Brexit with a little ‘b’: navigating belonging, ordinary Brexits, and emotional relations

Abstract

This article analyses senses of belonging and belonging disrupted via the lens of Brexit with a little ‘b’: namely at the level of ordinary experiences in the flow of daily lives. Our interlocutors recount these as deeply emotionally charged experiences. Their accounts supplement and help nuance more widespread popular explanatory models of the referendum vote and its outcomes. Examining brexit through the intersection of belonging and emotion permits new insights into how place became linked in social imaginaries with Leave and Remain. It also permits closer analysis of how senses of belonging are relationally and differentially mediated by other identities, including class, race, ethnicity, and migration status, and how these intersect unevenly with and have a consequence for people's senses of belonging. This includes demonstrating how the privileged sense of belonging of many white middle-class Britons (both Leave- and Remain-supporting) was disrupted and their sense of ontological security jarred, as well as how people navigated the multiple social and cultural outcomes of the referendum in their daily lives, networks of intimate social relations, and local places.