The forgotten migrants: did English local governments neglect support for EU nationals facing Brexit?

In the UK, in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum EU migrants have seen their legal status considerably weakened. For example, the Home Office requirement to register through the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) only via a Web-based application has endangered those most at risk of the digital divide within the EU community to lose their right to stay in the country. The results of a web content analysis of 341 English local governments (LGs) websites show that a majority of them (66%) did not provide any information or individual support on Brexit and the EUSS application process to EU nationals; 11% just offered information and links to UK government website pages on the EUSS and EU nationals' rights, and only 24% of LGs provided individual help. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis of these data based on a magnitude scale indicate that the quality and quantity of assistance provided by English local governments to their EU residents are influenced by the local result of the Brexit referendum, as support tends to be low or non-existent where Leave voters prevailed and higher in LGs with a Remain majority, possibly because of local policy-makers who, in case of a Council with Leave majority, expected their electorate not to want public resources to be dedicated to EU citizens. These results highlight an emerging risk of exclusion for vulnerable EU migrants and, although limited to the English case, can inform future research about the impact of major political events on the attitudes of local politicians towards specific categories of citizens