Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit is an innovative research project exploring the long-term impacts of Brexit on migration between the EU and UK to uncover what this reveals about Britain’s migration story and future.
A collaborative research project involving academics, policy makers, civil society and migrant-led organisations, this projectt aims to produce new and timely knowledge on how the changing legal and political relationship between the UK and EU in consequence of Brexit shapes migration and migrant experience - including settlement, questions of identity, citizenship and belonging. It adopts a unique approach to understanding Britain’s migration story, that brings together emigration with immigration, and that considers British citizens, EU citizens and Third Country Nationals alongside one another.
Co-led by Professor Nando Sigona and Dr Michaela Benson, the project examines the following questions:
- How, and in what ways, have volume, geography and direction of migration flows between the UK and EU changed since the Brexit Referendum? And how does this relate to global migrations to and from the UK?
- In what ways do settled populations – British citizens resident in EU member states before Brexit and EU citizens living in the UK — assess their mobile and residential futures in light of their changing legal status, personal circumstances, political and economic crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic? How does this then inform, for example, decisions to stay put, to move on or repatriate?
- How do transformations to migration governance regimes intervene in decisions to migrate and repatriate and subsequent experiences of settlement for those newly migrating between the UK to the EU following Brexit—British migrants, EU migrants and non-EU migrants?
Funder: The Economic and Social Research Council (Grant Number ES/V004530/1) through the Governance After Brexit Programme (Phase 2).
Professor Nando Sigona
Professor Nando Sigona is Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity (IRiS). He is also Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Associate at ODI.
Dr Michaela Benson
Dr Michaela Benson is a sociologist based at Goldsmiths, University of London. She previously led the ERSC-funded project BrExpats, which uniquely examined the impact and consequences of the Brexit negotiations for British citizens living across the EU, and was a recent recipient of the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for her research Britain and its overseas citizens: from decolonisation to Brexit.
Catherine Ruth Craven
Catherine Ruth Craven is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham, where she works on the ESRC-funded project MIGZEN - Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit. Catherine’s research focuses on migration and diaspora governance, particularly how states engage with and discipline their emigrant populations, and the global and local power relations that such governance is embedded within.
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