A look behind Brexit

One of the biggest issues facing Britain currently is Brexit. Why 52% of the voting British population want to leave the European Union (EU) is something many ‘remainers’ are yet to understand. The arguments for leaving the EU focused around immigration and controlling the flow of immigrants coming to Britain from other EU countries. As a result, parliamentary constitutions which had a strong net immigration frequently voted in support of Brexit (Arnorsson & Zoega, 2018). But why is it that those with greater contact to immigrants were more likely to vote in support of Brexit with its’ stronger immigration laws than those who have less contact with immigrants?

Cultural research proposes that dominant cultures want immigrants to assimilate to their culture as they feel threatened that the non-dominant culture will alter the dominant culture (Abramitzsky, Boustan & Erikssn, 2017). Ethnocentrism suggests that having a positive evaluation of the ingroup leads to outgroup rejection. In Brexit terms, this suggests that British people evaluated their own culture positively, in turn rejecting the outgroup and the threat of changing the British culture that they posed. This tendency to favour the British in group leads to negative perceptions of immigrants who posed a risk to British culture. This suggests that it is those who live in close proximity to migrants who feel most threatened by them and their cultural differences. This may explain one reason some of the British population voted for Brexit, but should Britain leave the EU in the near future, will people feel less threatened and be less hostile to immigrants? Or will they always hold their views to subcultures in Great Britain? History suggests that by separating cultural groups, the animosity only becomes greater (Esses, Hamilton & Gaucher, 2017) but in this new age where people are connected globally through the use of technology, only time will tell if the same will happen in terms of Brexit.

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References

Abramitzky, R., Boustan, L, P., & Eriksson, K. (2017). Cultural Assimilation During the Age of Mass Migration. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Arnorsson, A., & Zoega, G. (2018). On the causes of Brexit. European Journal of Political Economy.

Esses, Hamilton & Gaucher (2017). The Global Refugee Crisis: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications for Improving Public Attitudes and Facilitating Refugee Resettlement. Social Issues and Policy Review.