Post-geography worlds, new dominions, left behind regions, and ‘other’ places: unpacking some spatial imaginaries of the UK’s ‘Brexit’ debate

Abstract

The UK’s 2016 EU referendum and its aftermath have seen the eruption back into mainstream political and media discourse of spatial language and representations. As commentators, politicians and citizens have sought to make sense of the splintering and convulsion occasioned by the referendum, a spatial imaginary and lexicon has emerged–for example, referencing ‘left behind places’ populated by ‘left behind’ citizens, and contrasting these with ‘metropolitan cores’ and ‘metropolitan elites’. Informed by this the present paper identifies and unpacks some of the spatial imaginaries foregrounded in the UK’s ‘European debate’ and the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum.