music but they are not translatable’ (Alfred Schütz, The Stranger, 1944). It is, however, only by attempting to ‘translate’ and interpret these ‘fringes’ of discourses and actions that the sociology of ‘Brexit’ can make sense of the various experiences of the unfolding events.

Programme, abstracts and videos

Seminar 1: The spectre of Brexit: free movement and European citizenship in question (University of Southampton, 17 June 2016)

The upcoming referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union is one of great social significance, yet sociological research has not engaged with the question in any depth. This one-day seminar attempts to fill this gap by debating the observable and expected consequences of a radically changed relationship between the UK and the EU, focusing specifically on those whose lives are most directly affected by the referendum and the spectre of ‘Brexit’: EU citizens living in Britain, and British citizens living in other EU countries. Scholarly contributions to the seminar will discuss the experiences of such ‘mobile citizens’, and citizenship will be the core theoretical concept addressed in the context of the anticipation and possible outcomes of the EU referendum.

Keynote talks

Adrian Favell (University of Leeds), The Migration Equation in ‘Neo- Liberal’ Europe: Perspectives from the North and North-West

Free movement of new member state nationals after 2004 constituted a quasi “natural experiment” on the positioning of West European member states’ labour markets vis-a-vis open borders, transitional barriers, and the ensuing balance of European and non-European flows, in more-or-less migration-driven economies. On the face of it, the initial UK experiment with open borders and high levels of free market governed migration from within Europe – as an alternative to non-European immigration or irregular/segmented labour markets – might be deemed a success compared to both restrictive models (for example, the sluggish dynamics of France; the exclusionary reality of Denmark) and high level alternatives (the segmented, exploitative outcome of Germany; the unregulated marginality of EU migrants in Spain). Arguably, too, the migrants and their sending states did better from the relationship: the UK getting closer to the EU’s integration theory based on a win-win-win model of migration-development. In other words, the case would pose a reversal of the usual implicit normative hierarchy in varieties/worlds of capitalism literatures, perhaps highlighting a weakness of their methodologically nationalist assumptions. However, the UK’s policy has not proven politically sustainable, and the mid to long term outcome is in doubt. The economic crisis of 2008 and after also has proven a turning point. I will consider how a political economy focus on varieties of capitalism and its search for an enlightened national market economy might be assessed by evidence on transnational free movement in Europe, in terms of key indicators such as demographic and labour market dynamics, selection effects, welfare protection, inequalities, growth performance, and economic development/integration. The focus will be on thinking comparatively about for North and North-West European cases: the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths, University of London), Thinking beyond freedom of movement: constellations of privilege in British emigration

The spectre of the Brexit provides an opportunity to think again about the conditions that facilitate British migration to other European countries. Although widely cited as made possible by freedom of movement and the right to reside in other European countries, this paper revisits my research on the British in rural France to think in depth about how we might understand British migration and settlement to Europe whatever the outcome of the EU referendum later this month. While European Union Citizenship is often presented by such lifestyle migrants within their wider claims to belonging—and their rationalisations for living in the French countryside—I argue that their continuing sense of themselves as British communicated through their everyday practices and actions demonstrates the more complex structural conditions and support and promote their migration and settlement. On the basis of this, I introduce constellations of privilege as a new conceptual apparatus to focus how privilege is structured not only in and through European Union membership, but also, among others, through classed and racial formations in the United Kingdom and colonial legacies.

Session 1: The politics of mobility, belonging and classification

Simone Varriale (University of Warwick), Migration and the politics of classification: before and after Brexit

This paper re-examines recent scholarship on intra-EU migration pointing to the politics of classification emerging from several studies, namely the distinctions between deserving and undeserving citizens that migrants themselves draw when discussing their position vis-à-vis other groups, both EU and non-EU migrants. Such distinctions are drawn between but also within groups, revealing the centrality of both ethnicity/race and class in shaping the cultural politics of EU migrants. While the outcome of Brexit is difficult to predict, I will argue that this politics of classification should become a key site of investigation in future migration research. In this paper, I will focus particularly on the notions of ‘meritocracy’ that emerge from the narratives of recent Italian and Spanish ‘expats’. While Britain’s exit from the European Union could significantly affect such narratives, leading to new distinctions between ‘settled’ and ‘new’, legal and ‘illegal’ migrants, the politics of classification as a social process – and its links with class, race and gender – is likely to remain important. The paper thus makes a more general argument in favour of a relational approach to the study of migration, one that draws on Bourdieu (1990) and other forms of relational analysis (Desmond 2014, Tyler 2015). This approach focuses on struggles between individuals and groups endowed with different kinds and amounts of resources, which compete over the very definition of migration and its cultural, political and ethical-moral significance.

Russell King and Aija Lulle (University of Sussex), ‘Brexit’, Eastern Europeans and tactics of belonging

This paper is a critical exemplification of the concepts of ‘liquid migration’ and migrant political agency, based on new empirical research on young-adult Eastern Europeans who have migrated to Great Britain since 2004. Against the backdrop of ‘Brexit’, we interrogate one of the defining characteristics of what has been called ‘liquid migration’ – its ‘intentional unpredictability’, meant as intentional openness to future migration trajectories under the open border regime – and further develop its linkages to the tactics and temporality of migrant agency. Our research data derive from two sources. The first is netnography – analysis of English, Russian and Latvian language blogging and social networking sites where Eastern Europeans have been advising each other on the issue of the referendum. Through critical discourse analysis of netnographic material we reveal migrants’ own conceptions of their positionality, preparedness for future uncertainties and tactical (voice-less) struggle to prove their belongingness to Great Britain. Our second source of data is an ongoing interview survey of 60 Eastern Europeans (Latvians, Slovakians, Romanians) aged 18–35 living in London and the South-East Region. The respondents are equally divided between students, high-qualified (graduate-level) workers and lower-skilled workers. From the interview transcripts and from off-the-record conversations, we will apply the same discourse-analytic and thematic approach as for the netnography. Through this dual-method analysis we aim to contribute novel understanding of the role of everyday tactics in the meta-concepts of belonging and migrant political agency.

Chris Moreh, Derek McGhee and Athina Vlachantoni (University of Southampton), Should I stay or should I go? Opinions and strategies of EU citizens living in the UK in the context of the EU referendum

This paper presents results from a survey conducted by the Centre for Population Change since February 2016. The paper examines what we refer to as EU migrants’ ‘coping strategies’ with the possible outcomes of the EU Referendum, which may fall into two categories: staying, which can involve taking no specific action, or considering applying for UK permanent residence and/or citizenship; or going, which involves considering leaving the UK for another country. In this paper we consider these strategies primarily from the perspective of three EU nationality groups: Portuguese, Polish and Romanian. The three are currently the most numerous EU national groups living in the UK (apart from Irish citizens), and they represent three different EU enlargement waves, with Portugal joining the European Union in 1986, Poland in 2004, and Romania in 2007. Besides exploring and comparing the ‘coping strategies’ of these groups, we also examine their opinions on the Referendum, such as its ‘legitimacy,’ preferred outcome, and the fact that EU nationals are not been eligible to vote.

Session 2: Social citizenship and the EU Referendum

Josh Moran, Paul Bridgen and Traute Meyer (University of Southampton), Expense turns to investment: How the welfare state supports EU migrants’ economic achievements

Welfare support for European Union migrants to the UK has often been presented as a “burden”. However, evidence that migrants are strongly work-focused suggests greater attention should be given to the welfare state’s social investment role. This paper investigates the degree to which the UK’s welfare state helps EU migrants enhance their economic activity. How have policy changes post-2014 affected this situation? What would happen if the UK left the EU?

Thanos Maroukis (University of Bath), Precarious labour markets, precarious social citizenship? Employment experiences and coping strategies of EU migrant agency workers in low pay sectors in England

This paper discusses the employment experiences and social protection of EU migrant agency workers in England in a framework of flexible labour market regimes, workfare policies and an emergent uncertainty as regards their immigration status. The British political economy is largely characterised by poor labour market controls and increasing utilisation of atypical and precarious forms of employment, whilst access to out-of-work and in-work state support becomes increasingly difficult to access and tied to continuity of employment. The UK immigration regime compromises even further the employment conditions of migrant workers living and working under this workfare regime. The revisiting of UK-EU relations under the Brexit referendum may extend the grip that immigration rules have had on non-Europeans’ employment and social citizenship rights to EU nationals. Drawing on life-stories data of Eastern and Southern European migrant agency workers in low paid jobs in the English food industry, hospitality and domiciliary care sectors, this paper aims to explore the retrieval of formal and informal social protection resources in a setting where precarious employment regimes prevail and social citizenship rights become increasingly dependent on employment relations. On the one hand, the paper indicates the business flexible labour market strategies and public policy structures which (de)regulate temporary labour arrangements and obstruct the accrual and (re)distribution of social protection resources regardless of the result of the referendum. On the other, it analyses the conditions under which EU migrants’ transnational family relations and interpersonal networks can resist this process.

Taulant Guma (Aberystwyth University), Making immigrants out of citizens: (re)contextualising everyday experiences of state welfare provision amongst EU migrants living in Glasgow

The recent UK government’s negotiation of the so-called “emergency brake” on benefits for European Union citizens ahead of the EU referendum received a significant amount of attention in the media and the public, with some celebrating the deal as a ‘success’ while others criticising it for not ‘being good enough’. The ‘deal’ and the debate around it took place amidst an already widely negative public and political discourse around the nexus of migration and welfare, perhaps most poignantly signified by the trope of ‘benefit tourism’ and the targeting of migrants as ‘abusers’ of the system. Amidst this heightened debate and the ongoing preoccupation with (the threat of) ‘benefit tourism’, little attention has been paid to EU migrants’ own concerns and perspective with regard to welfare provision.

Taking as a starting point the experiences of welfare provision amongst these migrants themselves, in this paper I demonstrate how the process of restricting the rights of EU citizens with regard to social welfare has been ongoing and was already at play prior to debates around the EU referendum. The paper is based on ethnographic research conducted over 12 months in 2012 with Czech and Slovak nationals who came to the UK after 2004. Introducing the migrants’ notion of zkancelovali, the paper highlights a heightened sense of insecurity in their everyday lives, which arise from the increasingly common experiences of rejections of benefit applications and delays of payments. Various practices are discussed which call into question the limits of EU citizenship and show how the latter is affected not only through policies, rules and discourses but also in everyday encounters with state officials,  where boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are being redrawn. Drawing on sociological/anthropological perspectives on state and statecraft, it is argued that the migrants’ experiences of welfare provision can be considered as constitutive of nation-building processes, processes which turn (EU) citizens into immigrants.

Seminar 2: Migration and citizenship: evidence from two referendums (University of the West of Scotland, 2 September 2016)

This one-day seminar was organised around a keynote talk and paper presentations adopting a comparative sociological perspective on two recent referendums in the United Kingdom: the Scottish Independence Referendum and the Referendum on EU membership. The event brought together research examining the observable and expected consequences of the two referendums on diverse forms of citizenship (national, sub-national and transnational) and mobility.

Presentations and discussions centred on the following topics:

• The experiences of the ‘Brexit’ and the Scottish Independence Referendum and its effect on EU migrants resident in Scotland;

• Sentiments of regional (versus national) belonging among Scotland’s population (including EU migrants) in the context of the Independence Referendum and the EU Referendum;

• The experiences of national, sub-national and transnational citizenship among Scotland’s diverse population (including EU migrants) in the context of the Independence Referendum and the EU Referendum

Keynote talk

Keynote speaker: Professor Jo Shaw (University of Edinburgh), Brexit, free movement and Scotland

Session 1: Securities, Insecurities and Youth Transitions in the context of Scottish Independence Referendum and Brexit

Paulina Trevena (University of Glasgow), Securities/Insecurities and EU citizenship: attitudes of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe to two referendums

Maddie Breeze (Queen Margaret University), Independence? Young people, political engagement and transitions to adulthood after the Scottish Independence Referendum

Against a backdrop of on-going debates on youth ‘apathy’ and alienation from politics, the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum catalysed remarkably high levels of voter registration, and turnout, among this youngest group. We explore the character and sustainability of this engagement among a strategic sample of young ‘Yes’ voters, in the immediate aftermath of this exceptional political event. Qualitative interview data illustrates how these first-time voters experienced the referendum as inspiring and educational, and (re)connected to formal politics during and after the campaigns and vote. Most of all, participants narrated their political participation, and new active citizenship, as bound up with their transitions to adulthood and the development of an independent political identity. This enables us to begin to re-think young people’s political engagement in relation to both a broader conception of citizenship and their youth transitions.

Session 2: Scottish values and national identity and national community in the context of the Scottish Independence and Brexit

Murray Stewart Leith and Duncan Sim (University of West of Scotland), ‘Bloody Jocks’ (The Scots in England): Certainly Uncertainty and Change?

BREXIT has brought about many uncertainties. There has already been speculation regarding the position of UK based EU nationals, post-Brexit. Our concern is with a much less studied group, one of the largest sociological/socio-political sub-groups within England; the Scots. This large group of migrants, rather uniquely perhaps, live in a different country but remain within the same State.

Recent constitutional decision making has not been kind to them. In 2014, English based Scots had no vote in the Independence Referendum, even though it could have fundamentally changed their homeland relationship/status. In the EU referendum, they witnessed Scotland voting significantly differently to England, resulting in ongoing tensions between the UK and Scottish Governments. If Scotland undertakes a ‘Scexit’ all of its own, this would result in the Scots in England – a significant transnational group – being forced to make decisions about their citizenship, identity, and residence in a very different (r)UK.

Citizenship is certainly the core issue; English Scots face a potentially uncertain future. What would their status be in a (r)UK outwith the EU, while Scotland might be part of the EU but not of the UK – or vice versa? Would this nearest Scottish diaspora (in number about 12% of the current Scottish population) return home? If they remain, would they feel welcome in (r)UK? Would they begin to suffer racism within post-Brexit England or is this already beginning to happen? Does the current position of the English Scots tell us something about the future relationship between England and Scotland?

This paper seeks to answer some of the questions already being asked about those ‘bloody Jocks’.

Minna Liinpää (University of Glasgow), ‘Scottish values’, national community, and its boundaries

This paper will discuss the ways in which the Scottish ‘national community’ is imagined in the context of the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. As Anderson argues, ‘communities are to be distinguished (…) by the style in which they are imagined’ (1991:6; emphasis added). This paper will, firstly, consider the ways in which history – and which parts of history specifically – are appropriated in the SNP’s narrative of the nation and, importantly, how the party makes reference to specific ‘Scottish values’, which are portrayed as rooted in history. Following this, the paper will then move on to consider the ways in which ethnic minorities understand and narrate the Scottish nation or Scotland as a ‘community’. However, in order to understand how a ‘community’ is constructed, it is important to look at the ways in which it is demarcated and, therefore, what its boundaries are as well. The discussion will draw on empirical evidence collected during my PhD fieldwork in the run-up to, and in the aftermath of, the independence referendum. The data consist of interviews with ‘experts’ and ethnic minority voters, as well as content analysis of SNP’s party political publications and key SNP figures’ speeches, for example. The key argument is that a seemingly open and inclusive ‘national community’ based on specific ‘Enlightenment values’ is imagined via a selective reading of history, and this national community is, in turn, especially juxtaposed to ideas of England and Englishness.

Session 3: Refugee cases in the context of the Independence referendum and Brexit

Amadu Khan (International Commission on Survivor-Centred Disaster Recovery (ICSCDR), and The Welcoming Association, Edinburgh), Migration & Citizenship: Asylum Seekers’ Identity Formations & Implications for an independent Scotland and UK Brexit

This paper draws from a PhD research conducted in 2008/09 among asylum seekers and refugees residing in Scotland. The study explored the relationship between asylum seekers and refugees’ citizenship formations and the perceived importance of the UK news media in this processes. The data was generated by in-depth semi-structured interviews among twenty-three asylum seekers and refugees who live in Glasgow and Edinburgh between 1970 and 2006. Although the research was conducted before the Scottish Independent and Brexit Referendums, the paper employs its findings on interviewees’ practices, expectations and forms of belonging and identity to forecast on immigrants’ membership in an independent Scotland and UK Brexit. The papers’ core argument is that, Scottish independence in contrast to UK Brexit would create a rights-based citizenship and a ‘civic’ notion of Scottish identity, which would be favourable to immigrants’ claims to territorial, ‘hyphenated’ and transnational identities. Consideration of this hypothesis will be undergirded by the favourable asylum policies that have been adopted by successive Scottish Governments in tandem with using inward migration to address a skills shortage and ageing population in Scotland. The cross-party political consensus is in contrast to a lack of a rights-based citizenship that perpetuates asylum seekers and refugees’ structural inequalities under successive UK Governments, and the current anti-immigration policy articulated by Brexit political elites. The paper’s analytical extrapolation is significant in strengthening the call for a sociological analysis of ethnic minority would-be citizens’ negotiation of membership, contestations and constructions of mainstream identities in multicultural democracies in the West (Nagel, 2009).

Wafa Shaheen (Scottish Refugee Council), Refugee rights and experiences in the context of the two referendums in Scotland

Seminar 3: The legacy of Brexit: mobility and citizenship in times of uncertainty (University of Southampton, 31 March 2017)

Following the Brexit vote, the future status and rights of EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom and UK citizens living in other EU countries has become uncertain. Whether to leave, stay or protest are questions which now need to be asked and answered by all affected EU ‘migrants’. The third and final seminar in our series aims to explore these issues in detail, with a particular focus on how ‘mobility’ and ‘citizenship’ are experienced in the current circumstances. Bringing together the latest empirical research on mobile EU citizens in the context of the Brexit vote, the seminar will provide an insight into existential anxieties, practices of belonging and new forms of transnational activism.

On a secondary level, and in answering the broader post-disciplinary aims of the series, the seminar wishes to resensitise sociological epistemologies to the ‘fringes’ surrounding ‘every word and every sentence’ uttered by social actors, the ineffable ‘halo of emotional values and irrational implications’ which ‘are the stuff poetry is made of; they are capable of being set to music but they are not translatable’ (Alfred Schütz, The Stranger, 1944). It is, however, only by attempting to ‘translate’ and interpret these ‘fringes’ of discourses and actions that the sociology of ‘Brexit’ can make sense of the various experiences of the unfolding events.

Keynote talk

George Szirtes (poet and translator) Welcome to the UK: a refugee’s view of acceptance, adaptation and rejection

Session 1. (Br)Exit: fears, reactions and uncertainties of belonging

Eleanor Knott (LSE) “For the first time here in this country I felt like an immigrant”: identity, citizenship and EU immigration after the UK-EU Referendum

Susan Collard (University of Sussex) British citizens or European citizens? Rethinking Citizenship post Brexit amongst Britons living in the EU

Chris Allen and Özlem Ögtem Young (University of Birmingham) What next, where next? Post-Brexit fears among secondary migrant Somali Muslims in Birmingham

Session 2. Loyalty? Experiences of citizenship and naturalisation

Emilia Pietka-Nykaza (University of the West of Scotland) Aspects of citizenship and the meaning of citizenship: the complexities of Polish migrants’ citizenships in Scotland in the context of Brexit

Pierre Monforte and Leah Bassel (University of Leicester) ‘Brexit’ and belonging: experiences of naturalisation and the UK referendum

Djordje Sredanovic (Université Libre de Bruxelles) EU citizens in the UK and Britons abroad: defensive naturalizations and institutional barriers

Session 3. Voice: Mobilisation and enactment

Charlotte Galpin, Verena Brändle and Hans-Jörg Trenz (University of Copenhagen) Opening the Pandora’s Box of EU citizenship: online mobilisation during Brexit

Kuba Jablonowski (University of Exeter and the3million group) You don’t have rights – you use them! Enacting European citizenship in Brexit Britain