Brokering Britain, Educating Citizens: An Introduction

On the morning of 24 June 2016, the day after the referendum known popularly as Brexit, people in the United Kingdom woke to the news that, albeit by a fairly small majority, the electorate had voted in favour of leaving the European Union. In the days and weeks which followed, there was a sharp increase in reports of verbal and physical abuse suffered by minority-ethnic people, including those using languages other than English in public spaces. While much of the evidence for linguistic discrimination remains anecdotal – the police figure of a 41% rise in hate crimes recorded in July 2016 (Forster, 2016) was not broken down to show specifically language related abuse – traditional and digital media reported numerous stories of people being insulted for speaking languages other than English on public transport, in shops and around their neighbourhoods, and a general feeling prevailed – noted by many migrants and those close to them – of an increase in nationalist, xenophobic sentiment in which language seemed to be playing a central role (Burnett, 2016).