The New Normal: Racism after Brexit.

Several studies show a clear link between xenophobia and support for Brexit - regardless of voter age, gender, and even education (via). Hutchings and Sullivan (2019) argue that the vote to leave the EU was no surprise given the "increasing negativity regarding immigration" over the past ten years and have no doubt that prejudice was a factor in the Brexit vote.



In other words, racism led to Brexit. However, Brexit is also encouraging people to blatantly display prejudice. According to a survey, ethnic minorities are facing more overt racism since the Brexit referendum (2016: 58%, 2019: 71%). Authors see a causal correlation explaining the trend with the divisive rhetoric used in public by e.g. certain candidates making racist feel more confident in showing abuse and discrimination which again seems to have become the new normal. (via).

What people see is acceptable, they do.
Golec de Zavala

People have those sorts of beliefs in a more or less stable way. That would mean that they had them before Brexit. Those attitudes were made salient by the Leave campaign, and were more likely to mobilise these people.
Golec de Zavala

In recent years the public discourses on Polish migration in the UK have rapidly turned hostile, especially in the context of economic crisis in 2008, and subsequently after the EU referendum in 2016. While initially Poles have been perceived as a ‘desirable’ migrant group and labelled as ‘invisible’ due to their whiteness, this perception shifted to the representation of these migrants as taking jobs from British workers, putting a strain on public services and welfare. While racist and xenophobic violence has been particularly noted following the Brexit vote, Polish migrants experienced various forms of racist abuse before that.
Alina Rzepnikowska

- Hutchings, P. B. & Sullivan, K. E. (2019). Prejudice and the Brexit vote: a tangled web. Palgrave Communications, 5, link
- photograph of The Who by Art Kane via and via and by Colin Jones via