Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
Mitigating the hostile environment: the role of the workplace in EU migrant experience of Brexit
Abstract
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, this paper asks how Brexit was experienced by highly skilled migrants in a sector reliant on EU migration, and the ways that employment in higher education buffered staff against its impact. Interviews reveal the ways that the Brexit vote disrupted previous perceptions of life in the UK, creating new feelings of vulnerability in terms of rights as well as public acceptance. Symbolic and practical support provided by management, as well as informal support from colleagues, cushioned EU employees against this shock. At the same time, employee satisfaction with employer response was shaped by perceptions of a neo-liberal turn within the University, with a subset of (primarily) academics expecting more personalised support and political involvement in the Brexit debate. Ironically, at the institutional level, the university with the most neo-liberal employment model was the most concerned and proactive in response to the Brexit vote, due to reliance on ready access to the EU to fulfil contingent labour contracts.
You might also be interested in :
Economic turbulence and labour migrants' mobility intentions: Polish migrants in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany 2009-2016
Economists view earnings as a primary driver of migration, both actual and intended. However, studies on the relationship between migration intentions and earnings yield mixed results. We argue that earnings are an important factor…
Policy, office, votes–and integrity. The British Conservative Party, Brexit, and immigration
While Europe’s so-called migration crisis is of fairly recent origin, some of the continent’s centre-right parties have been successfully politicising immigration for at least half a century. But that success and that politicisation can come at a heavy price–for the country, for the party…
'Harvest work, migration, and the structured phenomenology of time'
The paper draws on Rosa's three dimensions of the structured phenomenology of time - daily time, longer time, and historical time - as a conceptual lens to analyse the lived experiences and structural framing of temporary farm work in the UK and to address the question:
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.