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Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit

Mapping social science research on Brexit and migration

This fully searchable database lists peer-reviewed journal articles on Brexit and migration published in social science journals since May 2015. It will be updated periodically. For our initial review of this body of work see our 2022 article published in Migration Studies From state of the art to new directions in research what Brexit means for migration and migrants.

578 articles

Brexit and student immigration to the United Kingdom: Points of growth and fissure
The article is made around the search for an answer to two questions: how Brexit affected the dynamics of the entry of students from the EU countries and what new opportunities it presents for the UK educational system in the future.
Brexit and the borders and boundaries of the European union
The article makes the case for the study of borders and boundaries as intertwined concepts that bear multiple implications for understanding the prominence of anti-migration in the public discourse.
Brexit and the British Overseas Territories: Changing Perspectives on Security
On 23 June 2016 the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. As well as citizens of the UK, residents of the UK Overseas Territory of Gibraltar were also allowed to vote, with 96 per cent voting Remain.
Brexit and the Classed Politics of Bordering: The British in France and European Belongings
This article considers what Brexit means for British citizens living in France. Drawing on empirical research I examine the emotional and material impacts that uncertainties about their futures have had on their lives. The article documents the measures they take (or anticipate)…
Brexit and the EU internal market
The chapter considers Brexit and the EU internal market. Barnard emphasizes the role that the UK played in creating the EU internal market and examines the view that its four freedoms-free movement of goods, services, capital, and people-are indivisible.
Brexit and the European National Health Service England Workforce: A Quantitative Analysis of Doctors' Perceived Professional Impact and Intentions to Leave the United Kingdom
Background: Although survey data suggest that Brexit has negatively influenced European doctors' decisions to remain in the United Kingdom, this is the first quantitative study to use multivariate analysis to explore this relationship. Objective:
Brexit and the Free Movement of Workers: A Plea for National Legal Assertiveness
National judges and Member State governments have an obligation to be assertive about national interests threatened by EU policies, even to the extent of challenging existing doctrines of law, proposing new interpretations, and insisting on the proper division of judicial functions…
Brexit and the Future of the European Union: Firm-Level Perspectives
Following the British referendum held on June 23, 2016, voters supported the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union (EU) (Brexit), a starting point for the third round of European crisis, following the eurozone debt crisis and the migration crisis.
Brexit and the Overseas Territories: Repercussions for the Periphery
There are 14 United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), of which nine are associated with the European Union (EU) via the Overseas Association Decision adopted by the EU in 2013. Gibraltar, meanwhile, is part of the EU under Article 355(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.
Brexit and the perils of “Europeanised' migration
Moving beyond short-term public opinion accounts for Brexit this article considers how Britain's historic policy and political dynamics on migration led to the outcome of the EU referendum and how the latter is likely to transform current immigration policies. To do so…
Brexit and the stratified uses of national and European Union citizenship
In this article the authors explore how Brexit changes the social meanings and uses of formal national and EU citizenship and how these meanings and uses are stratified, including by migratory experience, class and age. They do so through in-depth interviews with Britons in Belgium…
Brexit and UK International Development Policy
In this article we explore the implications of Brexit for the UK and the EU's development policies and strategic directions, focusing on the former.
Brexit and Uncertainty: Insights from the Decision Maker Panel
The UK's decision to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum created substantial uncertainty for UK businesses. The nature of this uncertainty is different from that of a typical uncertainty shock because of its length, breadth and political complexity. Consequently, a new firm-level survey…
Brexit and Westminster's "Ulsterior Motives"
The chances are growing that an unexpected consequence of the 2016 UK referendum to exit the European Union (or "Brexit") may eventuate in the unexpected development of Northern Ireland exiting the UK, or what might be termed "NIRexit." In other words, Brexit may lead to Irish unification.
Brexit as a scandal: gender and global trumpism
Brexit' was a watershed moment. It has made visible the major faultlines and fissures that underlie the so-called United Kingdom' (UK) and our increasingly globalized world. But the precise nature of those faultlines and fissures requires multiple strands of critical analysis and interpretation.
Brexit as a Trigger and an Obstacle to Onwards and Return Migration
In this article, using in-depth interviews with EU27 citizens residing in the UK and Britons residing in Belgium, I analyse the role of the Brexit process as both a trigger of and an obstacle to onward and return migration.
Brexit as postindustrial critique
Anthropologists and other commentators struggle to make sense of pre-COVID-19 political developments in the postindustrial Global North. Various narratives were created to explain these dramatic events and changes, deploying an armory of social science analysis.
Brexit implications in Europe and around the world
This paper analyzes Great Britain's exit from the EU, which implies the country's own will to leave the regional block, as well as the multiple effects that this has not only on this country but also in the European Union as a whole, as well as around the world.
Brexit Means Br(EEA)Xit: The UK withdrawal from the EU and its implications for the EEA
Because it extends the Single Market to the three EFTA States Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, the Agreement on the European Economic Area is not an EU external agreement comme les autres. This is particularly salient in the context of the UK withdrawal from the EU.
Brexit Means Brexit: What Does It Mean for the Protection of Third-Party Victims and the Road Traffic Act?
The UK's referendum decision of 23 June 2016, where voters elected to leave the European Union (EU), will fundamentally change aspects of national law. Much debate has focused on the constitutional implications of the decision and the procedure by which the government seeks to facilitate the exit.
Brexit, acculturative stress and mental health among EU citizens in Scotland
The `Brexit' referendum represents a hostile shift in the United Kingdom's acculturative context. With its remain majority and pro-migration political discourse, Scotland appears less hostile than the rest of the United Kingdom.
Brexit, Birmingham, belonging and home: the experience of secondary migrant Somali families and the dirty work of boundary maintenance
Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of the Brexit referendum on feelings of belonging and home among secondary migrant Somali families in the city of Birmingham. Here…
Brexit, Bordering and Bodies on the Island of Ireland
The Brexit campaign to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) was driven primarily by opposition to immigration and the freedom of movement of EU workers to Britain. Consequently, a central focus of Brexit was the perceived need for bordering, that is…
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…
Brexit, Europe and othering
The UK has seen, within recent years, a noticeable increase in Euroscepticism, culminating in the vote to leave the European Union altogether. Although there were many reasons for the Brexit vote, the UK, in common with some other EU countries…
Brexit, European union law and free movement: Situation of Turkish citizens living in the UK
It is generally accepted by most people that "ambiguity" is one of the fundamental concepts that gained prominence in political, sociological and legal fields as a result of UK's intention to withdraw from the European Union (EU), commonly known as Brexit.
Brexit, existential anxiety and ontological (in)security
This article explores how the Brexit Referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union has been a source of destabilisation, dread and ontological anxiety. Focusing mainly on British citizens who voted or self-identified as "Remainers", and on EU foreign nationals resident in the UK…
Brexit, 'Immigration' and Anti-Discrimination
This chapter sketches some of the key political science sources on the European Union (EU) referendum. It shows how these works have in effect uncritically confirmed and reproduced a reading of EU immigration and Brexit uncomfortably close to the one promoted by the United Kingdom (UK)…
Brexit, immigration and expanded markets of social control
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of EU citizens' exposure to UK immigration practices currently operating on non-EU migrants in the wake of the Brexit referendum.
Brexit, liminality, and ambiguities of belonging; French citizens in London
The Brexit process has affected the lives of "middling"mobile Europeans living in the UK, who have experienced uncertainty as their legal status and social position have shifted. Based on ethnographic research during the years 2015-2020 among French citizens living in London…
Brexit, race and migration
This timely series of interventions scrutinises the centrality of race and migration to the 2016 Brexit campaign, vote and its aftermath. It brings together five individual pieces, with an accompanying introduction, which interrogate different facets of how race, migration and Brexit interconnect:
BREXIT, social and environmental rights: Through the looking glass: Brexit, free movement and the future
This article looks at some of the implications of Brexit for free movement of persons within the European Union, for both UK citizens and those from other EU Member States. It begins by briefly outlining the principle of free movement of persons…
Brexit, Trump, and “methodological whiteness': on the misrecognition of race and class
The rhetoric of both the Brexit and Trump campaigns was grounded in conceptions of the past as the basis for political claims in the present.
Brexit: A requiem for the post-national society?
The ‘fourth freedom’ of freedom of movement of persons – somewhat misleadingly labelled ‘European citizenship’ – lay at the normative heart of the European project. Although sceptics have often suggested it was part of the building of a European fortress…
Brexit: an economy-wide impact assessment on trade, immigration, and foreign direct investment
We assess the impacts of Brexit on the UK economy along three dimensions: EU market access based on consideration of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, reduced numbers of EU citizens working in the UK, and reductions in FDI. Using a Computable General Equilibrium model with an integrated Melitz…
Brexit: EU social policy and the UK employment model
Big claims that are often unsubstantiated are made about the likely impact of Brexit on the UK labour market. This article seeks to go beyond the rhetoric and present a careful assessment of the employment relations consequences of Brexit for the UK. It addresses four key questions in particular: