Critical political economy, free movement and Brexit: Beyond the progressive’s dilemma
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117711082 |
| Author | Owen Parker |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles - Part One |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117711082
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2017, Vol. 19(3) 479 –496
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117711082
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Critical political economy, free
movement and Brexit: Beyond
the progressive’s dilemma
Owen Parker
Abstract
The progressive’s dilemma suggests that a trade-off exists between, on the one hand, labour
and welfare rights underpinned by solidarity and shared identity and, on the other hand, open
immigration regimes. With reference to debates on EU free movement in the United Kingdom,
it is argued (1) that a progressive European critical political economy literature of the Left has a
tendency to accept this dilemma and resolve it in favour of the former; (2) that it does so because
it erroneously conflates the free movement of people with the (increasingly neoliberal) free
movement of goods, capital and services; and (3) that it could and should treat human mobility as
qualitatively different and, consequently, need not accept the terms of the progressive’s dilemma.
The argument has important implications for a progressive politics in general and for the Left’s
(particularly the Labour Party’s) position in the United Kingdom on free movement (and, by
extension, on Brexit).
Keywords
Brexit, EU citizenship, free movement, progressive’s dilemma, the Left
Introduction
While in government, the UK Labour Party enthusiastically supported the EU free move-
ment regime. But long before the Brexit referendum in 2016, many in the party had
become critical of Blair’s decision to open labour markets to new member states’ citizens
following the 2004 ‘big-bang’ enlargement (Watt and Wintour, 2015). The numbers of
people who came to the United Kingdom from Eastern Europe exceeded estimates
(Dustmann et al., 2003)1 and many in the party have come to regard the decision as a
spectacular ‘policy failure’: a defining moment in its electoral decline and in the drift
towards Brexit. According to this perspective, the 2004 ‘failure’ paved the way for a fused
anti-immigration and anti-European Union (EU) discourse that became increasingly
prevalent following the economic downturn in 2007 and reached fever-pitch following
the ending of transitional arrangements with Romania and Bulgaria in 2013. Despite
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
Owen Parker, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Elmfield, Northumberland Road Sheffield,
S10 2TU, UK.
Email: o.parker@sheffield.ac.uk
711082BPI0010.1177/1369148117711082The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsParker
research-article2017
Special Issue Article
480 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(3)
efforts on the part of the Conservative-Liberal-Democrat coalition government to reform
the rules associated with the right of EU citizens to claim benefits (Cameron, 2013) and
Cameron’s partially successful efforts to elicit concessions on free movement from other
member states in the context of membership renegotiations, the issue remained live—and
for many was the central issue (Duncan, 2016; Ipsos MORI, 2016a)—during the referen-
dum campaign. The Leave campaign’s core and highly effective trope—the need to ‘take
back control’—was for many voters perceived as most real and urgent in relation to the
question of free movement. Post-referendum, the prioritisation of this issue meant that
continued single market membership—which would require the maintenance of the sta-
tus quo on free movement—was ruled out by the May government (May, 2017: 4).
Accepting the contours of this narrative, Ed Miliband’s former pollster has suggested that:
[t]here is a growing cultural gap between the way [traditional Labour] voters see the world and
the cosmopolitanism and utopian egalitarianism of much of the Labour Party … These voters
believe that a government’s first priority should be its citizens. They see no reason why citizens
of other countries should have entitlements in the UK simply because they move here … They
think Labour cannot comprehend these positions, let alone agree with them. (Morris, 2015)
Apparently endorsing such concerns, many pro-Europeans and many formerly staunch
defenders of free movement in the parliamentary party seemed to drift away from those
ostensibly ‘utopian cosmopolitan’ positions at the end of 2016 (Bailey, 2016; Bush,
2016).
At the heart of this UK-centric debate in the Labour party sits a broader dilemma—the
so-called ‘progressive’s dilemma’—that has been picked up and considered in a number
of different ways across a range of sub-disciplines in the political and social sciences. The
dilemma suggests a tension or trade-off between two aspects of contemporary political
and social reality that progressives would be likely to endorse. On the one hand, labour
and welfare rights underpinned by trust, solidarity and shared identity and, on the other
hand, permissive or open immigration regimes and high levels of diversity (Alesina and
Glaeser, 2004; Goodhart, 2013; Putnam, 2007). Among the first to assert the empirical
reality of such a dilemma nearly three decades ago, Freeman (1986: 51) suggested that,
‘migration has contributed to the Americanisation of European welfare politics’. To the
extent that this verdict is accepted as correct, it is perhaps unsurprising that many on the
Left are at least circumspect when it comes to permissive migration regimes in general
and the reality of freedom of movement in the EU in particular. They may be uncomfort-
able when suggesting the need for closure but this is instrumental to their pursuit of sub-
stantive social and welfare settlements. This tendency is present in some liberal nationalist
political theory (Miller, 1995, 2016; Walzer, 1983) and echoed in some (neo)-republican
EU studies work on post-national citizenship and free movement (Bellamy, 2008;
Menéndez, 2009). According to political sociologist Adrian Favell (2014a), such circum-
spection is also, at least implicitly, present in a body of European political economy litera-
ture of the Left—hereafter called ‘critical political economy’ (CPE). He criticises its
particular conception of the way in which neoliberal market forces should be governed
and constrained for implying a nationalist closure that cannot comfortably co-exist with
the so-called ‘fourth freedom’. This nationalism or closure is in tension with a pro-migrant
cosmopolitan position that many progressives, including Favell, would endorse: hence,
the progressive’s dilemma.
The remainder of the article takes Favell’s critique of CPE as its starting point to
reflect upon the reality of the progressive’s dilemma in the particular context of EU free
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