Everyday Brexits

Abstract

In this commentary we explore how geographers might respond to the event of "Brexit"the decision and process of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union after the referendum of 23 June 2016. Although it is necessary to understand the ways in which Brexit is an effect of a range of named causes and conditions, we argue that geographers should also stay with the event of "Brexit" by following how Brexit surfaces across a variety of everyday scenes and situations.Such geographies of everyday Brexit would begin from the different ways in which people, groups and organisations relate to Brexit through the making present of diverse futures. As futures are anticipated, hoped for, suspended or otherwise related to, Brexit (re)animates relations of power, and gives rise to new forms of collective and bodily life. K E Y W O R D S affect, Brexit, everyday, futures 1 | WHAT KIND OF THING IS BREXIT?In the days that followed the UK referendum of 23 June 2016 the verdict by a margin of 52% to 48% to leave the European Union had what Derrida, talking of 9/11, called the "impression of a major event" (Derrida & Borradori, 2003, p. 88) it appeared to both disrupt and open up possibilities. Immediately narrated as a decision to break with a long accepted, but for many only ambivalently attached to, status quo, the "impression" of a major event was created through a turbulent mix of dramatic scenes of jubilation and devastation, joys and despairs, which punctuated more familiar moods of resignation, apathy, or indifference (on which see Fisher, 2009;Gilbert, 2015). What very quickly became named and known as "Brexit" saturated everyday life in multiple, disjunctive ways; becoming as the exhilaration and joy of the return of something lost and the possibility of unspecified, better futures to come ("sovereignty", "control", "Britishness"), and the despair and worry of an unsettled present foreshadowed by future losses (of "influence" or "economic well-being", or a "tolerant Britishness"; see Wilson, 2016). As an act of voting quickly morphed into more or less intensely attached-to political identificationsremainers and leavers -Brexit became an occasion of dissensus and the complex enactment and reproduction of existing power relations and inequalities; intensifying, revealing and foregrounding existing divides of class, age, ethnicity, race, and locality, while also cutting across other commonalities (for example, on the whiteness of Brexit, see Emejulu, 2016). Perhaps it was felt as a "major event" not only because something settled was overturned, not only because of the surprise of a changeeven if exiting the EU had been successfully framed in the leave campaign as a simple solution to a range of contemporary illsbut because there was and is no consensus about the UK's (post)Brexit futures. Brexit was and is encountered as promise and threat, salvation and disaster, opportunity and mischance, or simply more of the same. And perhaps it has retained the "impression of a major event" because, despite efforts, it has not yet ...

“Where are we going to go now?” European Union migrants' experiences of hostility, anxiety, and (non‐)belonging during Brexit

“…Such processes are not necessarily uniform across the UK and may vary across its devolved nations. Local contexts of Brexit need to be explored, rather than assuming homogenous experiences across the UK common to all groups (Anderson & Wilson, ). The different voting patterns of the constituent countries demonstrate different attitudes towards EU membership, whereas the UK's asymmetric constitutional arrangements bring different policy contexts.…”

More‐than‐therapeutic landscapes

“…(Field Diary Notes, Summerview Care Home, 24/6/2016) While there is much we might say about the potential effects of Brexit on the therapeutic functions and capacities of care homes (Jarrett, 2017;Roberts & Barnard, 2017), I wish to focus here on the ways in which it, an intrinsically morethan-therapeutic thing, makes "an impression" on the everyday lives of the people within the care home (Anderson & Wilson, 2018). David, one of the Polish care workers in the home, was standing in the lounge, feeding a resident and staring at the rolling news on the TV.…”

“…There was, however, a sense that the world had changed, possibly forever. (Field Diary Notes, Summerview Care Home, 24/6/2016) While there is much we might say about the potential effects of Brexit on the therapeutic functions and capacities of care homes (Jarrett, 2017;Roberts & Barnard, 2017), I wish to focus here on the ways in which it, an intrinsically morethan-therapeutic thing, makes "an impression" on the everyday lives of the people within the care home (Anderson & Wilson, 2018). This impression is not one of coherence, but rather a juxtaposition of two (or probably more) sets of feelings, each shaping the experiences, moods, approaches, and actions of the people within the home in different ways.…”

National belonging post‐referendum: Britons living in other EU Member States respond to “Brexit”

“…However, it is important to document that a significant minority did not want to make any reflections before they knew what Brexit would look like or felt that the result would have little effect on their lives. As a method to “research and write geographies of Brexit in the midst of turmoil” (Anderson & Wilson, 2017a, p. 2), the questionnaire survey did not engage well with indifference, was unable to further unpack ambiguous or brief responses, or to situate these responses more thoroughly in respondents’ wider biographies; future qualitative research will be better placed to explore these issues in greater depth.…”