Symposium Introduction: The Paradox of Structure: The UK State, Society and ‘Brexit’

Abstract

Ostensibly motivated by ‘taking back control’, is Brexit an opportunity to enhance the UK's capacity for self-government? If driven by an aspiration to maximise the central state's governing autonomy, it confronts a paradox: governance structures at once enable action and constrain it. Exploring this paradox of structure, this article sets Brexit in long-term perspective. As well as reshaping its external relations, Brexit inevitably unsettles the UK's internal structures, not least in (partly) disentangling he UK state and organised civil society from EU institutions and processes. Equally, those internal structures were themselves rarely static. Brexit has complicated the processes of their flux. The article introduces a symposium which addresses issues of this kind in three important domains: feminist civil society organisations (Minto), Westminster's role and scrutiny of European affairs (Cygan, Lynch and Whitaker) and the legal rights and access to justice of EU migrants under English law (Barnard and Fraser Burton).