For Zoe Adams Green ‘The EU was my oyster’. Joining Michaela down the line from Italy, she describes her love affair with Europe, and her experiences moving around the EU seeking work and latterly starting a family, opportunities that will be out of reach for future generations of British citizens once they lose their rights to Freedom of Movement. As a campaigner for citizens’ rights through her work for British in Europe, she explains the potential far-reaching consequences of Brexit for the B...
Aug 28, 2020•25 min
British migration to the Spanish coastline is only part of the story about British emigration to Spain. In this episode Michaela is joined down the line by Michael Harris, British in Europe steering committee member, founder of Eurocitizens, who has been living in Madrid for close to 40 years. He shares his migration story, from fleeing Thatcher’s Britain to living in Spain in the 1980s, the conditions and circumstances which shaped this. He draws out his understanding of what it means to be Eur...
Aug 14, 2020•24 min
A lesser known story of British migration to the EU is how it interplays with social mobility. In this episode, Michaela is joined by Fiona Godfrey, co-chair of British in Europe, a resident of Luxembourg to bust the myth that British citizens living in Europe are wealthy and originate in the south England. They discuss her migration biography from Barnsley to Luxembourg, an intimate family history of the precariousness of citizenship rights, and the multiple challenges of advocating for the rig...
Jul 31, 2020•30 min
We’re travelling to Poland today, as Michaela talks with Steve Davies, who is studying for his PhD in Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to Brexit, Steve introduces us to a lesser known story of intra-EU mobility: the migration and settlement of British citizens in Poland. He highlights how Poland’s history, its position within the EU shapes migration and British experiences of life there; and reflects on how British-Polish families, a success of Europe...
Jul 03, 2020•22 min
Recorded earlier this year, in the episode Michaela talks with Lisa in France. In her thirties and married to a French man, she talks about what the EU has meant for her and her life. Moving within Europe as a student and in the first stages of her career, she eventually settled in France with her husband. But this was never the firm plan, just the outcome of changing jobs and personal circumstances. And there were moments when moving to the UK might also have been on the cards, including in the...
Jun 19, 2020•23 min
In the wake of the Brexit referendum, British citizens living across Europe started to come together in an unprecedented way, concerned about what Brexit might mean for their future legal status. In this episode, Michaela is joined by Jane Golding, co-chair of British in Europe to talk about the grassroots legal advocacy work on the future rights of British citizens living in the EU26 that they have been doing since the Brexit referendum. They discuss the movements pan-European journey from the ...
Jun 05, 2020•27 min
It’s the second of this week’s double-bill to mark the release of our latest reports! Michaela and Karen discuss the report drawing across three years of researching Brexit in the lives of Britons living in France. They talk about making sense of the ongoing uncertainty that Brexit has introduced to the lives of many Britons in France, and what this might tell us about how the negotiations and their impacts on the human lives at the core of citizens’ rights might have been managed differently. T...
Mar 06, 2020•31 min
This week we’re bringing you a double-bill to mark the release of our latest reports. In this first episode, Michaela is joined by Karen to talk about her report drawing across three years of researching Brexit in the lives of Britons living in Spain. They discuss the importance of locating Brexit within the context and conditions of British migration and settlement in Spain over time; the ongoing confusion about what Brexit means for their lives and futures; and the ever-present spectre of ster...
Mar 06, 2020•27 min
Recorded in Berlin in November 2019, in this episode Michaela is joined by Christy Kulz, Technical University Berlin and Christine Barwick, Centre Marc Bloch, to talk about the migration of British citizens to Berlin. We disturb some of the reductive narratives about the British in Berlin, in particular, understandings that see them solely as the young, creative industry workers. We question instead what the migration of these younger Britons reveals about contemporary urban and economic transfo...
Feb 28, 2020•28 min
Sticking with the theme of Brexit and Ireland, Michaela is joined by Vikki Barry Brown, a PhD candidate from Queen Mary, University of London, to talk about Irish passports, English and Irish identities, and Brexit. They discuss the rise in applications of Irish passport following Brexit and how the significance placed on this by those claiming these passports (through ancestry) extends beyond pragmatic and legal issues, into questions of identity, the experience a site for uncovering previously...
Feb 07, 2020•25 min
Since the recording of this podcast, the election returned a majority Conservative government in Westminster which has since passed the Withdrawal Agreement for leaving the EU. A transition period, lasting at least until the end of 2020, should mean British citizens in EU countries will retain their current rights until at least that period. If you are worried about your situation, you can get advice from independent organisations such as the Immigrant Council of Ireland ( https://www.immigrantc...
Jan 24, 2020•33 min
Our first episode of 2020, and it’s a throwback to a live recording of presentation that Michaela and Karen gave to colleagues at a conference in Umeå, Sweden. They offer some reflections on the practice of doing research with British citizens living in the EU27 over the course of the Brexit negotiations. As they draw out the complex picture of how these Britons navigate protracted uncertainty, they reflect on a set of key themes emerging from the project. In particular, they discuss the sociolo...
Jan 10, 2020•32 min
This episode sees Michaela joined by Adrienne Yong, lecturer at City Law School (https://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/adrienne-yong), to talk legal perspectives on Brexit and citizens’ rights. Adrienne offers her analysis of what case law reveals about shifts within legal understandings of EU citizenship. She charts the trajectory of EU citizenship from its base in market citizenship—where the rights of citizenship are in the service of economic integration within the Union—towards an approac...
Dec 20, 2019•28 min
In the latest of our episodes focussed on Brexit in the real lives of British citizens living in the EU27 , Michaela is joined over the Internet by Debbie Williams, founder of BrExpats Hear our Voice ( https://brexpatshov.com ). She explains how she went from never having been involved in politics beyond voting to founding this group that has had an increasing presence in campaigns for citizens’ rights. They discuss her concerns about the ways in which the human cost of Brexit has been overlooke...
Dec 13, 2019•26 min
In this episode, Michaela is joined by Lorenza Antonucci (University of Birmingham) and Simone Varriale (University of Lincoln). They discuss the conclusions of their recent paper Unequal Europe, Unequal Brexit ( https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/portal/files/69623578/Antonucci_Varriale_Unequal_Europe_Current_Sociology_2019.pdf ). In particular, they focus on their call to recognise that an understanding of the inequalities at the heart of Brexit need to account for Britain’s position within the...
Dec 06, 2019•30 min
What does Brexit mean for young British citizens living in the EU who have never known anything other than being European? In this episode, Michaela is joined over the Internet by Molly (in Spain) and Naomi (in Germany), campaigners for Young European Voices ( https://twitter.com/youngeuvoices ). Both in their twenties, they describe what Freedom of Movement has done for them and their families, their emerging sense of themselves as European in response to Brexit and their increased interest and...
Nov 29, 2019•25 min
This episode sees Michaela and Chantelle return to understanding the racialised exclusions at the heart of Britishness and other European national identities. They talk with Bel Parnell-Berry ( https://project-parnell.com ) who lives in the Netherlands. Drawing on the work she does as the programme manager for the European Race and Imagery Foundation ( https://erifonline.org ), Sinterklass and other practices of blackface across Europe, she talks about the exclusion of people of colour from imag...
Nov 15, 2019•31 min
Michaela is joined by Annette Schrauwen, Professor of European Integration at the University of Amsterdam ( https://www.uva.nl/profiel/s/c/a.a.m.schrauwen/a.a.m.schrauwen.html?1572365609704 ), the co-author of the 2017 report commissioned by the City of Amsterdam outlining the possible routes for guaranteeing the future rights of British citizens living in the city ( https://www.uva.nl/shared-content/subsites/amsterdam-centre-for-european-law-and-governance/en/news/2017/07/brexit-report-amsterda...
Nov 01, 2019•24 min
Ian lives in Sweden and crosses the Öresund Bridge on a daily basis for his job in Denmark. As a cross-border worker what does Brexit mean for him and others like him, now and in the future? And what does it mean for the cross border rights—pensions, healthcare, sick leave, workers rights—based on European citizenship that have been the foundation for so many cross border workers? This episode is part of a set of episodes that we have released throughout the project that focus on the human face ...
Oct 18, 2019•22 min
In today’s podcast special, Michaela and Karen get together to reflect on (some of) the sociological takeaways from the project. And it’s a really tour de force! Get ready to hear them tackle the problems at the heart of the perennial question—why don’t they just go back to Britain?—that has become all too familiar to many Britons living in Europe in a time of Brexit. They return to questions of Britain and Britishness, citizenship and racism. And in their latest discussion of bordering they hig...
Oct 10, 2019•47 min
One of the notable consequences of Brexit has been the rapid rise of transnational campaign groups lobbying for the rights of British citizens living in the EU26. Such political mobilisation of the British population across Europe is unprecedented, although understandable given the challenges that Brexit presents to their lives. However, as Michaela discusses with Jeremy MacClancy (Professor in Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University), political participation by British citizens living in the EU...
Oct 04, 2019•28 min
In this episode Michaela talks over the line with Aoife O’Donoghue, Professor of International Law and Global Governance, Durham University ( https://www.dur.ac.uk/law/staff/display/?id=5868 ) and Colin Murray, Reader in Public Law at Newcastle University ( https://www.ncl.ac.uk/nuls/staff/profile/colinmurray.html#background ), about the special relationship between Britain and Ireland and in particular, the Common Travel Area. The CTA has meant that Irish citizens living the UK and British citi...
Sep 20, 2019•38 min
In this episode, Michaela is joined on the line by Christine Barwick (Centre Marc Bloch, Humboldt University) to talk about her and her students’ recent research with British citizens living in Berlin. They focus in particular on how working with British citizens who live in cities opens up our understandings of who the British citizens are who live in Europe, how lifestyle interplays with other reasons for migration, and the absence of a British community. And as they discuss, Brexit has furthe...
Sep 06, 2019•29 min
Returning to a familiar theme of European and Europeanness, Michaela talks with guest Hannah White. Over the past two years, Hannah has been cycling around Europe on her bike, talking with ordinary Europeans about what being European means to them for the her project Outsider: journey through a changing Europe (URL: https://www.theoutsider.blog/about). We talk about how this has challenged her taken for granted understanding of European belonging. From Europe as a political project, to understan...
Aug 23, 2019•25 min
In this episode Michaela is joined by Helen McCarthy, a researcher at MPI Europe and PhD candidate at Middlesex University. Recorded in the week that Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, they revisit Helen’s work about how Spanish officials were preparing for Brexit’s impacts on British retirees, draw out the different conditions and circumstances that support British lives in Spain and consider how these variously may shape the outcomes of Brexit—including in the case of No Deal—for individuals...
Aug 09, 2019•29 min
In this conversation with Sean Rowlands, who was born and brought up abroad, moving to London to attend university, Michaela discusses the family ties between Britain and the EU. Through his perspective drawn from moving between countries, living in the EU and beyond, they discuss Brexit and what this means for his family. They discuss how his sense of belonging is informed by his relationship to people and places in Britain and beyond, zoning in on questions of Britishness and Europeanness. And...
Jul 26, 2019•28 min
In this episode Michaela reflects back on the Brexit Brits Abroad research project, drawing out some of its key take away messages. She talks through the different factors that shape how Brexit has been experienced by British citizens living in the EU-27: the terms and conditions on which their lives rest, their place of residence, their local and international connections and relationship, their social position, and their physical and mental health. As she explains, the case of what Brexit mean...
Jun 21, 2019•27 min
Michaela welcomes back Aliyyah Ahad (Migration Policy Institute Europe) to talk about her recent Policy Briefing about the issues Brexit presents for British families living in the EU-27. This is a population about which there is very limited knowledge and understanding. She starts by explaining the significant evidence gaps in understanding the scale of this demographic, and the diversity of family arrangements that exist among them—including those in relationships with third-country nations; s...
Jun 07, 2019•21 min
Michaela is joined by Djordje Sredanovic, Newton International Fellow at the University of Manchester. They talk about his recent research into the impact of Brexit on the experiences and orientations toward naturalisation in particular, the meaning and significance placed on this by British citizens living in Belgium. He describes how discussions over whether to apply for naturalisation are complex, at once pragmatic and caught up in deeper questions about Britishness, Europeanness, identity an...
May 24, 2019•37 min
This week, we’re bringing you something a bit different. Recorded at the recent British Sociological Association conference, Michaela and Chantelle present their recently published work on what Brexit means to British People of Colour living in the EU27. This shifts focus to their experiences of Brexit and how this is located in personal histories of institutional, structural, state and everyday racism. As they argue, placing these narratives centerstage deepens understandings of the relationshi...
May 09, 2019•17 min
