Abstract
In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016, the question of migration has been at the forefront of attempts to understand what happened, and in particular why working class communities in many of the regions of England, and in parts of Wales, voted predominantly for the Leave side. Polling data show a weak correlation between areas of the country that voted for Leave and high levels of inward migration from the rest of the EU. The link between immigration and Brexit is very clear in East Anglian agricultural towns like Boston and Wisbech, but otherwise is weak. South Wales and the North East of England, which also saw clear majorities for Leave, are not areas of high EU migration. Instead, they are regions that have experienced successive waves of deindustrialisation since the 1980s. The overriding issue raised by the Brexit vote, in my view, is not migration as such (although that is part of the story), but a wider phenomenon of deepening economic insecurity, and the dangerous political dynamic it has created.
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