‘I haven’t met one’: disabled EU migrants in the UK. Intersections between migration and disability post-Brexit

ABSTRACT

Historically, disability studies have ignored the experiences of people who migrate, while migration studies frequently excluded disabled people. This is a surprising omission from both fields of study given that many disabled people are migrants, and many migrants are disabled people. There is a clear lack of knowledge about disabled people among migrant populations. Most, if not all, studies in this area focus on disabled people among forced migrant populations; this paper focuses on voluntary migrants from the EU living in the UK during the Brexit transition period. We report findings that are part of a larger qualitative study conducted in 2018–2019 in the north of England. This paper is based on four in-depth interviews with disabled EU migrants and three key informant interviews with representatives from organisations that work with migrant and disabled people. The research findings indicate that disabled EU migrants in the context of Brexit represent some of the most invisible and vulnerable people in the contemporary UK. The contradicting stereotypical perceptions of cheap physical migrant labour (highly classed issue) and disability linked to economic unproductivity, lead to the invisibility of disabled migrants in theory and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• disability
• EU
• intersectionality
• UK

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Hostile environment – this policy was initially aimed at undocumented migrants, those without leave to remain and not aimed at EU migrants advantaged by their EU membership, although this changed in the context of Brexit. In the campaign leading up to the Brexit referendum, anti-immigrant sentiment reached its peak, portraying migrants as undeserving abusers of the British welfare system in an era of austerity (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. 2021).

2 The EU Settlement Scheme (settled and pre-settled status) https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families/applying-for-settled-status.

3 These are pseudonyms chosen by the research participants.

4 The delay in the analysis was caused by two maternity breaks of the researcher who conducted the original study.

5 Fact Sheets on the European Union – European Parliament – Free movement of persons https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/147/free-movement-of-persons.

Additional information

Funding

This was funded by a Kickstart Grant from the Sociological Review Foundation.