Mapping social science research on Brexit and migration

This chapter uses the lens of affective polarisation to analyse the precarious position of Romanian migrant workers in the UK, particularly as it was highlighted during the first COVID-19 lockdown. It explores their marginalised positions in British society, on account of their occupational…

Emigration to the United Kingdom became a symbol of the post-2004 EU enlargement migration processes in Hungary, which were increasingly characterised by the long-term outmigration of highly educated, urban youth from the early 2010s.

Borderlands are not easy to define. They can be a physical territory, a territory where communities and cultures meet, or where their ideologies meet; they can also refer to microterritories of one’s identity, and more besides. In the article…

This chapter aims to discuss the UK’s migration policy in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak. It questions how borders are instrumentalized and secured through government policy, based on a theoretical framework of the international migration-pandemic-security nexus. The “borders” of the UK…

London hosts by far the largest population of non-national EU citizens in Europe. It is also home to roughly one-third of the entire EU citizen population living in the UK. London’s population changed rapidly following EU enlargement in the 2000s in terms of its size…

Foreign populations play an important role in the Axarquía comarca in the province of Málaga, Spain, where in some municipalities they account for over 40% of residents. Many of these populations are very small and have come to depend on immigration to maintain population levels. In this context…

Brexit is expected to have a negative impact on the National Health Service (NHS) and the healthcare workforce. As a result, international medical graduates who consider migrating to the United Kingdom (UK) may encounter challenges and uncertainty. Here…

India and the UK, despite their long-standing historical relationship, have had a turbulent past regarding the mobility of students. In 2013, the Liberal-Democratic government in the UK adopted a policy withdrawing post-study work (PSW) visas to all international students.

While immigration has played a major role in public debate in the UK over the past twenty years, citizenship and naturalisation have received much less attention.

While transnationalism and mobility are sometimes used as synonyms, the two concepts have different focuses: on attachments within different countries in transnationalism and on multiple and open-ended moves in the mobility approach. In this chapter…

This book examines the implications of Brexit for Africa-UK relations amid a ‘new scramble’ for the continent. Engaging Nkrumah on neo-colonialism and recent scholarship on global coloniality…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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.

Foreign populations play an important role in the Axarquia comarca in the province of Malaga, Spain, where in some municipalities they account for over 40% of residents. Many of these populations are very small and have come to depend on immigration to maintain population levels. In this context…

The UK has responded strongly to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Since February 2022 British actions have been noticeable compared to those taken by other NATO allies. In the face of a mass influx of refugees…

The UK welfare system and growth in social care escalate the demand for migrant care workers (MCWs) as a system-level intervention. However, the UK migration regime creates structural barriers and facilitators for different groups of MCWs. The nature of the UK migration and social care policies…

Brexit has weakened collaboration between UK higher education institutions and their EU counterparts, with negative implications for UK resources and capacity, without leading to new global strategies and opportunities.