Mapping social science research on Brexit and migration

This book examines the implications of Brexit for Africa-UK relations amid a ‘new scramble’ for the continent. Engaging Nkrumah on neo-colonialism and recent scholarship on global coloniality…

This research paper is devoted to the analysis of the effect of Brexit on Slovak healthcare workers in the UK. The main objective of the research is to estimate the impact of the fallouts and the extent to which Brexit has had on Slovak healthcare professionals living and working in the UK.

Part of an accelerated trend to integrate algorithms in immigration decision-making, the UK's EU Settlement Scheme relies on automated data checks as an essential and mandatory step in the application for UK residence. In this article…

This special collection examines how immigration and asylum policies have evolved since Britain left the European Union. The referendum was won on the promise of ‘taking back control’, yet, since Brexit…

Since the European Union referendum in 2016, UK net migration has increased to record levels.

The Brexit process created a loss of rights and heightened hostility towards EU migrants within the UK, even among groups previously shielded from such animosity, notably EU academics. This paper is based on 24 clear instances of microaggressions…

This article analyses the socio-demographic impact of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union on recent Spanish emigrants living in the UK. The political process resulted in a change in the status of Spanish nationals living in the United Kingdom.

In this article, the UK's ‘safe and legal (humanitarian) routes’ are evaluated by examining how they are positioned in the post-Brexit migration regime, and how these domestic provisions compare to those underwritten by international protections. The Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas)—HK BN(O)…

The end of free movement and the introduction of the post-Brexit migration system represent the most important changes to the UK migration system in half a century. Coinciding with the aftereffects of the pandemic…

Migrant activism, particularly of Polish migrants in the UK, is a dynamic and interesting area in which to exploring intersections of social movement theory, politics, and global communication. This article examines the role of “transmigrants”…

The EU Settlement Scheme, a product of Brexit, both continues and breaks with the EU legacy, offering dismantlement for the vulnerable and continuity for the rest. In its attempt to keep the rights of EEA and Swiss citizens as close to their EU format as possible…

Transnational European migrants develop identity trajectories and a sense of belonging in a country other than their own and constantly renegotiate them.

This article explores stay-return motivations among Polish migrant essential workers in the UK and how the combination of Brexit and Covid-19 shapes them. It conceptualises Brexit and Covid-19 as polycrisis, ie multiple…

Migrants' subjective sense of home deserves further research attention. In the particular context of the United Kingdom's (UK's) decision to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’), we interviewed 10 European citizens living in the UK about their sense of home…

This paper examines the impact of Brexit on international student migration. In a structural gravity model, we estimate student migration between 69 countries for counterfactual scenarios in which the United Kingdom leaves the European Union one year before the referendum.

Drawing upon ethnographic research with families as they navigate a year in ‘Brexit Britain’, this article explores how people live with Brexit, examining the effect of Brexit politics on everyday personal life, particularly relationships with family.

Following ‘Brexit’, the UK leaving the EU, we analyse the effects of changes in the legal framework on EU residents and compare them with UK citizens, employing a difference-in-differences framework. The research focuses on several dependent variables, including labour supply and wages…

In the aftermath of Brexit, migrants in the United Kingdom found themselves navigating uncertainties. Drawing on questionnaires and interviews with French nationals residing in England…

Drawing from a qualitative longitudinal study with young migrants from Lithuania and Poland in the UK, this chapter explores how they understand the category of social class and position themselves in the racialised British class system.

In January 2021, the UK Government launched the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa, in this way offering humanitarian protections to its former colonial citizens. Introduced following the imposition of National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong SAR…

By removing rights from British citizens and EU27 citizens in the UK, Brexit has redefined the value of national citizenships. This article shows the experiences of British citizens living in Belgium and the UK who considered obtaining Irish or Italian citizenship by descent…

Brexit brought an end to the free-movement rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom, but the rights of the poorest Europeans were being actively curtailed even before that. From 2010, street homeless EU citizens were deported through a series of pilot schemes operating in London. In 2016…

This article examines the emergence of a new immigration regime in the United Kingdom, following its exit from the European Union, to uncover the entanglements and intersections of biopolitics, geopolitics and ideology in migration and migration governance.

This article contributes to two interconnected fields of study: recent literature on intra-EU migration, specifically South–North flows; and scholarship into the impact of intersecting crises on (im)mobilities.

This article applies the concept of Britain as a community of citizens and a community of communities to the analysis of post-2004 Polish migrants. This concept received its clearest articulation in the 2000 report on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain chaired by Bhikhu Parekh…

The life strategies of Polish post-accession migrants built after 2004 were based on the specific conditions then prevailing in Poland and the UK. However, conditions have changed over the years and recent events – particularly Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic…

Many Central and Eastern European countries recognized the benefits of migration of their citizens after the EU enlargement in 2004, such as financial remittances and obtaining education abroad.

Drawing on a case-study of Cornwall in the South-West of England, this paper has three main aims. First, it seeks to listen to the voices of migrant workers and, in doing so, learn more about their experiences of moving to, and working in, the British countryside. Second…

Focusing on the3million-a major organisation that was formed after the 2016 Brexit Referendum to represent EU citizens in the UK, this article explores the role of online communication in supporting civic actors' lobbying and mobilisation strategies at local, national and international levels.

The UK’s ‘Australian-style’ points-based system (PBS), introduced in 2021, has been promoted by politicians as a strategy to ‘take back control’ of migration after leaving the European Union. However…

This paper offers an in-depth analysis of perceptions of (Br)exit citizenship, integrating key themes of European Union (EU) mobile and political citizenship, along belonging, rights and participation. It draws on a series of original…

In Superdiversity: Migration and social complexity, Vertovec returns to the concept of superdiversity and reviews its uses in different disciplinary fields. Importantly…

In recent years, several countries have undertaken political initiatives aimed at reducing immigration. At present, we lack a clear understanding of how self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) living in these countries interpret and respond to such initiatives.

This paper investigates changes in the mental health of immigrants living in the United Kingdom (UK) during the European Union (EU) referendum. Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study, this paper assesses how the mental health of immigrants has changed before and after the referendum…

Politicians often mention immigration enforcement, and deportation in particular, as a means to assert state sovereignty. This article looks at deportation through exiting the European Union, an event that was interpreted as regaining sovereignty from the supra-national organisation.