Taking back control? Investigating the role of immigration in the 2016 vote for Brexit
| Author | Matthew Goodwin,Caitlin Milazzo |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117710799 |
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles - Part One |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117710799
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2017, Vol. 19(3) 450 –464
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117710799
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Taking back control?
Investigating the role of
immigration in the 2016
vote for Brexit
Matthew Goodwin1 and Caitlin Milazzo2
Abstract
The 2016 referendum marked a watershed moment in the history of the United Kingdom. The
public vote to leave the European Union (EU)—for a ‘Brexit’—brought an end to the country’s
membership of the EU and set it on a fundamentally different course. Recent academic research
on the vote for Brexit points to the importance of immigration as a key driver, although how
immigration influenced the vote remains unclear. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data
and individual-level survey data from the British Election Study (BES) to explore how immigration
shaped public support for Brexit. Our findings suggest that, specifically, increases in the rate
of immigration at the local level and sentiments regarding control over immigration were key
predictors of the vote for Brexit, even after accounting for factors stressed by established theories
of Eurosceptic voting. Our findings suggest that a large reservoir of support for leaving the EU,
and perhaps anti-immigration populism more widely, will remain in Britain, so long as immigration
remains a salient issue.
Keywords
Brexit, European Union, Euroscepticism, immigration, referendum, voting
Introduction
On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union (EU). Although
a majority of Members of Parliament supported remaining in the EU, 51.9% of the British
electorate opted to leave. Nine months later, the Conservative government triggered
Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, setting into motion the nation’s exit from the EU. The
British people had thus brought to an end a relationship with Europe that they had first
approved at a referendum in 1975 (Butler and Kitzinger, 1976).
1University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
2University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Corresponding author:
Caitlin Milazzo, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Email: caitlin.milazzo@nottingham.ac.uk
710799BPI0010.1177/1369148117710799The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsGoodwin and Milazzo
research-article2017
Special Issue Article
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