Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
Turning citizens into immigrants: state practices of welfare `cancellations' and document retention among EU nationals living in Glasgow
Abstract
This article examines the everyday experiences of welfare provision among EU migrants living in Glasgow, demonstrating how the process of restricting the rights of EU citizens has occurred well before Brexit. It is based on 12 months of ethnographic research conducted in 2012 with Czech and Slovak nationals who came to the UK after 2004. Introducing the migrants' notion ofzkancelovali, the paper highlights a heightened sense of insecurity in their everyday lives, which arises from the increasingly common experiences of rejections of their benefit applications and payment delays. Various state practices are discussed which raise questions about the limits of EU citizenship and show how the latter is affected not only through policies and discourses but also in everyday encounters with state officials, where boundaries between `us' and `them' are being redrawn. Drawing on sociological/anthropological perspectives on state, it is argued that the migrants' experiences of welfare provision can be considered as constitutive of statecraft and nation-building processes, processes which turn (EU) citizens into immigrants.
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