Violence and Harm in the Context of Brexit: Gender, Class and the Migrant ‘Other’

Abstract

This chapter explores the impacts on EU nationals in the UK of living in the context of the debates and aftermath of the 2016 referendum on whether or not the UK should remain a member of the EU—whether to ‘Brexit’. The Brexit-related debates, policies and processes have created a context of harm involving structural violence, ‘gaslighting’ and related increases in xenophobic hate crimes. The chapter explores these issues, drawing on my own experience as a non-UK EU national, and on reports from other non-UK EU nationals living in the UK (compiled by other researchers and EU3million). I draw on auto-ethnography, using my personal narrative and situating this in the socio-cultural-political context of the 2016 Brexit Referendum result to contribute to understanding of the impacts of that context. It is a story underpinned by a number of important shifts and trends in the UK, towards a much more right-wing populist discourse and xenophobic policies fuelled by neoliberal economics. In the UK, the use by the pro-Brexit politicians of a concerted approach involving lies and distortion of facts has created a new right-wing norm and interference with people’s lives and reality