Young, Sara; (2024) Resisting the anti-migrant narrative: the perspective of Polish-born teenagers living in the UK. Presented at: European Migrants in the UK in the Brexit Era: Discursive Approaches, Liverpool, UK.

Preview

Slideshow Resisting the anti-migrant narrative.Liverpool 12-06-24.pdf - Accepted Version Download (589kB) | Preview

Abstract

While much of the literature on European Union (EU) migration, especially that from Eastern Europe, has focused on the viewpoints of adult migrants, there is a growing recognition that narratives of children offer another perspective on the experience of migration in the time of Brexit. Unlike adults, children are rarely agentive in the decision to migrate, but find themselves obliged to adapt to a new environment, a new language and also education system. However, their discourses may be those of resistance, challenging the dominant discourses to which they are exposed. Like adults, children who have migrated with their families are also subjected to anti-migrant hostility, but here often coming via the school playground or even within the classroom. Research I conducted in 2016 on the brink of the Referendum focused on a group of Polish-born young teenagers (aged 11-16) living in the UK. Aiming to explore their ethno-linguistic identity construction in the light of the Brexit Referendum, the study consisted primarily of narrative interviews, where the children were invited to discuss their experiences of migrating to the UK. The stories they constructed highlighted multiple instances of overt anti-EU migrant hostility, encountered both at school and in the wider environment. While the incidents were upsetting to the participants, within the narratives they constructed, the children provided a counter to such anti-migrant discourses, with stories that showed them challenging the prevalent discourses of Poles coming to ‘steal jobs’, or having no right to be in the UK. This was reflected partly through the discursive practices through which the children positioned themselves within their narratives as agentive in their movements. The children’s agentive positioning was also reflected in their language practices. Language has often been used as a proxy for more overt forms of racism; linguistic xenophobia against Poles, amongst others, had become especially prevalent at that time. In the way they used Polish to make themselves visible, refusing to be silenced when talking in Polish, and resisting efforts – including by their parents – to be positioned as ‘English’, the children can be seen as subverting the dominant discourse, asserting their right to be seen as Polish as much as British. They thereby presented themselves as Poles who were proud of their birth identity, but with a legitimate right to be in the UK, asserting their heritage background alongside constructing new lives for themselves in the new country. The children’s attitude contrasts sharply with the more passive-victim approach that had previously been observed amongst adult Polish communities. Moreover, while scholarship on the experiences of Eastern European migrants to the UK during the Brexit era reported on what was seen as the explosion of anti-migrant hostility that emerged post-Referendum, this study shows that it was very much in evidence prior to the Referendum, as experienced by children. By highlighting this, and focusing on an under-researched group of participants, demonstrating the agentive way in which they strive to present themselves, this paper therefore offers a significant contribution to work in migration in the Brexit era.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONCSVXML

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item