Migrant NHS nurses as ‘tolerated’ citizens in post-Brexit Britain

Spiliopoulos, Georgia; Timmons, Stephen

Abstract

With this article we present European Union (EU) and non-EU nurses’ lived experiences of feeling ‘unwelcomed’ and ‘unsettled’ in a heightened xenophobic environment, in the workplace and elsewhere, following the 2016 EU Referendum. Brexit has exposed long-standing structural inequalities which oppress and disempower the NHS migrant labour force. Migrant nurses, a highly mobile and skilled workforce, were feeling increasingly disenfranchised and insecure in their employment. Drawing on notions such as tolerated citizenship and the contested political boundaries of belonging, and taking a situated intersectionality approach, we examine everyday bordering practices in the UK where the cultivation of a hostile environment is becoming increasingly prevalent. We contribute to the debates on forms of othering in post-Brexit Britain and question the instrumentality of policy interventions, closely connected to the ‘dangerous politics of immigration control’, which have far-reaching implications for long-term settlement of migrant nurses and other healthcare migrant workers.

Citation

Spiliopoulos, G., & Timmons, S. (2023). Migrant NHS nurses as ‘tolerated’ citizens in post-Brexit Britain. Sociological Review, 71(1), 183-200. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221092199

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 9, 2022
• Online Publication Date: May 12, 2022
• Publication Date: 2023-01
• Deposit Date: Mar 10, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 12, 2022
• Journal: Sociological Review
• Print ISSN: 0038-0261
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-954X
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 71
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 183-200
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221092199
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/7568936
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380261221092199