Back of the queue: Brexit, status loss, and the politics of backlash

Abstract

Status anxiety is not a necessary condition for backlash movements, and yet, both are highly complementary. Across political levels, from the community and state to the international system, status anxiety is often cited as a principal grievance and motivator of backlash politics. This article challenges the basic premise behind this framing by arguing that status loss – as a subset of status anxiety – and backlash politics, are essentially co-constitutive phenomena. Status loss can certainly propel backlash movements to form, but claims of status loss and decline are also uniquely exploitable mechanisms for bringing backlash movements into existence. Rather than treat objective status loss as an obvious cause of backlash movements, then, this article switches the focus to how subjective narratives of status loss are constructed, promoted, retrieved, and contested, in order to either advance, or oppose, the cause of backlash entrepreneurs. Doing so illustrates a primary mechanism of backlash politics, but also a primary mechanism of status loss, challenging dominant intrinsic and material premises on the role of status in international relations. This discussion is illustrated through a focus on Britain’s 2016 referendum on the European Union, and the extent to which both Leave and Remain campaigners elevated the rhetoric of status loss in defence of alternative pasts, presents, and futures.