Brexit and the perils of 'Europeanised' migration

Abstract

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, we explore historic and theoretical tensions in UK migration policy and politics over the last six decades. We show how these unresolved tensions allowed Eurosceptics to harness negative attitudes to the increasingly salient issue of immigration. We argue that a sufficient proportion of the UK's elite and electorate proved unable and unwilling to subordinate its desire for entirely domestic ‘control’ over immigration to the EU's right-based regime, let alone see fellow EU citizens in the UK as anything other than immigrants, ultimately giving Leave victory. The referendum process and outcome exposed the debate about free movement and migration to much wider public scrutiny and so raised more profound questions about the future of the British economy and the political model necessary to sustain it. We argue that, with the Brexit negotiations under constant public scrutiny a new, largely immovable parameter was set by the EU referendum result for the medium term that seems likely to lead to a decline in ‘Europeanised’ migration policy in the UK.