EU Migrant Workers, Brexit and Precarity

Author(s):  
Eva A. Duda-Mikulin

In June 2016, after 43 years as part of the European community, the UK people decided to leave. In March 2017, the UK Prime Minister officially started the process of Brexit – the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. While Brexit was decided by a relatively small margin of people, one issue was key in the debates preceding the EU referendum. This was migration. People have been migrating since the beginning of time but today the issue of migration has been elevated to a key national concern. It is now one of the most contentious and divisive matters in the UK. This book investigates EU women migrants’ perspectives on the Brexit vote in the UK. It presents accounts from EU nationals and considers the wider implications in relation to precarity and the British paid labour market. This book offers important insights into the world of the UK paid labour but from the point of view of EU migrants and more specifically Polish women whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the Brexit vote and the decision that the UK should leave the EU whilst any solid guarantees with regards to migrants’ rights are yet to come from the UK government. Through analysis of new data generated in qualitative interviews, this book makes an original and grounded contribution to understanding the significance and impacts of the result of the Brexit referendum on migrant workers from the EU resident in the UK.

Subject The government's preferred timetable for the UK referendum on EU membership. Significance The EU membership referendum will be a major event in both EU and UK political and commercial life. Prime Minister David Cameron's official position is that the poll could take place any time before end-2017. He is less concerned about the likely outcome of the referendum, which he is confident will produce an 'in' result, than about achieving a margin in favour of membership that decisively settles the question and minimises the damage to the Conservative Party arising from the process. Impacts The most likely referendum date is September 15, 2016. This timetable would make the key renegotiation period the first half of 2016, when the sympathetic Dutch government chairs the EU Council. The German government would also prefer the UK referendum to be dealt with relatively quickly.


Author(s):  
Eva A. Duda-Mikulin

Chapter three explores the British paid labour market and more specifically economic migration to the UK and its impact with the message that migrants contribute through taxation and alleviating labour and skills shortages. I discuss existing statistical data on UK’s labour force and its characteristics. This quantitative data is complemented with rich qualitative accounts from recent Polish women migrants to the UK. Different sectors of the economy are explored, in particular agriculture, hospitality, customer services and healthcare. These are said to be most reliant on workforce from the EU. Data on population characteristics is analysed taking into account the fact that it is ageing rapidly as is the rest of Europe. This increases the need for foreign-born labour to take on jobs unpopular with British workers, particularly when the EU labour force is younger and fitter in comparison to UK-born workers. This also suggests that after Brexit the UK is likely to experience issues with staff recruitment and labour shortages in certain areas of the economy. The chapter is supported by extracts from qualitative interviews with women migrants from Poland with the aim to bring in real-life stories from those who took advantage of the right to free movement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 260-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Brent Sullivan

United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) supporters and non-voters in England participate respectively in forms of engaged and disengaged anti-political activity, but the role of individual, group-based, and collective emotions is still unclear. Drawing upon recent analyses of the complex emotional dynamics (e.g., <em>ressentiment</em>) underpinning the growth of right-wing populist political movements and support for parties such as UKIP, this analysis explores the affective features of reactionary political stances. The framework of affective practices is used to show how resentful affects are created, facilitated, and transformed in sharing or suppressing populist political views and practices; that is, populism is evident not only in the prevalence and influence of illiberal and anti-elite discourses but also should be explored as it is embodied and enacted in “past focused” and “change resistant” everyday actions and in relation to opportunities that “sediment” affect-laden political positions and identities. Reflexive thematic analysis of data from qualitative interviews with UKIP voters and non-voters (who both supported leaving the EU) in 2015 after the UK election but before the EU referendum vote showed that many participants: 1) shared “condensed” complaints about politics and enacted resentment towards politicians who did not listen to them, 2) oriented towards shameful and purportedly shameless racism about migrants, and 3) appeared to struggle with shame and humiliation attributed to the EU in a complex combination of transvaluation of the UK and freedom of movement, a nostalgic need for restoration of national pride, and endorsement of leaving the EU as a form of “change backwards.”


Author(s):  
Б.Г. Вульфович

Задачей данной статьи является рассмотрение лингвопрагматических особенностей комментариев пользователей социальной сети «Твиттер» на выход Великобритании из ЕС. Анализ данных комментариев с лингвопрагматической точки зрения представляет интерес, так как показывает наиболее актуальную картину отношения пользователей социальных сетей к произошедшему событию. Приоритетными методами анализа лингвопрагматического потенциала Интернет-комментариев для нас являются: описательный метод, метод прагматического анализа, т.е. рассмотрение языкового материала в его непосредственном контексте в функциональном аспекте, метод частичной выборки, метод контекстологического описания. Контекстуальный метод был использован с целью установления особенностей комментариев в среде социальной сети «Твиттер»; описательный метод - для выявления непосредственного отношения пользователей социальных сетей к выходу Великобритании из ЕС; частичной выборки - для отбора наиболее эффективных и целостных комментариев с позиции прагматики и их реализации в данном контексте. Проведённое исследование позволило установить, что большинство людей удовлетворено результатами выхода Великобритании из ЕС и положительно отзывается об этом событии. Об этом свидетельствует как большое количество экспрессивов, использованных в интернет-комментариях в отношении данного события, так и активное употребление в них оценочной лексики. Результаты проведённого исследования могут быть применены в теоретических работах по описанию характеристик речевых актов, в курсе теоретической грамматики, стилистики, прагмалингвистики. The purpose of this article is to review the linguo-pragmatic features of Brexit represented in the comments in Twitter. Their analysis from a linguistic-pragmatic point of view may be of interest, since it shows the most relevant picture of the relationship of social network users for the event. The priority methods for analyzing the linguo-pragmatic potential of Internet comments for us are: a descriptive method, a pragmatic analysis method, i.e. consideration of linguistic material in its immediate context in the functional aspect, partial sampling method, contextual description method. The contextual method was used to establish the characteristics of comments on the Twitter social network; descriptive method was used to identify the direct relationship of social network users to the UK exit from the EU; partial sampling was used to select the most effective and holistic comments from the position of pragmatics and their implementation in this context. The study found that most people are satisfied with the results of the UK exit from the EU and respond positively to this event. The results of the study can be applied in theoretical works on the description of the characteristics of speech acts, in the course of theoretical grammar, stylistics, pragmalinguistics.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebtisam Saleh Aluthman

This paper presents a critical account of the representation of immigration in the Brexit corpus—a collective corpus of 108,452,923 words compiled mostly from blogs, tweets, and daily news related to Brexit debate. The study follows the methodological synergy approach proposed by Baker et al. (2008), a heuristic methodological approach that combines methods of discourse analysis and corpus-assisted statistical tools including keyword, collocation, and concordance analysis. Drawing on this methodological synergy approach, the investigation yields significant findings contextualized within the socio-economic-political context of the European Union (EU) leave referendum to trace how the issue of immigration is represented in the discourses of the Remain and Leave campaigns. The frequency results show that immigration is one of the most salient topics in the Brexit corpus. Concordance analysis of the word immigrants and collocation investigation of the word immigration reveal opposing attitudes toward immigration in the EU referendum debate. The analysis uncovers negative attitudes toward the uncontrolled flow of immigrants from other EU countries and public concerns about immigrants' negative impacts on wages, education, and health services. Other findings reveal positive attitudes toward immigrants emphasizing their positive contributions to the UK economy. The study concludes with an argument of the significant association between the political and socio-economic ideologies of a particular society and the language communicated in its media.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Stephen Trinder

As a master’s and Ph.D. student at Anglia Ruskin University in 2011, I recall the central message in lectures given by my eventual Ph.D. supervisor Professor Guido Rings was that we cannot underestimate the enduring strength of the legacy of colonialism in Europe and its influence on shaping contemporary attitudes towards immigration. Indeed, as I was completing my studies, I became increasingly aware of the negative rhetoric towards migrants in politics and right-wing press. In an attempt to placate the far-right of his party and address a growing threat from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a discourse of ‘othernising’ migrants on the basis of their supposed rejection of ‘Britishness’ from former UK Prime Minister David Cameron in particular caught my attention. The result of this was tightening of immigration regulations, which culminated of course in the now-infamous Brexit vote of 2016. Almost a decade after my graduation, Professor Rings is currently Vice Chair for the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission and continues to work at Anglia Ruskin University at the level of Ph.D. supervisor. He still publishes widely in the field of Migration Studies and his recent high-profile book The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema (Routledge, 2016) and editorships in the fields of culture and identity (iMex Interdisciplinario Mexico) argue for increased intercultural solidarity in Europe as well as a strengthening of supranational organizations like the EU and the UN to offset growing nationalism. I got in touch with Professor Rings to find out where he feels Europe stands today with regard to migration and get his comments on the continued rise of nationalism on the continent.


Subject The package of reforms on a new EU-UK relationship. Significance The agreement between the United Kingdom and its EU partners sets the stage for the UK referendum on EU membership, which Prime Minister David Cameron has set for June 23. Cameron said he had negotiated new terms that would allow the United Kingdom to remain in the EU. Impacts The deal bolsters the campaign to remain in the EU, but the referendum outcome is still highly uncertain. The deal will only come into effect if the outcome is for remaining, forestalling a second referendum for better terms. If the outcome is for leaving, a new relationship with the EU would have to be negotiated during a two-year transition period. It would also probably lead to a second Scottish independence referendum and UK break-up.


Subject The possible economic impact of the EU investment plan (the 'Juncker Plan'). Significance The EU investment plan launched by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker just over a year ago has made a slow start. This will encourage doubts that have existed since the scheme's inception about its operation and likely impact. Impacts Even by 2020, the EU economy will still probably require every effort to boost growth and make up for lost investment. Given continuing strong demand for high-grade bonds and equity investments, it should be possible to achieve the fundraising target. The plan could become a vehicle for Chinese investment into the EU: China is talking of 5-10 billion euros in future investments. The geographical distribution of funded projects could be politically sensitive within the EU. The plan could come under scrutiny during the UK EU referendum campaign; UK projects may come too late to have an impact before the vote.


Significance For the first time, there is a sustained increase in support for Scottish independence. The main reasons include dislike of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet north of the border, the UK government’s pursuit of a ‘hard’ Brexit and questions about its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Impacts Soaring Scottish unemployment when the UK furlough schemes end would undermine London’s claim to be protecting Scottish jobs. Rising support for Scottish independence could prompt the UK government to seek a closer trade agreement with the EU. The UK government will be unable to conceal the economic impacts of Brexit under the economic fallout of COVID-19. A Scottish vote for independence would put huge pressure on the UK government to resign and call early elections.


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