Popular imaginative geographies and Brexit: Evidence from Mass Observation

Nick Clarke,Jonathan Moss

doi:10.1111/tran.12444

Abstract

The EU Referendum of 2016 was one of the most significant events in recent British political history. It is widely recognised that citizens engaged with the referendum through understandings of Britain, the EU, the world, and their place in it. This study complements existing research where such understandings have been inferred from citizens’ demographic characteristics, the characteristics of their localities/regions, or elite discourses. It builds on existing research where a more direct engagement with citizens’ understandings has been achieved through interviews or focus groups, allowing the content of understandings to be thickly described. To these latter studies, this paper makes three main contributions. First, it focuses on popular imaginative geographies, which are conceptualised drawing on literatures in Geography and Political Science as fast‐thinking heuristics. Second, it brings new evidence to the conversation in the form of volunteer writing for Mass Observation. Third, the focus is on the content of popular imaginative geographies, but also how and why such geographies were used by voters in the referendum. The main findings include that many Leave supporters imagined Britain as an island – either a once great military and imperial power, an island separate from Europe, needing freedom from Europe to engage in the wider world; or a small island, a full container, close to the rest of Europe and vulnerable to mobilities across Europe’s borders. By contrast, many Remain supporters imagined Britain as post‐imperial, small, vulnerable, and under threat of isolation from Europe and exposure to a chaotic, uncertain, dangerous world. Both groups engaged with the referendum through such popular imaginative geographies because the referendum presented voters with a difficult task, the campaigns provided few trustworthy facts, and voters therefore had to rely on cognitive shortcuts, including popular imaginative geographies.

Highlights

INTRODUCTION SinceJune 2016, when a narrow majority of eligible British citizens voted to leave the European Union, geographers have engaged with Brexit – British exit from the EU – in a variety of ways
The potential consequences of Brexit have been considered for different regions of the UK (Billing et al, 2019), different sectors of the UK economy (Brown et al, 2019; Dobruszkes, 2019; Maye et al, 2018), and different financial centres across Europe (Dorry, 2017; Lavery et al, 2018); the way Brexit has been variously felt and enacted as an event since the referendum has been considered (Anderson et al, 2020); and the experiences of certain groups of citizens have been considered, including non-British citizens living in the UK (Botterill, 2018; Botterill et al, 2018), non-white British citizens living in the UK (Redclift and Rajina, 2019), and British citizens living in other EU Member States (Higgins, 2019; Miller, 2019)
In the rest of this paper, we identify the popular imaginative geographies shaping the views and votes of British citizens regarding Brexit in volunteer writing for Mass Observation

Summary

Introduction

INTRODUCTION SinceJune 2016, when a narrow majority of eligible British citizens voted to leave the European Union, geographers have engaged with Brexit – British exit from the EU – in a variety of ways. To understand the views and votes of British citizens regarding Brexit – which is partly a question about Britain and the EU, self and other, and the relations between these categories – is to identify their imaginative geographies (and the images and narratives from which they are made).

Results

Conclusion