Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
Brexit, 'Immigration' and Anti-Discrimination
Abstract
This chapter sketches some of the key political science sources on the European Union (EU) referendum. It shows how these works have in effect uncritically confirmed and reproduced a reading of EU immigration and Brexit uncomfortably close to the one promoted by the United Kingdom (UK) Independence Party's leading figure, Nigel Farage. The chapter introduces into a debate dominated by specialists of public opinion and electoral analysis, the view of migration scholars: facts about immigration, migration, mobilities and free movement in the UK. Protection against discrimination in the UK on the basis of gender, sexuality, age, race or disability has been strongly inscribed in national law and practice for decades. The chapter considers the evolution of legal and policy responses to the Brexit vote, as political leaders wrestled with reconciling the needs of a porous, highly transnational economy and society with the false, nationally bounded understanding of "the people".
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