“I don’t want the world, I want to be able to live in it”: Brexit and belonging in a working-class urban locale in Northern England

The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum represented an important moment in bringing questions about belonging to public attention. Within these debates the notion of the working classes as ‘left behind’ gained particular traction, with it being proposed that it was disaffected and predominantly white residents of deindustrialised towns and cities who delivered the ‘Brexit’ vote based largely on their resentment towards immigration and the impacts of globalisation on labour markets, articulated through a defensive form of nationalism. This thesis investigates the ‘left behind’ arguments and considers to what extent local belonging is raced and classed. Using a place-based approach it explores the ways that local residents variously related to the EU referendum, aiding understandings of the category of whiteness, and how local belonging is impacted by experiences of migrant settlement and policy initiatives surrounding cohesion and integration. The research was conducted with members of an increasingly ethnically and socio-economically diverse urban working-class locality in the North of England, examining their attitudes, beliefs and concerns in relation to Brexit and belonging. The study contributes to the rapidly developing sociology of Brexit literature and theories concerning the ‘left behind’, producing an in-depth analysis of the interplay of race and class. The data was gathered using a qualitative multi-methods approach based on twenty-seven semi-structured interviews, extended participant observation undertaken primarily in a local community centre, and auto-driven photo-elicitation techniques. Drawing on new theories of social class and work critically exploring whiteness, the research explored how residents articulate belonging in relation to the Brexit vote and the nation’s post-referendum future. My findings highlight the significance of both the ideological underpinnings of racism in terms of racialised notions of belonging and entitlement and the material underpinnings of racism in terms of competition over resources. The data further reveals a more complex and multi-dimensional picture of life in working-class communities than is popularly assumed and, from this, the thesis argues that a characterisation of members of the working class as ‘left behind’ is an inadequate conceptualisation and that a focus on the idea of being ‘left out’ of wider society is needed. Unlike the explanation of the ‘left behind’, this avoids blaming the working classes for their marginalisation and deprivation by facilitating recognition of the wider structural causes of growing inequality.