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The economic landscape of the UK has been significantly shaped by the intertwined issues of Brexit, COVID, and their interconnected impacts. The disruptions caused by Brexit and the COVID pandemic have created uncertainty and upheaval for both businesses and individuals. Whilst the effects of COVID are now receding, Brexit is still dominating headlines seven years after the referendum and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future. In this introduction, we provide an overview of the literature on Brexit. We review the reasons for leaving the European Union, as well examine the consequences of Brexit, with a focus on investment, economic growth, trade, unemployment, and financial markets. We then introduce the seven papers selected from the 'Post Brexit: Uncertainty, Risk Measurement and Coronavirus Challenges Conference' held at Birmingham Business School in June 2021, that advance the current literature on the effects of Brexit and COVID on the UK economy. Evidence in these papers suggests that Brexit and COVID are still clearly posing a severe strain on the UK's economy. However, some papers suggest that not everything about Brexit has been detrimental, or at least certain sectors of the UK economy are displaying a marked resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholarship on postfunctionalism in European integration has drawn attention to how processes of Europeanisation are not restricted to policymakers, but exist equally (if not more significantly) in the quotidian. The 2016–2020 Brexit process and debates on the relationship between national identity and 'Europeanness' urge a new consideration of how Europeanisation is narrated in everyday discourses. This paper analyses British fictional portrayals of the EEC and EU and posits a new theoretical framework of 'Imperial Gothic 2.0'. Pre-2016 representations of the EU were entirely dystopian. But post-2016, Brex-Lit fiction has reversed this trend and the EU now appears as a flawless utopia. Early twentieth-century 'Imperial Gothic' saw popular fiction defined by themes of British decline and oppression by foreign powers; a century later, Brex-Lit has resurrected these themes by narrating Britain in terminal decline, reflecting cultural anxieties, a reversal of Self and Other, and a loss of identities. This 'Imperial Gothic 2.0' reveals anxieties which reflect and influence political action, and reveals the extent to which imaginations and narratives of the EU have transformed from depictions of a distant, technocratic entity used for comedy or conspiracy, into a site of intense emotional affiliation, nostalgia, anticipation, and regret. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how so-called Brexit, that is the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (EU), has modified the regional geography of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs). The latter are therapies deriving from cell manipulation, gene editing, tissue engineering, or a combination of these techniques. Their development and delivery have been realised through research collaborations and commercial relations of international scope. In the EU, this has happened by means of a complex distribution of commercial activities and legal responsibilities. With Brexit, three main kinds of reconfigurations have occurred: the relocation of research and manufacturing activities; the reorganisation of quality control tests aimed to manage clinical risks; and the redistribution of legal responsibilities and representatives. This technical and legal reconfiguration is captured here by means of theoretical insights from the emerging domain of legal geography. Drawing on interviews conducted with both EU and UK professionals involved in ATMP development, this paper reveals the main challenges brought by Brexit to the current and future configuration of the ATMP landscape in the EU and the UK. Furthermore, it demonstrates how shifts in legal arrangements impact on science-intensive domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has examined the relationship between ethnic outgroup-size at the neighbourhood level and Brexit support, yet there is a lack of understanding on the factors that moderate these effects. This paper critically extends prior debate by focusing on how personality traits moderate not only the extent to which the levels (2011) of ethnic outgroup-size in individuals' residential neighbourhoods but also the increase thereof (2001-2011) are associated with individuals' preferences about the 2016 Brexit referendum. Using data from Understanding Society, we find that two personality traits, agreeableness and openness, are key moderators affecting the above-mentioned relationship. High-agreeable and high-open individuals are less likely than low-agreeable and low-open individuals to support Brexit. However, while the gap between low and highly agreeable individuals shrinks as ethnic outgroup-size increases, the gap widens between those higher vs. lower in openness. Our findings highlight the multifaceted role of personality traits as a driver of heterogeneous effects on political behaviour. In sum, this paper shows that analysing the complex and intertwined nature of both contextual and individual factors is fundamental for a better understanding, not only of the Brexit referendum but, more broadly, of anti-immigrant sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we theorize the 2016 Brexit referendum as a critical juncture in UK politics and analyse its effects on devolution using the concept of regional authority. We argue that Brexit raised the option of re-balancing the self-rule and shared rule dimensions of regional authority present in UK devolution. We generate hypotheses regarding parties' territorial strategies and test them against a content analysis of 2015 and 2017 UK general election manifestos. We demonstrate that proposals dealing with shared rule grew between 2015 and 2017, within the context of consistency in parties' overall territorial positioning. The governing Conservatives also offered more proposals on shared rule but not ones that increased devolved influence. Overall, they moved from favouring an increase in regional authority in 2015 to the cusp of maintaining existing regional authority and somewhat reducing it in 2017. This helps to explain whypost-Brexit UK government policy in practice maintained a primary focus on self-rule within a general approach of limiting the further growth of regional authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the evolution of Britain's involvement in the EU's foreign and security policy in order to highlight the reasons that led the issue to be left out of talks on the post-Brexit future relation. The paper argues Europeanisation or de-Europeanisation largely depends on the degree of politicisation of issues both in the EU, the EU-27 and in the UK. As long as foreign and security issues remained relatively low key, the UK was able to enjoy the magnifying effect of its participation in the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and contributed to the decision-making process in order to successfully influence EU policies. Politicisation of foreign and security issues was due both to developments in EU-led or national initiatives and to the reaction they provoked in the UK. The EU insisted the UK was to be considered as a 'third country' and stressed the need for future cooperation to be institutionalised. On the contrary, in the UK, public distrust against a putative European 'super state', led successive governments to avoid any formal commitment to new EU initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how Brexit has impacted on Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers in the UK Midlands, and to what extent such firms are reconfiguring their supply chains with the increase in trade barriers with Brexit. To do this, the paper aims to add to macro studies in the area by using a mixed-methods approach that combines descriptive quantitative analysis of secondary data with a complementary qualitative research analysis based on a novel interview dataset. The latter is generated from 14 semi-structured interviews conducted in late 2021 with senior managers and directors in advanced manufacturing firms across the East and West Midlands regions of the UK. A key finding of this paper is that the imposition of new non-tariff barriers through Brexit has proved particularly challenging to smaller firms in manufacturing supply chains. The findings of our research highlight the need for policy support for smaller firms engaging in EU-wide supply chains, particularly around skillsets and access to talent, cost reduction for exports and facilitating trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines how senior figures in the UK Labour Party and wider labour movement discussed the topic of immigration in the immediate aftermath of the UK's vote to leave the European Union in 2016. Influenced by the Discourse Historical Approach, the paper is based on an analysis of 86 public interventions by Labour figures, over a 6-month period, delivered in speeches, articles and essays. The paper examines argumentative strategies adopted by Labour figures – including Members of Parliament, advisors and trade union leaders – who called for stronger immigration controls from an avowedly 'left-wing' perspective. Foregrounding their commitment to progressive politics, Labour politicians argued that restricting the number of migrants entering Britain was democratic, anti-racist and an expression of the Labour Party's commitment to the interests of working-class people. Nevertheless, it is the contention of this paper that the Labour Party's rhetoric tapped into right-wing populist discourses which constructed immigration as a threat to the racialised privileges of a 'white' working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been exponential growth in research about the impact of Brexit on the plans and projects of EU migrants in the UK. Much research focuses on highly visible migrants, such as the Poles. By focusing on French highly skilled migrants in London, our paper offers the perspectives of those who, prior to the referendum, were relatively invisible and largely absent from anti-immigration discourses. In so doing, we consider how the shock of Brexit exposed but also threatened the previously taken for granted privileges enjoyed by this capital-rich migrant population. Moreover, our longitudinal data, gathered through repeated interviews over seven years (2011–2018), enables analysis of how participants' experiences and evaluations of life and work in the UK changed, over time, in response to Brexit. In analysing these longitudinal qualitative data from an under-researched migrant group, this paper also aims to advance our concept of embedding, in its differentiation across political, economic and relational domains, to understand change over time. Specifically, this paper advances understanding of how processes of embedding, both in their reflexive and tacit forms, frame the complex and nuanced ways in which our French highly skilled participants have experienced, made sense of, and responded to, Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the place of EU law in the law curriculum. It explores and critically assesses the pre- and post-Brexit arguments which have been made for EU law as a distinct module on the law degree. A number of commentators have made the case for the desirability of keeping EU law as a core subject. This paper takes account of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 and the changes to the professional requirements for qualification. Three key arguments are made. The first is that Brexit is disordering in an unquantifiable way the legal systems of the UK and introducing new uncertainties. The second is that at the same time there is a disordering of legal education with consequential changes to the rules for qualification to practise. The third argument, which is premised on the first two, is that providers of law degrees must recognise the implications of these processes and other processes of change (which are identified in this article) and reappraise the purpose of EU law in the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the United Kingdom's referendum on European Union (EU) membership in 2016, a new political cleavage of Remainers and Leavers has developed (Kelley, N. [2019]. British social attitudes survey: Britain's shifting identities and attitudes. (36). National Centre for Research). This paper explores how five pro-Brexit newspapers discursively construct political division in Britain in relation to two key events in the final year of Britain's EU membership: the extension of the withdrawal process past the original date of March, and the introduction of the Benn Act in September. The paper reveals two primary discursive constructions of division in Britain: a divide between incompetent and arrogant political officials and an innocent, suffering public, and an identity cleavage between pro-Remain 'elites' and 'ordinary' Leave-voting citizens. The study argues that the construction of these divisions threatens a collective national identity in Britain at a time when it is most required. It concludes that by apportioning blame for socio-political divisions, the newspapers obfuscate their role in contributing to disunity in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the risk implications of Brexit for UK-based, manufacturers, drawing on data generated from semi-structured interviews with senior managers and directors in the advanced manufacturing sector of the West Midlands region of the UK in 2021. The UK's departure from the EU has led to increased socio-economic risk for manufacturing businesses, requiring careful management by the latter. This paper draws on elements of the Kasperson et al. [1988. The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework. Risk Analysis, 8(2), 177–187] Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) to explore the communication of risk and uncertainty to businesses, during and post-Brexit discussions. This paper then examines the extent to which risk arises from changes to supply chains and production regimes and in turn examines consequences for the management of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we account for differences in the extent of risk disclosure among companies? The paper expands the existing explanations by claiming that corporate risk reporting is not just financial but also political communication. The presented empirical analysis of how corporations disclose Brexit-related uncertainties suggests that risk reporting is a part of a company's holistic conversation with multiple audiences in society (e.g. politicians, regulators, journalists and customers) and might have well-targeted but also unforeseen effects on each of them. The quantity and quality of risk disclosure can be explained – among other factors – by the extent to which companies want to participate in public discourse and wish their opinions on a particular political issue, such as Brexit, to be heard. In other words, risk reporting is a part of 'the politics of expectations' which should be investigated in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dentists, managing highly prevalent oral disease are in demand across the world and hence potentially highly mobile. Both the United Kingdom and Australia, continue to be favourable destinations for migrant dentists. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the professional integration of migrant dentists in the UK and Australia, and health system responses, while explicating implications for future health workforce governance. In doing so, the paper adopts a system-thinking approach to analyse interactions between the migration system and other societal systems. This is the first multi-country study to analyse the professional integration of migrant dentists through the lens of health workforce and migration governance. The study draws on semi-structured qualitative interviews with migrant dentists in both countries, together with national systems registration and examination data and relevant policies, together with data from government and global datasets. Both countries are high-income countries with a relatively large dentist-to-population ratio maintained through reliance on migrant dentists. The health systems and migration governance have responded by increasing the number of local graduates with limited success in the UK, potentially due to organisational demands, and the multifactorial complex mutual influences between higher education systems, labour market, feedback loops and dentist migration systems creating a nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses three of the key reasons why productivity growth in the UK is both so weak and also so regionally unbalanced. These reasons are Brexit, low levels of public and private investment, and the operation of the land-use planning system. In each case the national implications of these issues also have direct regional corollaries and causal mechanisms, which unless comprehensively addressed, heavily constrain the ability of Levelling Up to work. A reconsideration of the nature and scale of these issues also highlights the limited nature and scale of the current institutional and policy responses aimed at rebalancing UK productivity and prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the economic implications of Brexit by making recourse to original archival studies as well as the literatures concerning modern British and European economic history as well as the Two Irelands. An overriding lesson is that Northern Ireland, like the UK as whole, has suffered from weaknesses in competition and productivity that have given rise to long-run economic underperformance. Only after Brentry was this legislation reversed. Yet while European integration overall tended to improve economic performance, political instability tended to offset these benefits. Despite the political settlement in 1998, much room for improvement remains. Brexit, and in particular the Protocol, has complicated matters further. While the Windsor Framework offers greater economic opportunities than the original Protocol, seising these opportunities is far from inevitable. A better regional industrial policy is possible if the right lessons emerge from the historical evidence. Such a regional policy requires consideration of 'place-based' issues and in turn consideration of such issues return us to the importance of historical factors in determining long-run economic performance. Economic history matters more than is often understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relation between GDP growth, Divisia money growth, CPI inflation, financial stress, and the UK's economic policy uncertainty in the context of its departure from the European Union. We employ two Bayesian VAR models which account for the extreme observations in macroeconomic and financial time series resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. We document a contractionary effect of an economic policy uncertainty shock on GDP growth, which is not present in a model which does not account for the COVID-19-related outliers. Additionally, we find that GDP growth is enhanced by Divisia monetary stimulus but hampered by increases in financial stress. The results from a stochastic volatility in the mean threshold model also uncover different dynamics of transmission of shocks between economic uncertainty and the indicators we study across high and low economic policy uncertainty regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of Brexit-related uncertainty on the economies of the UK, EU, and the US. We propose a measure of Brexit uncertainty that has not been employed before in the literature. We first construct a binary variable by selecting Brexit-related events. We subsequently employ the Qual VAR model of Dueker [2005. "Dynamic Forecasts of Qualitative Variables: A Qual VAR Model of US Recessions." Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 23: 96–104] to transform this variable to a continuous latent variable that captures uncertainty on important economic and financial variables. Next, this latent variable enters a structural Factor-Augmented Vector AutoRegression model combined with 452 macro and financial variables for the sample countries. Overall, our results indicate that the prolonged period of uncertainty, had a positive effect on the economies of major EU countries and negative effects for the UK economy. Additionally, the UK is the most important net sender of uncertainty spillovers in the EU, while Germany and France are among the most important net receivers of uncertainty shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's 'Australian-style' points-based system (PBS), introduced in 2021, has been promoted by politicians as a strategy to 'take back control' of migration after leaving the European Union. However, the 2021 PBS is just the most recent of several initiatives since 2002 to introduce points into the UK's labor migration policy. Points tests in various forms have been repeatedly introduced, modified, and removed in the UK's immigration system. This paper examines what accounts for the enduring appeal and repeated reinvention of this policy tool. We argue that the main factor driving interest in points-based systems is not what they achieve in practice, but their symbolic value. Points systems have allowed policymakers to signal that labor migration policy is objective, rational, meritocratic and efficient. These objectives appear to outweigh the substantive policy benefits of points-based systems as mechanisms for accumulating human capital or offering flexibility in eligibility criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the perspectives of expert analysts and policy-makers on the implications of Brexit for different parts of the UK economy. For local and regional areas, the need for such expert voices to be heard is urgent, given the fact that UK subnational and substate governance authorities have been effectively blocked out of all Brexit-related negotiations, and as such, are wholly unprepared for the post-Brexit realities. The issues discussed in this paper reflect the key themes that came out of four regional stakeholder participatory symposia organized by The UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE), which were held in Leeds, Birmingham, London and Edinburgh, and that focused on the Brexit-related economic and governance challenges for the different parts of the UK. These issues are examined in the light of the recent 'levelling-up' agenda prioritized by the UK government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period leading up to Brexit in the UK has led to foreign corporate subsidiaries having to mediate uncertainties and upheaval, forming part of broader regional resilience tendencies. The roles of subsidiaries, their corporate contexts, global production network positions and regional coupling are all heterogeneous, meaning that responses are likely to be disparate. Utilizing 'dynamic managerial capabilities' and subsidiary competences perspectives, this paper examines how subsidiaries have mediated Brexit and why certain actions are taken, and which is co-constituted with regional resilience. Twenty foreign subsidiaries within manufacturing sectors in the West Midlands and Wales are examined. In conclusion, the paper finds that Brexit mediation strategies have generally focused on seeking stasis through worst-case no-deal planning and preserving existing supply chains, indicating the dominance of 'adaptation' forms of regional resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of Brexit's referendum polls, there were many predictions as to what its impact would be for the United Kingdom. While its socio-economic consequences have often featured as the main topic of discussion, this may lead to people overlooking its significance regarding its redefining of the British political community. One social field in particular which may see these dynamics play out is sports. More particularly, looking at England's favourite pastime, football and its top division, the Premier League, can be quite revealing in understanding how sports can contribute to defining the nation. Following from this idea, the theoretical framework of boundary-making processes is applied to the Premier League and its Brexit contextualisation. The findings from this approach demonstrate the government's underlying efforts in redefining the country's political community away from Europe through the sports regulation changes associated with Brexit. However, these are also found to be mitigated by the influence of external actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have applied theories of European integration to interpret crisis-led policymaking processes and integration outcomes in the EU. However, there has been little attempt to appraise the analytical leverage offered by major integration theories as a function of different crisis pressures. We theorize that diverse combinations of crisis pressures generate four decision-making scenarios in the EU, each of which can be ascribed to different combinations of analytical insights from neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, postfunctionalism, and federalism. We illustrate the value of our framework in relation to four EU crises concerning the euro area, refugees, Brexit and Covid-19. Overall, the paper makes a theoretical contribution to advance the debate on crisis-led integration in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1 January 2021 the new Protocol on Northern Ireland (NI) regulates NI's trade with the European Union (EU) and Great Britain (GB). These rules imply divergence between trade arrangements in NI and GB creating an unprecedented situation where trade frictions arise between two regions of the same country. In this paper we use a multi-sector economic model to capture the impact that potential non-tariff barriers and tariffs will have on trade in NI. Simulation results demonstrate that a weaker relation between GB and the EU will have a greater negative impact on the NI economy. However, this may be reduced by the ability of NI firms to substitute intermediate inputs from GB for EU imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fate of British finance following the Brexit referendum revolves around the 'resilience or relocation' debate: will the City of London continue to thrive as the world's leading financial centre or will the bulk of its activity move to rival hubs after departure from EU trading arrangements? Despite extensive commentary, there remains no systematic analysis of this question since the Leave vote. This paper addresses that lacuna by evaluating the empirical evidence concerning jobs, investments, and share of key trading markets. Contrary to widely-held expectations, the evidence suggests that the City has been remarkably resilient. Brexit has had no significant impact on jobs and London has consolidated its position as the chief location for financial FDI, FinTech funding, and attracting new firms. Most unexpectedly, the City has increased its dominance in major infrastructure markets such as over-the-counter clearing of (euro-denominated) derivatives and foreign exchange—although it has lost out in the handling of repurchase agreements and share trading. Based upon this evidence, the paper argues that London's resilience is mainly a function of its status as a crucial 'agglomeration peak' of global finance which shelters its unique ecosystem from the typical pressures of capital flight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether European Union (EU) regional spending influenced how local areas voted in the UK's 2016 EU referendum. While much focus has been on identity and demographic factors in explaining the referendum result, little attention has been paid to the role of EU interventions in the UK's regions. This paper provides an initial exploration into this by assessing the role of EU regional spending. It finds the level of EU spending in local areas had little impact on how those areas voted in the referendum, raising questions about the communication and awareness of EU regional spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1989, fascism had long been defeated in Europe, and reforms in the Soviet Union appeared to signify the collapse of communist ideology, prompting Francis Fukuyama to famously declare the 'end of history'. Since then, neoliberalism has been rolled out globally. This paper argues that, with regard to higher education, Fukuyama's claim that the pursuit of knowledge will be replaced by the 'satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands' is prescient. What, then, prompted Fukuyama to qualify his predictions in 2018? Citing both the turmoil of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, Fukuyama blames identity politics for the breakdown of consensus over what the nation is, or should be, and suggests that the promotion of creedal identity might rescue Western democracy from populism. This paper disagrees: using the examples of Brexit and the promotion of Fundamental British Values in schools, it argues that creedal identity has become another expression of populism. Rejecting the claim that identity politics are the ultimate source of populism, it argues that populism is the predictable outcome of recession in the market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a small and new EU member state Croatia had little to contribute to Brexit, which occurred just a few years after the country's accession to the EU. Stemming from its size, its pre-existing relations with the UK and its drive to learn to operate within the EU, Croatia is no outlier in the literature on small states' foreign policy. This paper analyses the behaviour of Croatia during Brexit and adds to the literature on small states. First, it analyses whether and to what extent Croatia opted for one or more of the following strategies: seeking shelter, hiding or hedging during the Brexit negotiations. Second, it examines the logics underpinning the aforementioned strategies (logic of consequences vs. logic of appropriateness). Third, it scrutinizes Brexit's impact on the Europeanisation of Croatia's foreign and defence policies and possible advancement or undermining of this Europeanisation process. We focus on both policy-uploading and policy-downloading dimensions of Europeanisation, thus contributing to the literature on Europeanisation. Our research is based on existing literature, second-hand sources such as official documents and statements, and the primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with eight persons who either shaped the Croatian foreign and defence policies or were well-informed about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World War II nostalgia in the UK is mired in a postcolonial melancholia that not only fuels Brexit nationalism, but carries implications for how the UK relates to the European Continent. This paper presents an empirically engaged examination of Gilroy's concept of postcolonial melancholia by exploring how British migrants negotiate this "complex ailment". Engaging with empirical research conducted with British migrants in Berlin, I will examine how migrants negotiate this form of nationalism through their relationships with family members in the UK. The particular position of the British migrant in Germany illuminates how postcolonial melancholia's entrenchment shapes British nationalism and Britain's relationship to mainland Europe. It explores discourses of British exceptionalism before examining how Brexit's foregrounding of empire nostalgia pushes migrants to redefine their relationship to Britain. Meanwhile, black British migrants inhabit a different orientation to the postcolonial through their practical engagement with complex colonial histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on a key dimension of transnational family relations, this article explores the impact of uncertain migratory contexts and citizenship status on migrant mothering. Based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with French migrant mothers living in Manchester, this paper explores how the UK's decision to leave the European Union ('Brexit') affects their identities as migrant mothers and their mothering practices. The paper explores the construction of the continuum of identities of female movers, wives/ female partners and migrant mothers in times of unprecedented social changes in modern Britain. It examines how Brexit affects European migrant mothers' lives with particular reference to cultural and linguistic maintenance and migrant community building. This article points to the affective, racialised and gendered dimensions of citizenship statuses and their susceptibility to changing political contexts. It underlines the need for conceptual developments to capture the affective, racialised and gendered dimensions of different migrant statuses to reveal some of their subtler dynamics. The findings highlight that, independent of actual policy and regulatory changes, shifting contextual norms of people's entitlement to family rights may induce changes in how migrants strategise and practise transnational family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the debate surrounding and following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, credentialed economic expertise did not enjoy a privileged position within the political and policy debate. Using the contrasting cases of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Economists for Brexit/Free Trade, this paper explores the mobilisation of economic expertise within the discursive politics of Brexit under conditions of pervasive radical uncertainty. It argues that politicisation is an important factor in side-lining technocratic influence over policy choice, but that the particular type of politicisation in play (plebiscitary) meant that the input of technocratic experts was downgraded. It is a politics conducted in another register to the reasoned, evidence-based vernacular of accredited experts and the policy discourses that they work with and through. We also argue that the basic unknowability of the post-Brexit economy further impaired expert input. These limitations were acknowledged by accredited experts themselves, reducing their traction within the policy debate. This unknowability was exploited by forms of counter-expertise mobilised by the Leave campaign. The radical uncertainties of Brexit allowed in heterodox assumptions and approaches to compete on a level playing field with an approximation of what could be presented as prudent best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the importance of taking into account re-exports. It shows that not taking into account re-exports causes estimates from the gravity model to be biased. It also considers the implications of re-exports for two current policy events. It is shown that the United States actually ran a net trade surplus in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Second, it is argued there may be additional costs for the UK economy from Brexit that are not addressed in earlier studies. This paper derives bilateral trade flows corrected for re-exports for a large number of countries at a detailed product level, using the World Input–Output Database (WIOD). Through a constrained non-linear optimization procedure, complete origin–destination matrices of re-exports are determined. Trade is subsequently restored to its most likely origin and destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU General Data Protection Regulation was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on May 4 2016 and it will be binding on all member states including the UK, from 25 May 2018. This paper critically examines the implications of Britain's exit from the EU on data protection law in the UK with a particular focus on the various trade models available to the UK such as the EEA model, the Swiss model, the free trade agreement as adopted by Canada, as well as the WTO model. Irrespective of the model chosen for exiting the European Union, the UK will adopt standards almost identical to the GDPR in order to remain a competitive actor in the global economy. Nevertheless, the paper contends that this does not necessarily suffice to secure an adequacy decision from the EU Commission. As clarified in the European Commission's January 2018 Notice, if the UK and the EU cannot reach an agreement on data transfers bureaucratically burdensome requirements could apply to UK businesses. This adds to the prevailing uncertainty around Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK has seen little progress in reducing road death over the last decade and as a result, the government has been criticised by industry stakeholders for a lack of leadership, including the removal of national targets in 2011 and the devolution of powers to a municipal level. The aim of this paper is to understand how decision-making at a municipal level takes place from a systems perspective, using the case study of Cambridgeshire. Actors involved were mapped using a STAMP control structure analysis and highlighted a key role for formal and informal partnerships between local and national government agencies and non-government organisations at the same level in the control structure. The changing international context of the model for the UK is also discussed in relation to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union and provides a useful tool for future analysis of its effect on policy and decision-making. Practitioner summary: This paper uses a STAMP control structure analysis to understand how decision-making at a municipal level takes place from a systems perspective, using the case study of Cambridgeshire. It highlights a key role for formal and informal partnerships between organisations at the same level in the control structure. Abbreviations: STAMP: System Theoretic Accident Model and Processes; STAMP-CAST: Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes – Causal Analysis using Systems Theory; FRAM: Functional Resonance Analysis Method; HFACS: Human Factors Analysis and Classification Scheme; NGO: Non-Government organisation; iRAP: International Road Assessment Programme; EuroRAP: European Road Assessment Programme; NCAP: New Car Assessment Programme; CCG: Clinical Commissioning Group; GP: General Practitioner; PPE: Personal Protective Equipment; SD: standard deviation; Beds: Bedfordshire; Cambs: Cambridgeshire; Herts: Hertfordshire; Pboro: Peterborough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When former British Prime Minister Theresa May resigned in May 2019, in the first few days much mainstream and social media coverage focused on the tears she cried. Newspapers highlighted her tears as an extraordinary act for a politician. Her unexpected display of emotions was met with sympathy, sometimes even considered a feminist political moment, and often contextualised the framing of May's political legacy. Analysing UK mainstream tabloid and broadsheet coverage following May's resignation, this paper explores the media reactions in more detail. A dominant theme in the assessment of May's legacy was her perceived inability to "get Brexit done." Any deployment of feminist celebrations of public female tears was quickly overtaken by coverage that constructs May as politically and personally fragile, rooted in a known range of sexist tropes that associate femininity in politics with weakness. This "feminine weakness" is the opposite of what is needed to fulfil the Brexit project, which is often described in masculinist terms. Thus, Brexit is constructed as inherently masculine, and women are considered a threat to this project, highlighting the ways in which Brexit is mediated as a gendered political process. This article argues for greater attention to the role media play in the gendering of populist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberal international order has recently come under increasing nationalist pressure, evidenced by a rise in nationalist demands to withdraw from international institutions. A growing literature examines the domestic economic, social, and political origins of this nationalist backlash against international institutions. However, less is known about the extent to which precedents of withdrawals of one country affect nationalist pressures for future withdrawals elsewhere. In this paper, we argue that initial withdrawal episodes provide new information about the feasibility and desirability of withdrawals to nationalist elites in other countries. Hence, we expect nationalists abroad to be either encouraged or deterred to follow a similar path – depending on the success of these precedents. We explore this argument in the context of the British withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit), which arguably marks the most significant withdrawal from an international institution to date. Based on a quantitative analyses of media reports in ten European countries, we show we show that nationalist parties in Europe increased or moderated the aggressiveness about their EU-related rhetoric as the ups and downs of the Brexit-drama unfolded. Our results suggest that precedents of nationalist withdrawals shape domestic politics well beyond the concerned countries themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When governments introduce controversial policies or face a risk of policy failure, officeholders try to avoid blame and justify their decisions by using various legitimation strategies. This paper focuses on the ways in which legitimations are expressed in government social media communication, using the Twitter posts of the British government's Brexit department as an example. We show how governments may seek legitimacy by appealing to (1) the personal authority of individual policymakers, (2) the collective authority of (political) organisations, (3) the impersonal authority of rules or documents, (4) the goals or effects of government policy, (5) 'the will of the people', and (6) time pressure. The results suggest that official legitimations in social media posts tend to rely more on references to authority and shared values rather than presentation of evidence and sound arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Ireland and Northern Ireland barely featured during the 2016 referendum campaign, they have been central to Brexit negotiations. For some, Ireland's prominence in talks represents core EU values of solidarity and peace. For others, Ireland has been 'used' as a bargaining chip to 'frustrate Brexit'. In contrast, this paper shows how conflicting policy styles had an impact on the outcome of Brexit negotiations on the border in Ireland. Drawing on the literatures on Brexit negotiations, British policy style, and new intergovernmentalism, it shows that Ireland pursued a deliberative approach, contributing to its negotiating success. This is contrasted with three, relatively ineffectual, British approaches to Ireland, 'lack of engagement', 'magical thinking', and 'delayed deliberation'. The paper draws on original interviews conducted with Irish politicians during negotiations, and interviews with senior British political figures contained in the UK in a Changing Europe Witness Archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events – such as summits – and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain's relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article researches the performance of the European Parliament (EP) in the Article 50 withdrawal negotiations. Drawing upon insights from the actorness concept, the inquiry assesses the EP's performance on the basis of Kaunert's, Léonard's and MacKenzie's conceptualisation of actorness, i.e. in terms of the six variables of capacity, legitimacy, initiative, autonomy, cohesion and recognition. The paper finds that, within the Article 50 negotiations, the EP established itself as a distinct, ambitious actor in its own right, with its actorness being a complex reality that manifested in a number of ways. Serving as the ultimate veto power, the ability to withhold consent to the final deal lent the EP a strategic advantage and represented the principal source of parliamentary influence in this area. With Brexit high on the assembly's agenda, the EP successfully claimed its voice in withdrawal negotiations beyond the simple power of consent and its soft power in the subject area increased precipitously throughout the process. The finding also points to a strong pattern of continuity in the EP's acting on Brexit before and after May 2019 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the power and influence of the Scottish and Welsh governments in shaping UK Brexit policy during the first phase of Brexit, from the European Union referendum to the Withdrawal Agreement. It analyses their limited recourse to constitutional authority, and their exploitation of procedural and soft power, in their efforts to make UK Brexit policy reflect devolved government interests. It draws a distinction between the external and internal dimensions of Brexit, noting the inability of the devolved governments to gain any influence in shaping the former, despite increased procedural opportunities. By contrast, both constitutional and, especially, non-constitutional power shaped intergovernmental dynamics with respect to the domestic Brexit process, helping the devolved governments to secure concessions regarding the impact of UK Brexit legislation on devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British referendum on EU membership was both the result and the cause of major ruptures and reconfigurations of the British political order. It also marked the climax of the politicization of European integration, as highlighted by the post-functionalist theory. The UK Independence party (UKIP) is pivotal in this process: it is both a product of this politicization and one of its major agents. As such, from a European viewpoint, UKIP stands as a case in point, an illustration of the potentially disruptive impact of such parties on national and European arenas. Building on Putnam's two level-game, on Tsebelis' nested games and on Reif and Schmitt's first and second order, this article aims to show that UKIP stands as the very embodiment of the interaction between these two arenas – between first- and second-order games. It perfectly illustrates the fact that the referendum reconfigured the national game that created it. This paper will therefore explore those two aspects: how UKIP impacted the first-order game, and conversely how the referendum impacted UKIP. Finally, the paper will analyze the disruptive impact of UKIP's successor, the Brexit party, on the British and European arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Net-zero emissions' has emerged as a common international response to tackling a protracted global environmental crisis. Climate change has functioned, and continues to take place, simultaneously to other crises of different types, durations and geographical scales. While progress has been made in understanding tourism in climate change policy and vice versa, there has been very little work on how tourism features in approaches to addressing other major crises and how these may impact on climate change ambitions. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining how tourism features in concurrent UK government approaches to the climate crisis and to a political crisis, Brexit, between 2016 and 2019, with special reference to aviation as a major pivot between the two. Existing tourism studies have mainly focussed on environmental crises in isolation. This paper argues for greater investigation and consideration of the positioning, coincidence and interaction effects among different forms and scales of crises. Through the Tourism Sector Deal, tourism has been cast as a source of economic growth and resilience after Brexit but, heavily depending on aviation emissions, it has significant potential to confound the UK government's ambitions for net-zero Emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the effect of Brexit implemented through the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement on UK trade. Using COMTRADE data for the period of 2019 up to 2022Q1, and the method of synthetic difference-in-differences (SDID), we build a counterfactual UK that did not experience the change in its trade relationships with the EU. We show that the negative, large, and statistically significant impact of the TCA on UK exports has persisted over the examined period. This highlights the continuing export challenges that UK firms have faced since the TCA was put in force and underscores the need to systemically think about the UK's post-Brexit trade policy. Our further analysis suggests that the UK has experienced a significant contraction in its trading capacity in terms of the varieties of goods being exported to the EU due to the TCA, which signify some serious long-term concerns about the UK's future exporting and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the impact of Brexit on financial services employment in the UK. Initial estimates suggested that around 10,000 jobs could relocate from London to other EU financial centres as a result of Brexit. Official statistics show that the total number of job relocations that has taken place to date is lower than these estimates, but concerns have been raised concerning 'missing' financial services jobs as employment growth has been relatively flat since Brexit. We analyse the geographies of these 'missing' jobs and examine the different causes in wholesale and retail banking. Our findings suggest that it is the combination of Brexit alongside the changing nature of financial work itself that best account for 'missing' financial services jobs in the UK. As a result, Brexit is far from done and, in the case of financial services, it is likely to be some time before its full impacts are fully understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the various potential impacts of Brexit on UK regions and outlines the sub-national governance challenges these potential impacts raise. In the light of these, the types of activities that UK sub-national governance bodies have initiated in preparation for Brexit are then reviewed. The conclusions suggest that the UK sub-national institutional system is largely unprepared for the post-Brexit realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political economy of Brexit generates new challenges for the UK's national business model and for European capitalism more broadly. Two symposia examine the implications of the UK's withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas. These symposia contribute to two main bodies of academic literature: the political economy literature on varieties of capitalism, with a specific focus on the UK, and the political economy literature on key economic policy areas of the EU. This short introduction to the first symposium first outlines the key features of the British variety of capitalism and highlight the main questions raised by Brexit in that respect. It then summarises the main findings of the papers of the first symposium and tease out some common themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the public discourses on Polish migration in the UK have rapidly turned hostile, especially in the context of economic crisis in 2008, and subsequently after the EU referendum in 2016. While initially Poles have been perceived as a ‘desirable’ migrant group and labelled as ‘invisible’ due to their whiteness, this perception shifted to the representation of these migrants as taking jobs from British workers, putting a strain on public services and welfare. While racist and xenophobic violence has been particularly noted following the Brexit vote, Polish migrants experienced various forms of racist abuse before that. This paper draws on narrative interviews with Polish migrant women illustrating their experiences of racism and xenophobia in Greater Manchester before and after the Brexit vote, and how they make sense of anti-Polish discourses and attitudes. This paper illustrates the importance of the interplay between the media and political discourses, class, race and the local context in shaping relations between Polish migrants and the local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from six rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS), between 2004 and 2016, to examine attitudes towards European integration across countries. Using both individual responses and country-level variables, we analyse factors influencing Euroscepticism; how these factors are changing over time; and whether they may signal a latent potential for Brexit-like outcomes in different countries. Controlling for a unique combination of demographic, political and macroeconomic factors, we find individuals with higher levels of income and education, and those with more left-leaning political views to be more supportive of European integration, while those who are older and right-leaning to be less supportive. Using predicted values from our empirical analysis, we find median voters' attitudes diverging across European countries over time, with an increasing number of countries moving closer to the threshold values observed among voters in the United Kingdom in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience is one of the most popular and yet ambiguous topics in the social sciences. It has been examined not only in an individual sense but also in relation to communities. The European Union (EU) has faced several crises in the 2000s that have shown the level of resilience of EU societies. This paper discusses community resilience within the framework of the EU's recent crises to examine how EU societies have coped with adversity. Specifically, it analyses competences and common policies at the EU level in relation to resilience and crises within the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]