Back of the queue: Brexit, status loss, and the politics of backlash

Abstract

Status anxiety is not a necessary condition for backlash movements, and yet, both are highly complementary. Across political levels, from the community and state to the international system, status anxiety is often cited as a principal grievance and motivator of backlash politics. This article challenges the basic premise behind this framing by arguing that status loss – as a subset of status anxiety – and backlash politics, are essentially co-constitutive phenomena. Status loss can certainly propel backlash movements to form, but claims of status loss and decline are also uniquely exploitable mechanisms for bringing backlash movements into existence. Rather than treat objective status loss as an obvious cause of backlash movements, then, this article switches the focus to how subjective narratives of status loss are constructed, promoted, retrieved, and contested, in order to either advance, or oppose, the cause of backlash entrepreneurs. Doing so illustrates a primary mechanism of backlash politics, but also a primary mechanism of status loss, challenging dominant intrinsic and material premises on the role of status in international relations. This discussion is illustrated through a focus on Britain’s 2016 referendum on the European Union, and the extent to which both Leave and Remain campaigners elevated the rhetoric of status loss in defence of alternative pasts, presents, and futures.

In Quest for Discursive Legitimation of Ongoing Policy Processes: Constructing Brexit as a Success Story

“…Secondly, the UK has already left the EU and so the need to frame Brexit as a promise for the future might intuitively no longer seem so obvious. Yet, I anticipate the UK government to keep seeking legitimacy through promissory discursive representation related to the future vision of post‐Brexit UK, much in continuity with the Leavers' rhetoric during the referendum campaign (Buckledee, 2018; Freedman, 2020; Spencer and Oppermann, 2020).…”

Conceptualising backlash politics: Introduction to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison

“…Given our focus on retrograde objectives and extraordinary goals and tactics, one can also consider how more fundamental social changes serve as triggers of backlash politics. One might also investigate, as Freedman (2020) does, whether illusory triggers are a more likely frequent companion of emotion and nostalgia, since reason-based arguments may be harder to construct where posited triggers are illusory. We might think that localised triggers are more likely reversible, while external triggers might be more likely to lead to the construction of scapegoat targets and so on.…”

“…Joshua Freedman’s (2020) article ‘Back of the Queue: Brexit, Status Loss, and the Politics of Backlash’ focuses on a category that we did not include in our backlash definition per se, namely status anxiety and status seeking. Freedman challenges the notion that there is some a priori status loss that triggers backlash politics.…”

Theorising backlash politics: Conclusion to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison

“…The deeply felt nature of these sentiments, however, as manufactured and implausible they may be (e.g. the nostalgia for the glory of the British Empire, which is part of the Brexit debate Freedman (2020) discusses) can precipitate backlash politics. Certain backlash movements (e.g.…”

“…Pro-leave advocates did make materialist arguments for exit, yet the closer in time one got to Brexit, the harder it became to link Brexit to material advantage. As materialist claims declined, status reclamation played an increasingly larger role in Brexit debates (Freedman, 2020).…”