On 31.01.2023 at 13:00 we invite you to the conference room of the Centre of Migration Research at the University of Warsaw, 7 Pasteura Street (2nd floor) for an open meeting summarising the project ‘The impact of Brexit on migration from the V4 countries: migrant strategies’ (International Visegrad Fund grant no. 21910049). The meeting will be combined with a discussion of an article jointly written by project participants.
Meeting agenda:
13:00 – introduction (Wojciech Bedyński)
13:15 – presentation Poland (Wojciech Bedyński)
13:30 – presentation Hungary (Ágnes Erőss, Katalin Kovály)
13:45 – presentation Slovakia (Petra Strnádová, Jana Pecníková – online)
14:00 – presentation Czech Republic (Karel Čada)
14:15 – 15:00 – discussion on the text of the paper
Title: The impact of Brexit on migration from V4 countries: migrants’ strategies
Authors: PL – Wojciech Bedyński (OBM UW), HU – Ágnes Erőss, Katalin Kovály (CSFK), SK – Petra Strnádová, Jana Pecníková (UMB), CZ – Karel Čada (Charles University)
Abstract
The outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum came as a shock to European public opinion. The unprecedented situation of the UK leaving the EU structures raised questions and concerns especially in Central and Eastern European countries, from which thousands of citizens migrated to the British Isles after joining the EU in 2004 and the immediate opening of the British labour market. Brexit changed the established status quo and introduced uncertainty. In many cases, it forced decisions that had been postponed for years, and was a motivation to regularise the legal status of residency, which until then, thanks to being in the European Common Market, did not need to be regularised. For some, it was a moment of reflection on their life strategy, including considering the option of returning to their home country or moving somewhere else. Brexit later proved to be just one of the crisis events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine or high inflation across Europe, which also affected migrants’ life strategies. Qualitative ethnographic research conducted by teams from all four Visegrad countries provides a unique opportunity for comparative analysis.