Conversations: Yulia Nesterova with Marta Moskal

For this issue of the Conversations, I had a discussion with Dr Marta Moskal, Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) of Sociology of Education and Migration in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Dr Moskal’s research addresses the need for equitable opportunities for migrant students, workers, refugees, and their families through fair and inclusive policies and practices in the UK. Her research has been funded by the European Commission, Economic and Social Research Council, Art and Humanities Research Council, and British Academy; and her work has been published in leading international journals. In our discussion, we focussed on Brexit, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) in 2020, following the 2016 EU referendum where 51.9% of the UK voted to leave the EU. Brexit was a significant event for the country and EU citizens residing in it, and the runup to it – political and media campaigns to “Take Back Control” in particular – set the tone for how immigration has been perceived and discussed in the British society. As Simpson and Startin (2022) assert, for example, the coverage of European affairs has become “vigorously partisan, nationalist and at times xenophobic” (p. 3). In this Conversation, Dr Moskal and I discuss how Brexit and the media and political discourse around it have affected the experiences of young people from Central and Eastern European backgrounds living in the UK.