For the First Time here in this Country I felt like an Immigrant: Identity, Citizenship and EU Immigration after the Brexit Referendum

The right to remain in the UK, for non-UK EU migrants, is predicated on freedom of movement and EU citizenship rights; all these rights are now up for debate as the UK negotiates its future relationship with the EU, following 2016 UK-EU referendum. This paper will use evidence gathered from a survey, conducted in July-August 2016 (n=3,000), and will focus on experiences of non-UK EU migrants of the referendum, most of whom do not hold UK citizenship and could not participate in the referendum. From this survey, the paper will argue that the EU referendum changed, for many of those sampled, their idea of the UK, their relationship with the UK and their identification as immigrants. For many of those sampled, the UK through the referendum campaign appeared to shift from a tolerant, multi-cultural state and society, to a society that was critical of EU immigrants (and immigration more generally) and where anti-immigrant, if not xenophobic and racist sentiment and actions, have been given a greater, and more legitimate, voice. In this environment, many non-UK EU citizens felt themselves ‘for the first time’ as immigrants. The paper will also consider the variation of these experiences, in particular between individuals from ‘older’ EU member-states (e.g. Germany), who have resided in the UK for a long period, and individuals from ‘newer’ EU member-states (e.g. Poland and Romania), whose migration to the UK is more recent.