First Brexit, then COVID: Exploring Unsettling Events in the Lives of Young Lithuanian and Polish Migrants in the UK

This article applies the concept and framework of unsettling events (Kilkey, Ryan 2021) to explore 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 and asynchronous exchanges with 77 young migrants collected over the five waves of a qualitative longitudinal study. The study began during the period of the post-Brexit referendum negotiations (2019) and ended during the pandemic (2021). Looking at material, relational and subjective dimensions of unsettlement, we demonstrate variability in terms of consequences of these two events on life course transitions and migrants’ life circumstances, including material situation and relational dynamics. Moreover, since the subjective dimension of unsettlement is closely tied to the sense of belonging among the CEE migrants in the UK, the paper shows that mobility and settlement, like other life plans, are embedded in macrostructural disruptions and their resulting uncertainty.