With this article we present European Union (EU) and non-EU nurses’ lived experiences of feeling ‘unwelcomed’ and ‘unsettled’ in a heightened xenophobic environment, in the workplace and elsewhere, following the 2016 EU Referendum. Brexit has exposed long-standing structural inequalities which oppress and disempower the NHS migrant labour force. Migrant nurses, a highly mobile and skilled workforce, were feeling increasingly disenfranchised and insecure in their employment. Drawing on notions such as tolerated citizenship and the contested political boundaries of belonging, and taking a situated intersectionality approach, we examine everyday bordering practices in the UK where the cultivation of a hostile environment is becoming increasingly prevalent. We contribute to the debates on forms of othering in post-Brexit Britain and question the instrumentality of policy interventions, closely connected to the ‘dangerous politics of immigration control’, which have far-reaching implications for long-term settlement of migrant nurses and other healthcare migrant workers.
CITATION STYLE
Spiliopoulos, G., & Timmons, S. (2023). Migrant NHS nurses as ‘tolerated’ citizens in post-Brexit Britain. Sociological Review, 71(1), 183–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221092199
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