Prof. Majella Kiley and Dr Aneta Piekut, Co-Directors of Sheffield Migration Research Group together with Prof. Louise Ryan, edited a special issue in Central and Eastern European Migration Review (CEEMR). The special issue addresed the question of the implications of Brexit for the UK’s EU-citizen population. In the context of the global pandemic and imminent recession, the issue of Brexit negotiations, and their consequences for migrants living in the UK, remains salient.
The collection of articles comes from an IMISCOE conference organised in Sheffield in Spring 2019 under the title Transforming Mobility and Immobility: Brexit and Beyond, which brought together leading scholars to present cutting-edge research on migration. The event was also a part of Sheffield Migration Research Group led networking project entitled Modern Poland: Migration and Transformations (October 2017–September 2019), funded by the Noble Foundation under their Programme on Modern Poland scheme.
Articles in this special issue relate to the different aspects of Brexit’s implications for the immobility and mobility: emotional responses, coping strategies in the context of uncertainty, everyday relations with neighbours and co-workers, everyday bordering, reflections on future life plans and possible return to the countries of origin. This work adds to the increasing scholarship on migration and Brexit, as noted in our editorial note:
At the time of writing this Introduction (June 2020), according to a Google Scholar search for ‘Brexit’, 179 000 scholarly works (articles, books, working papers etc.) have been written (…) One in every five of these outputs is related to the topic of migration (36 700 search results for: Brexit + ‘migration OR immigration OR emigration’) (page 6).
The contributions in the CEEMR special issue include:
- Talking about Bordering – Professor Nira Yuval-Davis interviewed by Professor Louise Ryan, 15 July 2019.
- Rosa Mas Giralt – The emotional geographies of migration and Brexit: tales of unbelonging.
- Elena Genova and Elisabetta Zontini – Liminal lives: navigating in-betweenness in the case of Bulgarian and Italian migrants in Brexiting Britain.
- Alina Rzepnikowska – Migrant experiences of conviviality in the context of Brexit: Polish migrant women in Manchester.
- Daniela Sime, Marta Moskal and Naomi Tyrrell – Going Back, Staying Put, Moving On: Brexit and the Future Imaginaries of Central and Eastern European Young People in Britain.
- Barbara Jancewicz, Weronika Kloc-Nowak and Dominika Pszczółkowska – Push, pull and Brexit: Polish migrants’ perceptions of factors discouraging them from staying in the UK.
- Luka Klimavičiūtė, Violetta Parutis, Dovilė Jonavičienė, Mateusz Karolak and Iga Wermińska-Wiśnicka – The Impact of Brexit on Young Poles and Lithuanians in the UK: Reinforced Temporariness of Migration Decisions.
The full special issue can be read here.