Living with Brexit: Families, relationships and everyday personal life in 'Brexit Britain' Katherine Davies, University of Sheffield

Event details

Department of Sociology Seminar Series

It is often asserted that Brexit has had a divisive and destructive impact on personal relationships,
yet little sociological attention has been given to the lived experiences of families in ‘Brexit Britain’. Drawing on an ESRC funded study that traces how families are making their way through these troubled times, this paper argues that it is necessary to explore the ways that Brexit is entangled with people’s existing lives and relationships. Data generated through repeated ‘ethnographic encounters’ with a small number of families over time - including biographical interviews, ‘Gogglebox’-style television elicitation, diary keeping and ‘hanging out’ - highlights the ways that Brexit is woven into the fabric of everyday family practices such as mundane interactions, tactile embodied intimacies, humorous exchanges, domestic chores and leisure time. The paper demonstrates how Brexit is experienced within family relationships, emphasising the ways Brexit maps onto existing webs of relationships, sometimes enhancing feelings of connection, sometimes exacerbating perceived differences. Other times Brexit is
experienced as a more fleeting presence, existing on the periphery of or bubbling beneath family life, coming to light in moments of heightened activity in Westminster or personally significant moments such as a family event. In directing the sociological gaze towards the continuity of everyday life in Brexit Britain rather than focusing on disruption, the paper offers anuanced understanding of the emotional,
relational and day-to-day realities of living with Brexit.