Fuzzy Frontiers? Testing the Fluidity of National, Partisan and Brexit Identities in the Aftermath of the 2016 Referendum

John Kenny,Lindsay Richards,Anthony Heath

doi:10.1177/00323217211050001

John Kenny, Lindsay Richards + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211050001

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Abstract

British and English national identities have long been considered to have porous boundaries whereby English individuals consider the terms more or less interchangeable. However, there is no empirical evidence to demonstrate whether primary feelings of either Britishness or Englishness are highly fluid within-individuals or whether individuals are consistent in their perceptions of their British or English identity. This is especially relevant in the post-Brexit referendum context where national identity is highly correlated with Brexit attitudes. Using panel data, we demonstrate that there is a notable degree of fluidity between identifying as British or English. This is higher than the fluidity between other national identities in the UK as well as more fluid than moving between any partisan or EU referendum identities. Remainers are more fluid than Leavers in their Englishness, whereas they are similar in the fluidity of their Britishness.

Highlights

Cultural issues over identity, national identities, appear to have been an important part of the mix of issues involved in Brexit (Chan et al, 2020)
We draw on new panel data to examine the fluidity – that is, the extent of people’s readiness to switch back and forth between different options (Fisher and Swyngedouw, 2002; Heath et al, 1991)1 – of national identities in the UK in the aftermath of the referendum, and in particular to examine whether the ‘fuzziness’ of the distinction between Englishness and Britishness still holds true, and whether an emerging sense of Englishness is a major driver of continuing support for Brexit or whether instead Englishness reflects prior attitudes towards Brexit
Between wave 1 and 2, for instance, 24% of respondents who had a primary English identity in wave 1 switched to a primary British identity in wave 2 and the figure going in the opposite direction from British to English was 12%

Summary

Introduction

National identities, appear to have been an important part of the mix of issues involved in Brexit (Chan et al, 2020). We show that there is a notable degree of fluidity within-individuals between primarily identifying as British or English in subsequent time periods The level of this fluidity has not hardened or softened during the course of Brexit negotiations and is considerably more fluid than either partisan or EU referendum identities. This latter finding somewhat supports earlier accounts of the fuzziness of the boundary between British and English identities – for which we provide additional empirical evidence using data from 1997 to 2001 – and differs somewhat as the level of fluidity between these two identities is not high enough for these to be regarded as completely interchangeable. Additional evidence indicates that the causal direction is more likely to run from Brexit preferences to choice of British/English identity rather than the other way round

Literature

Results

Wave 1:2 Wave 2:3 Wave 3:4 Wave 4:5 Wave 5:6 Wave 6:7 Wave 7:8

Conclusion