A Country Divided? Polarisation and Identity After Brexit

The objective of this project is to examine what shapes Brexit identities and how they are evolving over time.  The EU referendum left Britain a politically divided country: ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’ became new political and social identities that still shape how people view politics, and each other. Research over the last few years has demonstrated large social divisions along Brexit lines and a partial realignment of British party politics. Yet we still know very little about what shapes and reinforces these new Brexit identities and why these identities so central for some people, but tangential for others.

Thus, the aim of this project is to delve deeper into the nature of Brexit identities and how they respond to changing political and economic consequences. The greater the resilience of these identities, the greater the potential negative effects on democratic dialogue and legitimacy. To the extent that Brexit identities are rooted in a deeper societal divide about cultural values, such polarisation may persist far into the future even as the meaning of the labels grows ever more obscure. Equally, now that Britain has left the EU and other issues have grown in importance, it also seems reasonable to expect that these identities may become less important to most people. Either way, we need to understand how these identities change, and crucially we need to understand who remains attached to their Brexit identity. We thus want to address two sets of research questions:

• How are Brexit identities evolving over time? In what ways do Brexit identities, and related attitudes, respond to a changing political and economic environment?
• What makes some people remain more attached to their Brexit identity than others? How do individual personality traits, social networks and the social media environment shape attachment to, and the emotional intensity of, these identities?

We want to provide new fundamental insights into the nature of political identities and how these identities change. Our core argument is that to understand the long-term impact of Brexit divisions on British society, it is not sufficient, although it is clearly necessary, to simply track how many people identify as ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’. Knowing the size of these groups is important, but we also need to track the strength, and emotional intensity, of these identities, and assess what affects how these identities alter over time.

First, we want to apply insights from social psychology about the role of fundamental personality traits in shaping identity attachment and resilience. We do not intend to use personality traits to explain who is on one side or the other, but rather use these traits to explain identity retention and identity strength.

Second, we know that affective polarisation is related to ‘filter bubbles’ and ‘echo chambers’ as people become unwilling to engage (in person or online) with people from the other side. We therefore also explore how identities are retained, and again become entrenched, via the homogeneity of social, geographical and social media networks.

Finally, we are interested in how material self-interest affects identity change. To this end, we want to examine how real world changes, specifically focussed on people who we know are better off or worse off because of Brexit, affect political identities.

Principal investigator

Professor Sara B. Hobolt
Sutherland Chair in European Institutions

Researchers

• Professor James Tilley | University of Oxford (co-investigator)
• Katharina Lawall | LSE
• Nick Lewis | LSE

ORAs

• Albert Ward | University of Oxford
• Rachel Darby | University of Oxford

Project details

Project duration: 2 years

Project funder: ESRC / UK in a Changing Europe