The changing status of European Union nationals in the United Kingdom following Brexit: The lived experience of the European Union Settlement Scheme
| Author | Fiona Costello,Catherine Barnard,Sarah Fraser Butlin |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639211032337 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The changing status of
European Union nationals
in the United Kingdom
following Brexit: The lived
experience of the European
Union Settlement Scheme
Catherine Barnard, Sarah Fraser Butlin,
and Fiona Costello
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Following Brexit, European Union citizens now find their rights to live and work in the UK
have changed and they had to make an application under the European Union Settlement
Scheme, established under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, by 30 June 2021 to
enable them to continue to live in the UK lawfully. This article examines the experience
and perceptions of those navigating the European Union Settlement Scheme and how
they feel about life in the UK post-Brexit. It raises questions about identity and belonging.
We also examine the other routes European Union nationals, and their family members,
are choosing to use to secure their status in the UK. Our research highlights how the
impacts of Brexit and European Union Settlement Scheme are unevenly felt and experi-
enced by different European Union national groups. The article concludes that it is likely
that we will only be able to measure the true extent of the ‘success’of the European
Union Settlement Scheme after the application gateway has closed on 30 June 2021, by
learning whathappens to those who fall betweenthe gap, especially those morevulnerable.
Keywords
Brexit, citizenship, European Union freedom of movement, rights, settled status,
transition, transnationalism, vulnerabilities
Corresponding author:
Fiona Costello, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK.
Email: fc501@cam.ac.uk
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2022, Vol. 31(3) 365–388
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639211032337
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
Introduction
The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020 after a referendum on 23 June 2016 delivered a
narrow victory for those voting in favour of ending the UK’s membership of the
European Union (EU). Universally referred to as ‘Brexit’, leaving the EU has meant
the end of freedom of movement for EU nationals under EU law, together with
Norwegian, Icelandic, Liechtenstein, and Swiss nationals (European Economic Area
(‘EEA+’
1
)), as well as their non-EU national family members (NEFMs), into the UK
(and UK nationals in Europe). This was one aspect of the Leave Vote’s call to ‘take
back control’of the UK’s borders. The end of free movement was in fact delayed, due
to the transition period (1 February 2020–31 December 2020), but it formally happened
on 31 December 2020.
In a move to preserve the rights of those EEA+nationals who already live in the
UK, the British Government introduced an application process called the EU
Settlement Scheme (EUSS). The EUSS is a Home Office (HO) scheme giving effect
to the citizens’rights provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement which was implemented
in the UK by the European Union (withdrawal agreement) Act 2020. The scheme went
live in March 2019 and all EEA+citizens and their non-EU family members (NEFMs)
had to make an application to the scheme before the application deadline of 30 June
2021. Detailed rules on the EUSS are found in the appendix EU to the immigration
rules.
In this article, we examine the position of those already living in the UK before the end
of the transition period. The Office for National Statistics estimated that there were 3
million
2
EU nationals living in the UK, but no data was available on the exact
number. In fact, this figure included Irish citizens, who are eligible for the scheme but
do not have to apply to remain in the UK, but it did not include EEA-EFTA and
Swiss citizens who must make an application, nor third-country national family
members. To date, there have already been about 5.4 million applications to EUSS.
The latest statistics for the EUSS show that non-EU application numbers are 340,000
(March 2021) meaning that NEFMs of EU nationals represent 6% of the total number
of applications to date (Barnard and Costello, 2020b).
We examine the roll-out of the new EUSS in its first 24 months of operation, looking
at how this scheme is working in practice –specifically the lived experiences of those
making applications. We note that, for many, the EUSS is an achievable, relatively
easy application, and the digital-only status will be manageable for them moving
forward, in line with the HO’s future policy move towards a largely digital immigration
system. Yet even for this group, Brexit has presented a number of challenges as to how
life for them has changed, especially how they feel about their life in the UK (Bueltmann,
2019; Guma and Jones, 2019).
There are also particular groups who struggled to meet the June 2021 deadline for an
application, and who will struggle to maintain a digital status. To develop our understand-
ing of this complexity and nuance we also discuss some of the perceived hierarchy within
the EEA+group of nationals in the UK –as reflected by respondents to our research.
The article is structured as follows. First, we begin by describing the methods used to
do the research (section ‘Method’). Second, we present our findings about how EEA+
366 Social & Legal Studies 31(3)
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