First Brexit, then COVID: Exploring unsettling events and (un)settledness in the lives of young Lithuanian and Polish migrants in the UK
First Brexit, then COVID: Exploring unsettling events and (un)settledness in the lives of young Lithuanian and Polish migrants in the UK
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Authors
Pustułka, Paulina
Budginaitė-Mačkinė, Irma
Trąbka, Agnieszka
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Date
2025-09-03
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Migration Studies
Issue
3
Volume
13
Pages
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1-19
ISSN
2049-5838
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2025-09-03
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Abstract EN
This article explores how young Lithuanian and Polish migrants to the UK narrate their experiences of the spillover effects linked to macrostructural crises, namely the Brexit process and the global Covid-19 pandemic. The analysed data stems from the CEEYouth project, specifically interviews with seventy-seven migrants, collected over the five waves of a qualitative longitudinal study. The study began during the post-Brexit referendum negotiations (2019) and ended during the pandemic (2021). Building on and extending Kilkey and Ryan’s framework on unsettling events, we look at the material, relational, and subjective dimensions and dynamics of two related but distinct processes: spatial (un)settlement and a sense of (un)settledness understood as the personal experience of feeling settled or unsettled. Recognizing that life-course underpins young people’s complex experiences, we demonstrate variability in terms of the meanings young migrants assign to migration and mobility in uncertain times and the consequences of unsettling events for their existential and emotional state. While the interviewees with more disadvantageous life situations at the outset of the crises felt cumulatively unsettling effects of the pandemic and Brexit over time, those sufficiently settled could—especially as the time went on—distanced themselves from unsettlement. Contrarily, intersectional vulnerability experiences by some interviewees made it harder for the sense of unsettledness to dissipate. The study’s broader contribution lies in showing that subjective sense of (un)settlement is dynamic and closely tied to the sense of belonging among CEE migrants in the UK.
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CEEYouth: The comparative study of young migrants from Poland and Lithuania in the context of Brexit’
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