(Un)settling home during the Brexit process

Abstract

Building upon extensive literature on the concept of home, this article uses narrative interviews to argue that home can be (un)settled. The process of (un)settling home can occur in relation to various circumstances such as widowhood, ill health, or geopolitical changes. This article presents (un)settling home as a process constituted by three intertwined dimensions; practical and material, emotional, and temporal. This article explores how the Brexit process is (un)settling home for older British migrants, a population of lifestyle migrants, living in Spain. This geopolitical event has an ongoing destabilising and unsettling effect upon individual's sense of home and belonging. Brexit is a process experienced simultaneously by older British migrants living across the European Union. Consequently, this article provides useful insights into how these relatively privileged migrants negotiate an unprecedented shift in their status, their uncertain future as lifestyle migrants, and their understandings of home in this shifting geopolitical context.

EU Children in Brexit Britain: Re‐Negotiating Belonging in Nationalist Times

“…The subsequent referendum outcome has undermined their sense of home and belonging, leading to feelings of disembedding (Ryan, ) and displacement and often regret and resentment for the choices made. This confirms the importance of considering the influence of the structural and discursive context rather than assuming that integration is a linear process that occurs by default with the passage of time (Miller, ).…”

“…Such studies argue, instead, that "in a world of mobility, personal attachments to people and places are multiple and changing" (Sva sek, 2010: 877). Such emotional attachment and belonging can be activated by memory, imagination, long-distance communication and return visits (Sva sek, 2008) but also by structural constraints, such as immigration policies (Sva sek, 2010) and, as pointed out in this article, public discourse, an aspect that we believe requires further investigation, especially at times of crisis (see Miller, 2018).…”

“…These narratives demonstrate that the sense of home has been unsettled by Brexit (Miller, ), suddenly substituted by a sense of disembedding (Ryan, ) and displacement. Martina summarizes this well when recapping her experience of more than 20 years in the UK:

enthusiasm, acceptance, efforts at integrating, feeling integrated, beginning of having doubts, desire to return to Italy, now disappointment of having done the wrong thing, not knowing what to do basically…

…”

“…Emerging literature on the effects of Brexit is starting to document how Brexit is affecting the sense of security of many migrants (Guma and Jones, ; Lulle et al., ,b; Miller, ; Rzepnikowska, ). Such studies have focused particularly on those in already vulnerable positions who fear losing their already precarious rights.…”

Brexit, British People of Colour in the EU-27 and everyday racism in Britain and Europe

“…Even for those European citizens who had migrated and settled in other EU member states, such mobility was deemed unremarkable; until Brexit, they had rarely been questions about their rights to residence. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising that initial reactions to the outcome of the Brexit vote included shock and disappointment (Kilkey 2017;O'Reilly 2017;Puma and Dafydd Jones 2019;Miller 2019). As Miller (2019) stresses drawing on the case of the British pensioners living in Spain, from the outset Brexit was experienced as a challenge to "their place within the well-established structures, rules, and rights, as members of the EU surpranational organisation" (Miller 2019, 9).…”