EU Free Movement, the Political Left and Brexit

The free movement of people in the European Union (EU) in the context of Brexit is a key site of contention for the Left, both in public policy and scholarship. This paper argues that the revival of Polanyi-inspired political economy analysis of the current financial and economic crises and their political aftermath -- associated, for instance, with the work of Wolfgang Streeck -- while attuned to the structural contradictions of commodification, has tended uncritically to privilege the national protective welfare state as the most legitimate site for decommodifying responses. This makes such positions often blind to forms of domination perpetrated by patriarchy, ethno-nationalism and colonialism; to the ethical, human consequences of exclusionary politics; and places them in close proximity to right-wing exclusivist populism. Normatively, we advocate an approach that retains an important critique of market commodification without resorting to nationalist patriarchal welfarism as the main means of decommodification. Drawing on new qualitative data, we develop this argument through an analysis of the politics of the free movement of people in the EU in the context of Brexit, focusing on the political and human consequences of increasing restrictions on EU migrants access to national labour and welfare policies in Germany and the UK post-crisis. The argument provides the foundation both for further analysis of these forms of commodification and for an important alternative orientation for the political left.