Turning Against Neighbours: The Fortification of the United Kingdom in Representations of Internalised Movements by Non-UK EU Citizens During the Early Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This article challenges the static polarisations between open externalised and closed internalised societies found in liberal paradox models, and shifts to more active understandings of socio-psychological fortification processes. It investigates the remarks of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom (UK) during the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, in particular their representations of internalised movements by non-UK European Union (EU) citizens into the UK. The study illustrates that, even as a member of the EU, UK leaders blurred the distinctions between the rights-based movement of EU citizens, and permission-based non-EU movements of people. The movement of EU citizens into the UK was stigmatised with broader fears about the scarcity of societal health and welfare resources. This was in concert with the propagation of more collective-nationalist normative attachments. UK leaders contributed to the ongoing fortification of UK society in opposition to the EU as a whole.