ABSTRACT The protracted Brexit process had negative practical and emotional consequences for the millions of Europeans who reside in Britain. The analysis presented in this paper elucidates the circumstances, experiences and perspectives specifically of young Europeans, achieved through interrogation of data from the 2021 Census of England and Wales and a 2023–24 novel, longitudinal survey of 1490 young Europeans. The findings reveal considerable heterogeneity within this cohort, but widespread concerns about employment transitions, housing and mental health. Drawing on concepts of permacrisis and ‘modes of uncertainty’ (Anderson et al. 2020), the research demonstrates how challenges in specific life domains are experienced and have the cumulative effects of significantly shaping how young people live with and in permacrisis. As such, the paper argues for nuanced framings of the European youth migrant experience beyond a precarity‐privilege binary and calls for greater emphasis on the individual, embodied experiences of permacrisis in young people's lives.

The restrictions to international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic have posed significant barriers to transnational family life. This paper focusses on the negotiation of familial obligations of over 300 young EU nationals aged 14-25 living in Britain. We examine how care practices were reconfigured within families, as forced immobility, absence and loss became part of transnational family life. Young people's agency was activated to engage in desirable circulations of care, while they also engaged in acts of citizenship locally that had a care dimension. Many young people contributed to local initiatives of caring for others, such as mutual aid initiatives and local groups extending care practices to non-familial relations. We examine thus the range of care receiving and care giving practices and resources involved, including material resources, time, affection and sharing information. These practices involved family members locally or at a distance, but also non-familial relations, to shape new constellations of care.

Migrants' opportunities for civic and political participation are often restricted by their legal rights. This paper reports on a study which included a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12-18 originally from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK, and follow-up focus groups with 122 participants. We examine young people's views on political and non-political participation and their engagement in everyday performative citizenship. We found connections between civic participation and political participation, and both are conditioned by one's sense of belonging to place and recognition of individual agency. Young people were interested and wanted to be involved in politics, yet they did not feel they could shape political decisions, unlike other forms of participation, such as volunteering and social activism. The study progresses existing knowledge on young people's exclusions from everyday performative citizenship, in the context of current public debates on youth engagement and young migrants' integration.

Since the 2016 European Union referendum, young European migrants living in Britain have faced growing exposure to social exclusion and insecurities over their future. The Brexit process has not only changed their rights, but has also increased their experiences of xenophobia and discrimination. In this context, we consider it timely to focus on young EU nationals’ processes of identification and (re)constructions of their identities while they negotiate the multiple challenges posed by geopolitical transformations. The social constructionist research with young migrants shows that they increasingly experience their identities as fluid, with relationships that move between proximity and distance. Our findings from focus groups with 108 young people aged 12–18 years born in Central and Eastern European countries and case studies of 20 families support this perspective. The analysis documents young people's agency and efforts to negotiate identity as a process of becoming in the context of change and uncertainty. To understand how young people from a migrant background navigate individual and collective identities, the article offers an explanatory framework that highlights their need for familiarity, continuity, and control over their lives, necessary to maintain a sense of home and belonging.

The state-induced anti-immigration environment and the normalisation of xenophobia in political and media discourses have led to the increased othering of European migrants in the UK through new forms of social stratification, especially since the Brexit Referendum of 2016. For young people who migrated to the UK as children from Central and Eastern Europe, Brexit has represented a major rupture in the process of their identity formation, adding new insecurities in the context of increasingly uncertain rights. Based on a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12-18 who identified as Central or Eastern European migrants, followed by focus groups and case studies, we report on young migrants' everyday experiences of xenophobia and racialisation. We explore the coping and resistance strategies young people used to integrate themselves in these racialized hierarchies. Drawing on insights from emergent theories of racialisation and whiteness, we add new evidence on the direct consequences of these experiences of marginalisation on young people's sense of belonging and their own attitudes towards other ethnic groups.

This article draws on a school-based case study carried out in Scotland with 11–12-year-olds reflecting on their views and experiences of school before transitioning from primary to secondary school. Drawing on Honneth’s recognition theory, and the dimensions of love, rights and solidarity, the findings show that school was seen by children as a place of dialogue, reciprocity and recognition; the learning and knowledge activities cannot be separated from the relational and emotional aspects. When misrecognition happens, subjects’ identity and sense of self-respect can be deeply violated.

This paper explores the ways in which young people aged 12 to 18 who were born in Central and Eastern European EU countries but now live in the United Kingdom construct their future imaginaries in the context of Brexit. It reports on findings from a large-scale survey, focus groups and family case studies to bring an original perspective on young migrants' plans for the future, including mobility and citizenship plans, and concerns over how Britain's decision to leave the European Union might impact them. While most of the young people planned to stay in Britain for the immediate future, it was clear that Brexit had triggered changes to their long-term plans. These concerns were linked to uncertainties over access to education and the labour market for EU nationals post-Brexit, the precarity of their legal status and their overall concerns over an increase in racism and xenophobia. While our young research participants expressed a strong sense of European identity, their imaginaries rarely featured 'going back' to their country of birth and instead included narratives of moving on to more attractive, often unfamiliar, destinations. The reasons and dynamics behind these plans are discussed by drawing on theories of transnational belonging.

Austerity has had a disproportionate impact on young people across Europe. They are especially disadvantaged, compared to other age groups, and youth poverty is now acute in most European countries. This chapter discusses the particularities of young people's lived experience of austerity in deprived neighbourhoods in Glasgow, the city with the highest rates of deprivation in Scotland. Drawing on data from focus groups with 38 young people aged 14–23, we explore young people's positioning as an underclass, who experience everyday humiliations and degradations through austerity policies targeting them and the areas in which they live. We argue that young people are integrating aspects of an austerity 'logic' into their sense of self, taking responsibility for their own actions and role as citizens. Their experiences of austerity are mediated through their relationships to the places they live in, as well as new forms of neoliberal personhood.

This article examines the impact of Brexit on young people aged 12–18 who had moved to Scotland from Central and Eastern Europe. It draws on empirical data collected with over 250 young people who contributed to an online survey and focus groups between 2016–2018, immediately after the Brexit Referendum took place. The paper examines young people's feelings of national identity and how their sense of belonging has been impacted by Brexit. The key findings reveal that factors such as their everyday experiences of racism and xenophobia and perceptions of what other people, often their friends, might think about who gets to belong were identified as significant to the identities young migrants felt able to claim. While many young people expressed a strong sense of belonging in the UK as a whole and over half said they were feeling Scottish, access to a Scottish national identity seems to be restricted and often denied to them. At the same time, many felt able to occupy the national identity of their country of birth or claim hyphenated identities that included Scottishness and a European identity. In the context of Brexit, this poses a challenge for making New Scots feel like they belong in Scotland, as many may now decide to review their plans to remain in Scotland long-term if their rights change.

In this paper, we examine the experiences of young people born in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) who are part of the 1.5 migrant generation living in "Brexit Britain." We focus on two key themes: (a) young people's feelings of belonging to Britain, their countries of birth and Europe, and the ways in which these have been impacted by the EU Referendum result; (b) young people's future plans, in an intergenerational context, with particular regard to their feelings of belonging and the ruptures of migration and Brexit. Britain's decision to leave the EU caused uncertainty for CEE 1.5 generation young people at a time when many of them were consciously reflecting on their beings, becomings, and belongings. The majority of young people asserted a sense of belonging to Britain whilst simultaneously feeling a sense of "in-between-ness." Many young people wanted to remain living in Britain, at least in the short term, and felt a sense of belonging to Britain. Our focus on the potential intergenerational impact of Brexit suggests that CEE young people and parents may view possibilities for the future differently; we examine some of the key reasons for these differences from the young people's perspectives.

Young people talked about several factors that were important to their sense of identity. Some key dimensions of their identities were related to being young migrants, their nationality and transnational relationships with family and friends and also, the languages they spoke and the multiple cultures they were navigating. In the context of Brexit, their feelings of being marginalised or not fully accepted also impacted on their sense of identity and who they are. There was often a disjuncture between what young people identified as their nationality, often related to their country of birth, and where the felt at home - mostly in the UK. Home was linked to a sense of identity and many young people said they felt they had multiple homes. This was generally seen as a positive thing, although some young people described the challenges of living between different cultures. Feelings of belonging often resulted from feeling connected to people and places which were familiar and welcoming. For young migrants, identities are fragmented, dynamic and changeable. Young people talked about how their sense of identity had changed since they had moved to the UK. For some, this was about the process of growing older and maturing, while others suggested that they had changed as a result of migrating. Many Eastern European young people reflected on their potentially hybrid identities and saw the processes of their identity formation as in constant flux, negotiable and consisting of multiple identities.

Here to Stay? is a research project which explores the lives of young people who arrived in the UK as migrant children from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It focuses on young people aged 12-18 who migrated after the EU enlargement in 2004 and have lived in the UK for at least 3 years. The project explores how migration and current immigration policies are impacting their lives, how satisfied they are with local services, the quality of their relationships, and what are their feelings of identity and belonging in the UK. The study is important because it presents the first analysis since the Brexit Referendum on how current plans for Britain to leave the European Union are impacting on young Eastern Europeans’ lives. We have gathered the opinions and experiences of over 1,100 young people on a range of issues, including Brexit, their participation in communities and access to services, their experiences of racism and exclusion, their relationships, well-being and plans for future now that the UK is planning to leave the EU. These Briefings aim to inform a wide range of audiences on the experiences of young Eastern Europeans living in contemporary Britain. The Briefings should also help local authorities and other organisations develop policies and improve services for young people, taking into account their needs and experiences.

The discrimination of Roma groups across Europe has been highlighted by several international organisations. For many, poverty, racism and their children's systematic exclusion from education are push' factors when deciding to migrate. This study explores Roma mothers' views of their children's education post migration and their attitudes to education more broadly, by adopting an intersectional framework and examining issues of difference and belonging as experienced by Roma mothers and their children. While Roma mothers recognised the value of education for social mobility, they remained aware of the limited resources they could draw upon, in the absence of desirable economic and cultural capitals, and as a result of their ethnicity, social class, gender and undesirable migrant' status. There was a perceived hopelessness in relation to the chances that Roma children have to overcome their marginalisation through schooling, pointing to the need for dedicated policy interventions when working with Roma families.

Research has given increasing recognition to the important role that children play in family decisions to migrate and the significant impact of migration on family relationships. At the same time, the role of emotional labour involved in feeling ‘at home’ and the sense of ontological security and everyday belonging that families develop post-migration can benefit from further exploration. Drawing on data collected with Eastern European migrant families in Scotland, this article explores intergenerational understandings of (in)securities by comparing parents’ and children’s views on their lives post-migration. It shows that, while adults constructed family security around notions of stable employment and potential for a better future, children reflected more on the emotional and ontological insecurities which families experienced. Family relationships are often destabilised by migration, which can lead to long-term or permanent insecurities such as family disintegration and the loss of a sense of recognition and belonging. The article reflects on the ways in which insecurities of the past are transformed, but are unlikely to be resolved, by migration to a new country. It does this by grounding the analysis in young people’s own understandings of security and by examining how their narratives challenge idealised adult expectations of family security and stability post-migration. It also shows that young people’s involvement in migration research brings an important perspective to the family dynamics post-migration, challenging adult-centred constructs.

Here to Stay? is a research project which explores the lives of young people who arrived in the UK as migrant children from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It focuses on young people aged 12-18 who migrated after the EU enlargement in 2004 and have lived in the UK for at least 3 years. The project explores how migration and current immigration policies are impacting their lives, how satisfied they are with local services, the quality of their relationships, and what are their feelings of identity and belonging in the UK. The study is important because it presents the first analysis since the Brexit Referendum on how current plans for Britain to leave the European Union are impacting on young Eastern Europeans’ lives. We have gathered the opinions and experiences of over 1,100 young people on a range of issues, including Brexit, their participation in communities and access to services, their experiences of racism and exclusion, their relationships, well-being and plans for future now that the UK is planning to leave the EU. These Briefings aim to inform a wide range of audiences on the experiences of young Eastern Europeans living in contemporary Britain. The Briefings should also help local authorities and other organisations develop policies and improve services for young people, taking into account their needs and experiences.