Popular explanations of the Brexit vote have centred on the division between cosmopolitan internationalists who voted Remain, and geographically-rooted individuals who voted Leave. Katy Morris, Neil Lee, and Thomas Kemeny (LSE) write that residential immobility also matters. They explain why those living in their county of birth were more likely to support Leave. However, the impact of immobility was filtered by local circumstances: immobility only mattered for respondents living in areas experiencing relative economic decline or increases in migrant populations.
One of the most popular explanations of the Brexit vote to emerge in 2017 centred on the division between two apparently distinct British tribes: Somewheres and Anywheres. In his best-selling book The Road to Somewhere, David Goodhart draws on a longer tradition of scholarship on localism and cosmopolitanism to identify two economically and culturally dissimilar groups within British society: locally-oriented, geographically-rooted Somewheres who voted to leave the European Union, and mobile, internationally-oriented Anywheres who voted to remain within the EU.
The notion of geographical mobility (or the absence thereof) lies at the heart of this apparent social and political cleavage. In Goodhart’s framework, Somewheres are defined through their rootedness in place, with strong attachments to the specifics of their local area and identities that are formed through local associations. By contrast, Anywheres are defined partly by their mobility. Such mobility, which typically occurs through attending university and/or obtaining professional work some distance away from the place of birth, contributes to the development of what Goodhart describes as ‘portable “achieved identities”’ which tend to be internationally rather than locally oriented. Yet in this framework, it is not clear whether mobility is a cause or a consequence of certain political values and dispositions.
In a new paper, we use early release data from Understanding Society, the largest longitudinal survey of UK households, to explore whether residential immobility was an important variable in the Brexit vote. Understanding Society offers rich individual-level data on respondents’ county of birth, demographic characteristics, highest level of educational attainment, psychological values and cognitive ability. In Wave 8 of the survey, Understanding Society respondents were also asked the same question that was posed in the 2016 EU Referendum: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”.
Image by Kenneth Allen (Wikipedia), licenced Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.
We use these data to explore two important issues that have not been addressed by the growing body of research on the determinants of EU Referendum voting patterns or the wider literature on populist voting. First, we investigate whether immobile respondents, defined as those living in the same county in which they were born during 2016, were more likely to support Brexit than respondents who have moved away, holding constant other factors that might affect the likelihood of having moved away.
We then investigate whether the effects of residential immobility on support for Brexit depend on recent change in local economic performance or inward migration, recognising that there can be positive and negative selection into immobility. We conceive of two ideal types of placebound individuals, those that choose to remain fixed in place because things are going well in their local area, and those who feel trapped and unable to move away from places experiencing rapid change.
Contrary to the implicit assumptions of much academic research, immobility is the majority experience among the British electorate. In our sample, 55% of respondents were living in the same county in which they were born in 2016. And immobility does appear to exert an independent influence on support for Brexit. Controlling for a host of potential mechanisms through which immobility might influence support for Brexit (including educational attainment, psychology, and personal values), we find that those who were living in their county of birth in 2016 are around 7% more likely to state that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union.
Yet our findings are only partly about immobility per se. We also find that the effect of immobility on support for Brexit is modified by recent local change in terms of wage growth and increases in the non-white British population: immobility only matters in places where wages have been growing slowly or where recent growth in the non-white British population exceeds 2 percentage points. This can be seen in Figures 1 and 2 which graphically present the impact of immobility on the probability of being pro-Brexit at different levels of change in local wages and population composition. What these figures show is that it is the combination of immobile people and the characteristics of the places that they have remained immobile in that appear to shape support for Brexit.
Note: Each model presents the predicted marginal effect of the impact of immobility (defined as living in county of birth) at different levels of local changes in wages on belief that Britain should leave the European Union. 95% Confidence intervals given by shaded area. Models specified as in table 5, with controls for Gender, 5 Ethnic Categories, Age, Age2, whether sampled before Brexit, labour force status (employed, retired, student, unemployed, inactive), education, life satisfaction, income satisfaction, cognitive testing, the Big 5 personality traits and values.
Note: Each model presents the predicted marginal effect of the impact of immobility (defined as living in county of birth) at different levels of local changes in non-White population on belief that Britain should leave the European Union. 95% Confidence intervals given by shaded area. Models specified as in table 5, with controls for Gender, 5 Ethnic Categories, Age, Age2, whether sampled before Brexit, labour force status (employed, retired, student, unemployed, inactive), education, life satisfaction, income satisfaction, cognitive testing, the Big 5 personality traits and values.
We do not wish to overstate our results: immobility was just one factor in the vote, others such as educational attainment were more important, and we are unable to fully tease out the complex linkages between mobility, individual psychology and values, and populist voting. Yet it is clear that immobility and in particular the combination of immobility and certain types of local change created an important set of circumstances that help explain the EU Referendum outcome. Had more of the British electorate moved away from the place they were born in; had the places in which immobile people have stayed in fared better economically under processes of globalisation; or had these places remained more stable in terms of demographic composition, then the EU Referendum outcome may have been different.
This article draws on the authors’ published work in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, it first was published on the BPP blog. It gives the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE Brexit, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Katy Morris is a PhD Candidate at the European University Institute.
Neil Lee is an Associate Professor in Economic Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics.
Tom Kemeny is a Senior Lecturer in Economic Development in the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London.
‘Brexit’ is an entirely Party-Political construct & stems from a condition preexisting the 2016 referendum.
After all, something had to drive the gerrymandering of the sample to be canvassed, deprive the EU itself of any role and ensure there was no pro-EU voice within the ‘Remain’ campaign. All of which played a part in increasing the numbers who chose the Leave option. [It very nearly didn’t work.]
It rather makes you sick to find economists wondering why people voted for Brexit when the real mystery is why they voted for Remain.
The UK has a Trade Deficit of 4% of GDP with the EU. Yes, the trade deficit directly reduces UK GDP by 4% (remember the Sectoral Balances Equation?).
The Eurozone has free access to the UK market so that Eurozone companies operating in the UK are acting like Trojan Horses for imports – PSA Vauxhall for instance uses 75% foreign parts. The UK would never accept this degree of penetration by other foreign countries and even the EU sets a minimum of 55% domestic parts for non-EU companies operating in the EU.
The penetration of UK markets by Eurozone imports coupled with the movement of quality employment from Eurozone-owned UK companies to their EU headquarters means that the UK economy is being rapidly regionalized. We are in danger of becoming to the EU as Cornwall is to the UK. This doesnt bother academics – they can just move to Berlin for work – but it is a disaster for ordinary UK citizens.
Project fear was simply an invention of politically motivated pro-Remain economists, we now know that the Referendum had little effect on the UK economy and the current poor performance of the UK is widely accepted to be due to poor productivity resulting from an inability of the UK to give preferential loan facilities to companies and prevent the ingress of cheap EU labour after the 2008 crash.
So, given that the EU represents an immediate 4% hit to UK GDP, regionalizes the UK in the EU and prevents us from dealing with the productivity crisis why does anyone support Remain? Hubris?
The problem I have with many of the academic discussions on the UK Brexit referendum result is – where do all the insights into the mind of the voter, the certainties and the precise percentages come from?
Surely not from the UK ballot process itself, where great efforts are made to ensure that the secret vote of each individual remains secret.
So whence this academic certainty? – Most likely from the “ex ante” poll samples aimed at forecasting voter intentions and the “ex post” poll samples aimed at identifying the voting decisions of those who actually voted.
Might be interesting to apply Donald Rumsfeld’s “known knowns” here – his take on the popular “JoeHarry” decision analysis box…………………
We know for example, that in the world of industry and commerce there is not the same certainty about the results of polling samples.
Let’s take the fiercely competitive Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector. In this sector there is a constant flow of new products launched into the marketplace, each preceded by thorough market research into the buying preferences of the target consumer.
Notwithstanding this intensive market research effort we know the failure rate of the new products to be catastrophic.
Among the many root causes of the carnage one culprit we know to be a well -known “unknown” – the proportion of the sample interviewees that have given deliberately misleading and sometimes dishonest answers.
Turning to the UK referendum we know that throughout the process the polls consistently showed Remain in the lead.
We also know that the bookies, those pastmasters in the art of spotting last minute changes in intentions, kept Remain as clear favourites until the end. So to many the Leave outcome of the two-horse UK referendum came as a complete surprise.
I am tempted to conclude that many voters in the referendum gamed the pollster system throughout.
We know that during the referendum run-in there was widespread Operation Fear campaigning in the media by the politicians and the chattering-classes.
Potential Leave voters were routinely characterised as racists, deluded, old people, anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, uneducated, etc – all the perjorative labels you could think of, bar poor fashion sense and bad breath. Not too difficult to argue not the most welcoming environment to identify yourself as a Leave voter !
In essence I am suggesting that that deliberate perverse consumer behaviour we often observe in response to product polling may have been replicated in the referendum polling.
If people did disguise their Leave intentions then you could argue that any answers they have given in ex ante and ex post polls were similarly misleading. So in these circumstances I see no case for the current academic certainy about the Brexit voters.
A few more terms such as “maybe”, “possibly”, “perhaps”, “at a guess” would be welcome.
OK, now for a taste of my own medicine. The above is a guess which seems to fit the facts. I don’t “know”for sure – but neither do you.