Learning from 'Left-Behind' places: everyday hopes and fears for the future after Brexit in England

Learning from 'Left-Behind' places: Everyday Hopes and Fears for the Future After Brexit in England

This project will investigate how residents of four urban areas in England think about Brexit and its consequences. It will study their hopes, aspirations and anxieties about the future after Brexit. The research will focus on four electoral wards in three English cities. These are places where large post-industrial, social and economic changes, together with government policies of austerity, have contributed to experiences of marginalisation and exclusion amongst many residents. They have been identified in social scientific, political and media accounts as 'left behind' places.

It has been argued that the referendum provided residents of 'left-behind' communities the opportunity for a 'protest vote'. Not merely a protest against the EU (although of course many voters were doing precisely that), but also a protest against, for example, establishment politics (Westminster), the detrimental effects of austerity, the forces of globalisation, the tyranny of market fundamentalism, and immigration policies. The argument that a vote to leave the EU demonstrated defiance and mistrust is significant. However, it tends to screen out residents of the same localities who voted to remain, those who did not vote, and those who were not permitted to vote. It flattens the diversity within such communities and assumes a unified response. This project will investigate what Brexit means, two years after the referendum, to people on the ground. We hear from politicians that 'Brexit means Brexit'. But what does it mean for ordinary people? What does it mean in relation to their everyday preoccupations and concerns? Does Brexit feature in the futures they imagine? Or in the futures they have abandoned? Is it significant to them, and if so how?

Concerns about immigration played a large part in the vote to leave the EU. We know however that the meanings and anxieties attached to immigration across England and within 'left-behind' places are not uniform. This project aims to investigate where, when and how immigration figures in everyday Brexits. By everyday Brexits, we refer to the ordinary, everyday ways in which Brexit features in people's lives.

The project will take place in three phases over 12 months. The first will 'take the temperature' of the everyday concerns about Brexit of residents in the four localities under study. Focus groups and group discussions will be organized and from these meetings interested participants will be 'trained up' in social scientific research methods: for example, in doing interviews, photo-journalsor mini-surveys. The second phase of the research will focus on 'Brexit Day' on the 29th March 2019. This will be investigated as a political event. The aim is for research participants, trained earlier as 'citizen social scientists', to record the day in the form of photo-diaries, mini-interviews, and media accounts. The third phase of the research comprises a series of public dissemination events to which local politicians, policy makers, members of campaigning groups and NGOs will be invited. The aim is for research participants to be closely involved in the organisation of these events and in presenting the findings of the research.

The project will provide a more nuanced and fine-grained account of what Brexit means for residents of urban England than we have thusfar. It will include research participants in the design, conduct and presentation of the research in ways that will facilitate their participation in discussions about governance that are usually about them but rarely include them. It also looks beyond the current emphasis on division and explores the commonalities and connections across social categories and places, in order that communities and policy makers have something meaningful to work with, rather than against.

This project will focus on four electoral wards in three English cities. It will open up a space for response and critique from people who are over-discussed and under-represented in current political and academic debate about Brexit. The public communication of cultural, social and economic concerns of our informants will be on their terms and, in this sense, the capabilities of individuals and groups to garner both academic and political attention will be established and maintained throughout the course of the project.

Impact activities are fully incorporated within the research project design from the outset, involving research participants at every stage of the research including identifying the relevant research questions, collecting data, and disseminating results. Local participants will articulate their own concerns for the future after Brexit. We will aim translate those concerns into transferable knowledge that is intended to have an impact in policy and political discussions.

The project aims to engage local people as co-researchers in the development of questions regarding Brexit and Governance that are relevant to them. It will draw on their local, everyday 'expertise' and the project will impact local communities by:

- building social scientific literacy;
- building capacity and developing skills of data collection and presentation;
- and improving access to effective political representation.

The research also has a broader reach. Access to a more nuanced and 'thick' knowledge base about 'everyday' Brexits in four urban areas of England will be valuable to politicians, and policy and decision makers in the UK in their deliberation of long-term governance post-Brexit. The key to the project is to interrogate common grounds: mutual anxieties, shared hopes, and agreed solutions that cut through current, dominant discourses of polarisation and division. It will provide information about shared concerns and hopes for the future that government might work with rather than against. If successful, it is a research model that might be mobilised in other parts of the country, at the same time as generating fine-grained, qualitative data about everyday Brexits in other places.