Skip to main content
Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit

From expat mothers to migrant mothers: Narratives of transformations, lost privileges and the `quieter' everyday in Brexit Britain

Abstract

Focusing on a key dimension of transnational family relations, this article explores the impact of uncertain migratory contexts and citizenship status on migrant mothering. Based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with French migrant mothers living in Manchester, this paper explores how the UK's decision to leave the European Union ('Brexit') affects their identities as migrant mothers and their mothering practices. The paper explores the construction of the continuum of identities of female movers, wives/ female partners and migrant mothers in times of unprecedented social changes in modern Britain. It examines how Brexit affects European migrant mothers' lives with particular reference to cultural and linguistic maintenance and migrant community building. This article points to the affective, racialised and gendered dimensions of citizenship statuses and their susceptibility to changing political contexts. It underlines the need for conceptual developments to capture the affective, racialised and gendered dimensions of different migrant statuses to reveal some of their subtler dynamics. The findings highlight that, independent of actual policy and regulatory changes, shifting contextual norms of people's entitlement to family rights may induce changes in how migrants strategise and practise transnational family relationships.

You might also be interested in :

From expat mothers to migrant mothers: narratives of transformations, lost privileges and the ‘quieter’ everyday in Brexit Britain
Focusing on a key dimension of transnational family relations, this article explores the impact of uncertain migratory contexts and citizenship status on migrant mothering. Based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with French migrant mothers living in Manchester…
Mitigating the hostile environment: the role of the workplace in EU migrant experience of Brexit
The rejection of free movement embodied in the 2016 Referendum vote created tremendous uncertainty regarding the immediate and future legal rights of EU nationals living in the UK. Drawing on interviews with EU staff and management at three universities…
Racism and xenophobia experienced by Polish migrants in the UK before and after Brexit vote
In recent years the public discourses on Polish migration in the UK have rapidly turned hostile, especially in the context of economic crisis in 2008, and subsequently after the EU referendum in 2016.
'I haven't met one': disabled EU migrants in the UK. Intersections between migration and disability post-Brexit
Historically, disability studies have ignored the experiences of people who migrate, while migration studies frequently excluded disabled people. This is a surprising omission from both fields of study given that many disabled people are migrants, and many migrants are disabled people.

Journal

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Author

Benedicte Brahic (United Kingdom)

Article meta

Country / region covered

Population studied

Year of Publication

Source type

Keywords