Belonging after 'Brexit'? Exploring the effects of political uncertainty in the everyday lives of young Poles

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This research proposes to explore the relationship between political uncertainty and belonging byconsidering what it means to be a young Polish migrant in 'Brexit' Britain. It will address the impact of'Brexit' and the accompanying anti-migrant narrative, exploring to what extent this creates a barrier tobelonging for young Poles. It will examine their everyday lives considering their location intranslocal/transnational networks and it will seek to understand what 'belonging' means for youngmigrants. The research will focus on young Polish migrants aged 16-24 who came to the UK as children,using narrative and semi-structured interviews, in conjunction with visual elicitation and participantobservation, to explore in-depth experiences of their migration journeys to date, as well as their currentlived realities. Participants will be initially recruited via the SMART (Supporting Migrants, AsylumSeekers and Refugees Together) programme in Newcastle with snowball sampling being used to recruitfurther respondents. The research will be conducted within the North East of England, a region whichoverwhelmingly voted to leave the EU; only the city of Newcastle voted to remain. At 19,000, althoughthe overall number of Polish born residents is small (Hawkins and Moses, 2016), it is a region thatremains relatively ethnically homogenous with little overall experience of immigration. This study seeksto build on previous research into the impact of 'Brexit' upon young migrants by examining how youngPoles experience the effects of political uncertainty in their everyday lives.