Anti-immigrant xenophobia alongside non-elite cosmopolitanisms in Britain's most 'pro-Brexit' town

Boston is a town located in the rural east of England that returned the largest Leave vote in the 2016 EU Referendum. 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 2019–2020 and further interviews conducted during the covid-19 pandemic. The chapter paints a complicated picture of everyday anti-immigrant xenophobia coexisting alongside convivial discourses of empathy and solidarity with EU migrants. It then illustrates how through these non-elite cosmopolitanisms 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.

Citation

Blamire, J., Tyler, K. and Degnen, C. (2025) Anti-immigrant xenophobia alongside non-elite cosmopolitanisms in Britain's most 'pro-Brexit' town, in Tyler, K., Banducci, S. & Degnen, C. (eds.) Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times Fractured Lives in Britain. London: Routledge, pp. 179-205.

Type

Chapter in book

Language

en

Description

ISBN

9781003454137

Collections

Institute for Community Research and Development