Free Movement of Labour and Brexit: Reclaiming National Sovereignty or a Victory for Xenophobia?

Abstract

20 | International Union Rights | 23/4 REPORT | BREXIT Free Movement of Labour and Brexit: Reclaiming National Sovereignty or a Victory for Xenophobia? In a timely essay in the aftermath of Brexit, the great Egyptian Marxist scholar, Samir Amin, addresses the key issue of what is meant by ‘national sovereignty’ by posing the question: National sovereignty: for what purpose?1. At first glance, ‘national sovereignty’ in an age of globalising economic forces may seem something of an anachronism. Amin however makes the important distinction between what he terms a national ‘sovereignty…in the service of… financialised monopolies’ and what by contrast, is a ‘positive nationalism’, within a ‘framework defined by the (‘nation’) State’. The nation State, is still the key arena where the ‘decisive struggles that transform the world unfold’. A ‘positive nationalism’, therefore, in contrast to insular reactionary nationalism, is both ‘popular’ and ‘democratic’. Its content is defined against, in the first instance, national ruling elites and involves ‘decisive struggles’ for democratic rights. Such struggles also have the inherent potential to interlink with other national struggles of a similar democratic and popular nature. So understood, internationalism is therefore part and parcel of asserting a different kind of ‘national sovereignty’. This narrative of ‘reclaiming’ national sovereignty as a ‘project that is popular, social and democratic’ offers a more nuanced understanding perhaps of why many in the UK voted to leave the European Union in the referendum of June 2016. The Brexit vote is emphatically characterised as a vote for closing borders against ‘foreigners’. This entails ending the European Union’s mandatory requirement for all member States to accept ‘free movement of persons’ with the right to live and work in any member State. Control over who enters, who leaves, who has the right to remain and under which conditions is, of course, the most fundamental marker of national sovereignty. Free movement of persons in this light can be seen as fundamentally undermining national sovereignty. The Brexit vote thus could be seen as an assertion of the desire to reclaim control over national borders, for mistaken reasons or otherwise. The referendum vote is an expression of opposition to the European Union perceived as a super-State which seeks to obliterate national borders. Yet to reassert the prerogatives of the nation State is not necessarily to embrace a reactionary nationalism which seeks to scapegoat foreigners, immigrants and non-nationals as the ‘Other’. A democratic national politics stand in sharp opposition to the remote and supra-national European Union, and especially to the unelected and politically unaccountable European Commission, characterised in Amin’s words, as an ‘absolute denial of democracy’ and ‘incapable’ of reform. Prevailing austerity policies at a pan-European level serving the interests of ‘financialised monopolies’ were decisively rejected by many ‘Leave’ voters in the context of the UK where national elites, in the service of the City of London, have vigorously implemented their own ‘competitive austerity’ programmes since the global crash, under both Labour and Conservative-led coalitions. In the backwash of the global financial and economic crisis, austerity at the behest of the European Commission and the European Central Bank, with the notable temporary exception of Greece, was willingly or otherwise implemented by national governments throughout the Eurozone area. Restoring the economic health of the European economy, simultaneously ruled out policies of industrial investment as well as State-led interventions that could generate jobs and growth. Thus, a rejection of the current European project is a rejection of ever-encroaching EU interventions in domestic policy decision-making and the grip of tight disciplinary fiscal powers which have eroded the economic independence of member States. The Brexit vote is therefore also about the desire to regain control over national economic direction and decision-making. In this reading, it aims at creating a more democratic form of national economic policy and more responsive democratic forums at national and regional levels (Scotland being a case in point), which ordinary people feel they have some say in, rather than being an expression of simple-minded ‘anti-immigrant’ sentiment. Yet undoubtedly, the heart of the matter in the British referendum vote – the hinge issue – was the question of the free movement of labour to the...