Skip to main content
Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit

State of normality: Transnational migrants' shifting views of state institutions and their obligations

Abstract

The power of nationalism is evident in how people perceive the world around them as `normal'. A national normality is constituted through education and media but also in everyday encounters with the state or state-regulated institutions in the fields of education, welfare provisions, medical care, finance and others. When people migrate between countries, their sense of `normality' can become disturbed. Migration might impact how people think of their relationship to the state and its institutions. This article is based on analysis of 120 interviews with Polish migrants in the UK and Germany. It asks if migration creates a `post-national situation' in which national categories are questioned and negotiated anew. The contexts of Poland, which is undergoing a return to conservative national identity, the UK and its struggle over Brexit, and Germany in its claim to European leadership, provide an instructive case for the discussion of intersections between nationalism and post-nationalism.

You might also be interested in :

Cultural Precarity: Migrants' Positionalities in the Light of Current Anti-immigrant Populism in Europe
The Brexit referendum was an earthquake to those in otherwise privileged positions: white intra-European migrants. Poles form the largest among these groups in the UK. As much as they are vulnerable to discrimination as non-British citizens…
'Uni-Culti' Myths and Liberal Dreams: Brexit and Austerity from the Perspective of Migrants
This chapter discusses the post-Brexit condition from the perspective of the margin: of an outsider to Britain as well as of Britain’s marginal men, migrants from Poland. It considers anti-immigrant populism and austerity as transnational rather than national phenomena. Thereby…

Journal

Journal of Sociology

Author

Article meta

Country / region covered

Population studied

Year of Publication

Source type

Keywords