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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Cathrine DegnenORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Boston is a town located in the rural east of England that returned the largest Leave vote. Boston is therefore an iconic place embroiled in public political and social scientific commentaries about Brexit, the white English working class, the so-called ‘left behind’, and their perceived attitudes towards immigration. This chapter scrutinises those debates from the perspective of white English residents living in Boston, drawing upon residential ethnography undertaken during 2019-20 and further interviews conducted during the pandemic. The chapter paints a complicated picture of everyday anti-immigrant xenophobia co-existing alongside convivial discourses of empathy and solidarity with EU migrants. It is then through these non-elite cosmopolitanisms that new antagonisms and solidarities are being generated which, while embryonic, may be constitutive of new identities and futures that are inclusive of EU migrants. Consequently, the transposition of the ‘left behind’ narrative onto Boston provides a partial and distorted view that fixes its residents in place in a particular moment in time. Instead, reading place relationally helps to understand how white English residents are not simply reactionary but are engaging in more outward-looking articulations of what their town should stand for in the post-Brexit and post-pandemic future.
Author(s): Blamire J, Tyler K, Degnen C
Editor(s): Tyler, K; Degnen C; Banducci S
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times : Fractured Lives in Britain
Year: 2025
Pages: 179-205
Print publication date: 05/03/2025
Online publication date: 05/03/2025
Acceptance date: 20/09/2024
Publisher: Routledge
Place Published: London
URL: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003454137-9
DOI: 10.4324/9781003454137-9
Notes: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/98921 9781003454137 ebook ISBN.
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781032593159
