Was the Brexit Referendum A Product of Nationalist Anxieties over Immigration, and Have Evolving Narratives of Nationalism Continued to Shape the Perceptions of Belonging Among People in Post-Brexit Britain? | RISE Research

This paper reframes the 2016 Brexit referendum, arguing that the Leave vote was not primarily a rational economic or sovereignty decision but an identity-forming moment in which nationalist narratives gave coherence to a range of disparate grievances. Situating the vote within longer historical and cultural patterns of British identity, the study contends that surface concerns about immigration expressed deeper anxieties about cultural loss, globalisation and the erosion of sovereignty. It draws on theories of ethnic and civic nationalism alongside Social Identity Theory to explain how nationalist rhetoric recast complex policy problems as questions of belonging and exclusion, dividing a 'British' in-group from a 'European' out-group. Two case studies anchor the analysis: the 'Breaking Point' poster, read as ethnic-exclusionary messaging, and the 'Take Back Control' campaign, read as a civic-sovereignty appeal; the paper shows how the two registers converged to mobilise voters. A historical section traces Britain's uneasy relationship with the EEC and EU from 1975 onward, including the Maastricht Treaty and the post-2004 wave of EU migration, to explain how immigration became politically salient. The paper further argues that the colonial legacy and Commonwealth ties continue to shape a national identity bound up with superiority and control. Its wider contribution is to use Brexit as a lens on the international resurgence of populist nationalism and the challenges this poses for multicultural democracies, documenting how fear of immigration became a vehicle for struggles over sovereignty and 'Britishness'. The paper ultimately treats Brexit as a case study in how nationalism converts diffuse economic and cultural discontent into a politics of belonging, with lessons that extend well beyond Britain to other democracies facing populist movements built on immigration anxiety.