About the Project

Living Brexit in rural Britain: migration and rural communities

January 2023 - January 2025

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust 

Rural areas are experiencing dramatic social and economic change. For example, they have become significant sites of international labour migration and, increasingly, asylum seeker and refugee settlement leading to more ethnically diverse rural populations. Our project aims to develop understandings of how Brexit politics and policies interact with wider social, economic and demographic rural changes and affect everyday social life.

While there were variations in how rural regions voted in the 2016 Brexit Referendum, there was nevertheless a higher Leave vote in rural areas compared to the national average. This suggests a relationship between rural areas and Brexit agendas as well as highlighting why it is important to understand rural contexts and the social and economic changes being experienced within them.

It is seven years since the referendum and the three years since the UK left the EU and our project examines what Brexit means for rural areas now and for the way in which rural populations think about the future of their rural localities. Putting the countryside at the centre of analysis the project pays attention to the social consequences of Brexit for different rural communities. It looks at the increasingly shared urban-rural experience of international migration and asks if it makes sense to 'ruralise' what have been more urban-associated ideas such as social cohesion and social inclusion.

Situating itself in community life in small rural towns in England, Wales, and Scotland this project offers a nationally sensitive, place-based investigation of changing rural social relations and the ways in which rural localities are being reshaped after Brexit.