Mapping social science research on Brexit and migration

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…

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…

Although research on return migration is growing, little is known about returnees’ plans and attitudes regarding further migration. This article contributes to the filling of this knowledge gap by studying the likelihood of engaging in further mobility among Polish and Lithuanian returnees.

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.

This article examines the Brexit-driven remaking of some EU families into mixed-status families. Drawing on original research conducted in 2021-2022 with British, EU/EEA and non-EU/EEA citizens living in the UK or the EU/EEA…

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…

Brexit created uncertainty for migrants living in the UK and a potential reason to leave the country. Some of the consequences of the Brexit referendum, such as the loss of skilled workers, may have been unintended.

In this article, I argue that identity documents (ID) and migration statuses are both tools of population control and subjectivities that individuals have an interest in holding. I use documentary analyses and interviews with 31 EU27 citizens in the UK…

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.

Given the uncertainty over the post-Brexit immigration system between the UK and EU, how are new migration regulations affecting labor markets?

The European Union expansion in 2004 resulted in a large-scale migration from less ethnically diverse Poland to multicultural societies. Many Polish migrants have become conscious of being white due to contact with people of colour, and at times…

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.

The end of free movement and the introduction of the post-Brexit migration system represent a major structural change to the UK labour market. We provide a descriptive assessment of the impact on a sectoral basis. We examine how overall labour force growth has differed between sectors…

This research aims to shed light on the Romanian diaspora's experience of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, a global pandemic experienced by all, yet not under the same restrictions or with the same challenges. It looks at how the Romanians rate their experience of the pandemic in the UK…

Understanding the role of external actors is essential to understanding the United Kingdom’s (UK) securitization agenda in the field of asylum. Whilst the internal dynamics of securitization in migration and asylum and its links to the Brexit referendum have been extensively analysed…

A new legal order has arisen in the United Kingdom ('UK') following that country's withdrawal from the European Union ('EU'). Nowhere are these changes more evident than in the complex rules that have emerged in the fields of freedom of movement and the right to work.

This paper draws on symbolic bordering perspectives as a conceptual frame to highlight practices that shape the reproduction, justification, masking and distancing of precarious work. Via a case-study of the UK harvest labour market in 2020–2021, at a time of Brexit and COVID-19, we use media…

We estimate the short run effects of Brexit border disruption on the UK economy. We estimate a structural VAR for the UK, where Brexit effects are identified by the dates of Brexit events, the referendum, and the exit from the single market. We find evidence of short run effects of Brexit:

This article investigates the impacts of global legal rulings and political agreements on domestic sport, and charts the responses of national governing bodies to these changes. The article studies rulings and agreements that impacted on employment practices within professional sport.

Brexit raised the question of whether the UK will continue to attract internationals. Here the focus is on academic staff - a critical component of the War for Talents discourse and current geopolitics in the field. Despite a clear trend of loss of EU internationals…