Between cosmopolitanism and nationalism : The rights of EU denizens in the UK

In 2016, following the Brexit referendum, the UK voted to leave the EU (52% against 48%), and with that, the UK commenced the process of withdrawal from the European Union. ‘Leavers’ built their campaign mostly on a nationalistic rhetoric that stressed the importance of recovering the UK’s sovereignty from the EU and controlling its borders from the free movement of EU citizens. The sole idea of EU citizenship was perceived as threatening to the British national identity and the cosmopolitan dimension of EU integration clashed with narrow visions of the nation-state in the UK. In this context, denizens’ rights enacted by EU treaties, specifically, freedom of movement, demonstrated an uncomfortable arrangement in British politics and public opinion. The research examines the political, economic and public opinion factors that led to the initial acceptance and later to the erosion of EU denizens’ rights. It adopts a qualitative approach to the analysis of political, economic and public opinion documents and reports to gain a deeper understanding of the complex phenomena of denizen rights and then uncover patterns, themes and meanings related to the area of investigation. This research argues that the protection of EU denizens’ rights in the UK oscillated between the cosmopolitan dimension of EU integration and narrow visions of the nation-state in Britain. On the one hand, accepting these rights was necessary for the UK to benefit from the economic and capitalist advantages provided by the EU market, and this enabled British industries to access effective reserve labor among the EU workforce. On the other hand, there was a growing perception that those rights were eroding the UK’s national sovereignty and threatening its ability to govern itself. Amid EU integration, when EU denizenship emerged into a powerful status that was overlapping the idea of a British nation-state, EU denizens’ rights became a contested issue that reflects the precariousness of cosmopolitan visions of transnational citizenship.