The disruptive politics of Brexit: rural communities, dependency and migration, Professor Sarah Neal (University of Sheffield)

This event has ended.

 ‘There won’t be any vets’ (Rose, rural community organization, Scotland).  

This presentation draws on a series of qualitative interviews with both rural and migrant organisations to explore the social impacts of Brexit on rural communities in rural areas of England, Wales, and Scotland. This was a small exploratory study conducted with colleagues at the University of Glasgow and Aberystwyth and recently published (Neal et al 2021) and is currently being developed as part of a second stage research bid to the Leverhulme Trust.

The presentation will focus on the ruralisation of migration which, until recently, has been associated as being a predominantly urban phenomenon.  It explores how this unsettles rural imaginaries and relates to the political geographies of Brexit. Arguing that there were complex intra-rural Leave/Remain divides rather than a straightforward rural-Leave Brexit geography, I will examine the turbulence of a heterogenous rural and a rural-migrant dependency relation which emerged as a reoccurring pattern across the interviews.

While Rose’s worry about there not being ‘any vets’ post Brexit fits with the wider concerns being articulated about key rural economies, the dependency narrative might be more broadly conceptualized, as social as well as economic, as the decisions (and constraints) of rural migrants disrupt and recalibrate rural livability. It is the social implications of Brexit for rural communities, for social inclusion and for what Shucksmith (2018) has called the ‘good countryside’ that the presentation considers.