Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
Reimagining, Repositioning, Rebordering: Intersections of the Biopolitical and Geopolitical in the UK's Post-Brexit Migration Regime (and Why It Matters for Migration Research)
Abstract
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. It draws a clear line between Brexit as a political and geopolitical rupture, the ideological project of “Global Britain” that emerged from it, and the forms of migrant and citizen subjectivity that these paired projects produced as the body politic was re-modelled in this image. It demonstrates this through a critical analysis of recent immigration data and trends that consider who is coming to the UK, through what routes and under what conditions, and of recently introduced changes to the immigration system, including the curtailment of asylum and the emergence of new humanitarian routes. Building on scholarship that has shown the impact of migration on the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum, our analysis of migration and migration governance after Brexit offers unique insights into how migration continues to play a central role in the ideological reimagining and geopolitical repositioning of the UK on the global stage and develops the concept of rebordering to capture the nexus between ideological and geopolitical transformations and the making — through migration and migration governance — of a new body politic and its “others” that embody and can serve their purposes. © The Author(s) 2024.
You might also be interested in :
Reflexive practice in live sociology: lessons from researching Brexit in the lives of British citizens living in the EU-27
This paper brings reflexivity into conversation with debates about positionality and live sociology to argue for reflexivity to be reimagined as an enduring practice that is collaborative, responsible, iterative, engaged, agile and creative.
From the state of the art to new directions in researching what Brexit means for migration and migrants
What has Brexit meant for migration and migrants? How has the geopolitical repositioning of the UK in consequence of the UK's exit from the European Union (EU) impacted on the experiences of long-established migrant communities and newly arrived migrants?
Polish migrant settlement without political integration in the United Kingdom and Ireland: a comparative analysis in the context of Brexit and thin European citizenship
Following EU enlargement in 2004, the United Kingdom and Ireland experienced large-scale migration from Poland and other new EU states.
Remain, Return, or Re-migrate? The (Im)mobility Trajectory of Mainland Chinese Students after Completing Their Education in the UK
The migration of Chinese students to the UK has long been the focus of academic and policy-making attention. However, what happens to their transnational mobility after their education remains understudied.