Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
Marginalized (non)citizens: migrant youth political engagement, volunteering and performative citizenship in the context of Brexit
Abstract
Migrants' opportunities for civic and political participation are often restricted by their legal rights. This paper reports on a study which included a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12-18 originally from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK, and follow-up focus groups with 122 participants. We examine young people's views on political and non-political participation and their engagement in everyday performative citizenship. We found connections between civic participation and political participation, and both are conditioned by one's sense of belonging to place and recognition of individual agency. Young people were interested and wanted to be involved in politics, yet they did not feel they could shape political decisions, unlike other forms of participation, such as volunteering and social activism. The study progresses existing knowledge on young people's exclusions from everyday performative citizenship, in the context of current public debates on youth engagement and young migrants' integration.
You might also be interested in :
Going Back, Staying Put, Moving On: Brexit and the Future Imaginaries of Central and Eastern European Young People in Britain
This paper explores the ways in which young people aged 12 to 18 who were born in Central and Eastern European EU countries but now live in the United Kingdom construct their future imaginaries in the context of Brexit. It reports on findings from a large-scale survey…
Performing whiteness: Central and Eastern European young people's experiences of xenophobia and racialisation in the UK post-Brexit
The state-induced anti-immigration environment and the normalisation of xenophobia in political and media discourses have led to the increased othering of European migrants in the UK through new forms of social stratification, especially since the Brexit Referendum of 2016.
Brexit, British People of Colour in the EU-27 and everyday racism in Britain and Europe
This paper foregrounds an understanding of Brexit as unexceptional, as business as usual in Britain and Europe. It reports on original empirical research with British People of Colour who have settled elsewhere in Europe…
Superdiversity's backstory
In Superdiversity: Migration and social complexity, Vertovec returns to the concept of superdiversity and reviews its uses in different disciplinary fields. Importantly…