Written by Amy Buxton
13th November 2016
What is Brexit? What is the EU? And what can anthropologists do about it?
Unfortunately, Professor Jim Rollo (University of Sussex) was not able to join us as planned, but we had an active and interesting discussion nonetheless! With many thanks to Professor Francesca Conti (International Relations and Global Politics Program) and Professor Irene Caratelli (Director and Associate Professor of International Relations and Global Politics) and the students from the American University of Rome (AUR) who gave a brilliant outsider perspective on what is happening (and not happening!) with Brexit at the moment. Indeed, two hours in our little common room revealed a lot of comparisons between the situation in the United States, and the vote to leave the EU. We discussed taking to the streets, lobbing politicians, mobilising the younger generations and students, changing our education system so that people learn more about politics and learn how to change things, creating more opportunities for discussions, spreading messages on social media, and popularising the theories that help anthropologists understand Brexit. What will you do? Read the full debate below.
*If you are a student from AUR and I did not manage to get down your name, or if I have made a mistake, please let me know by email amy.buxton.13@ucl.ac.uk. This debate was organised by UCL Anthropology Society. If anybody has any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other member of Anth Soc. Thanks for reading!
Keshia (AUR) - Thinking about education and our history books, how will Brexit be perceived for generations to come?
Rhianon (UCL) - Brexit was a momentous moment. Obviously, we anthropologists are all quite left wing, but I was crying when I saw the result. Lots of people were shocked. I think it is something that people in the future will analyse closely, but for now it's still up in the air as Brexit hasn't really happened yet.
Student (AUR) - For how many people was it an emotional experience?
Rhianon (UCL) - A lot of people. Then again, I live in a liberal bubble and most people I know voted to remain. There wasn't much crossover between groups of people who were Leave and those who were Remain voters.
Katja (UCL) - The crossover was generational, which is an interesting comment on the way our society is stratified. We have a parliamentary democracy, but look what happens when you give such a vote to the people.
Flo (UCL) - The emotional response was very interesting. Here you had a lot of young people crying over some huge transnational bureaucracy. I voted remain because I think reform is very important, but largely it was about unity. There were people marching with banners that read "We love the EU". But if you asked people to tell us three things that you love about the politics of the EU, I'm sure not many people would have an answer. The debate became more about an idea of unity and solidarity.
Rhianon (UCL) - During the referendum not many people knew what they were voting for. So it came down to being together or not. It was too complex for anything that should have been a referendum.
Ella (UCL) - I've never learnt anything about the EU in school.
Prof. Irene Caratelli (AUR) - What do you think of when I say: "What is the EU?"
Ella (UCL) - I know hardy anything about the economics of the EU, the way it works...
Flo (UCL) - A lot of socialists/anarchists/hard line leftists were marching for Europe for pro-democracy against a democratic referendum! This marching against popular opinion was really confusing!
Irene (AUR) - 'Direct democracy' referendums are often used in very populist way, asking people to get into difficult political decisions that only politicians usually answer. The UK takes most EU funds for research (especially the top universities) without thinking about or knowing what the EU is or what it does.
Sharon (AUR) - Is it true that after the EU referendum, people started googling what it was?
Irene (AUR) - I didn't even see people of the Remain campaign voting for the EU beforehand.
Julie (AUR) - I remember a previous referendum which asked the public if the UK should change from first past post to proportional representation. Is that something you guys want to do?
Flo (UCL) - If we were schooled on it from an early age people would see it as fairer system, but we'd have more coalition parties like much of Europe. But we aren't schooled on it!
Keshia (AUR) - Is education the root of this then?
Flo (UCL) - Absolutely!
Keshia (AUR) - In terms of the US presidential elections then and Donald Trump, this is perhaps a warning sound for our democracy.
Jake (UCL) - Donald empowers the disenfranchised which is just what happened with the EU referendum
Ella (UCL) - Nigel Farage did that too. People who are so tired of working hard and getting little money voted for UKIP and they voted to leave the EU too. These are the kinds of people voting for Donald Trump.
Eduardo (UCL) - Yes, it's either a jump in dark or stick to the status quo.
Rhianon (UCL) - The EU is normalised such that going abroad is so easy, and when you get ill abroad you use the EHIC (European Medical Card) so that there are no costs. We don't really think about the role of the EU. There's a huge discrepancy between what people understand the EU to be and what is actually is.
Irene (AUR) - This must be seen together with 2008 economic crisis. You can tell people it's fine and we're all better off together but when they have families to feed, people change their political ideologies because the financial crisis affects them personally.
Elexsa (AUR) - A lot of people say it's about racism and anti-immigration. It's difficult to talk about because the institutions around us make these kinds of discussions uncomfortable. It legitimises hatred and racism because people don't want to get uncomfortable.
Irene (AUR) - Yes, for example, in Austria, where they are arguably not suffering economically there is lots of anti-immigration sentiment.
Flo (UCL) - I know some political educators in Austria, and they told me that some 15 year olds believe that 50% of the Austrian population are refugees! That must be the impact of the far right media.
Katja (UCL) - The media on the side of the Remain campaign projected a fairly ambivalent message. Whereas, the Leave campaign were dogmatic and not above lying. This is scary when we're talking about how many refugees are here and how many of those are lazy and taking more than they give back.
Irene (AUR) - If the Remain campaign was not working or not answering the facts that the Leave campaign were putting out there, then they come across as not convinced about staying in the EU. And again, that is at a time when the extreme right wing parties are getting more and more votes due to economic crises.
Flo (UCL) - I think the failure of the leftist movements currently are to blame for the rise of right wing political movements across Europe. If people are not offered an alternative, they will turn to those who give them quick solutions. Left movements should be listening to what people are saying not just call them xenophobic, when people have genuine fears. Don't just overlook disenfranchised working class people who have something to say. The left wing needs to look at itself.
Irene (UCL) - The middle class are now angry too. They've seen wages go down and are not going to listen to those in establishment. The right has solutions and it's up to the left to propose something now.
Rhemi (AUR) - Can you combat all these lies in the campaigns with the truth? This doesn't seem to be working. In the American debate, it's just people shouting over each other! The truth doesn't capture peoples' attention. Should the lefties be more dramatic and entertaining?
Katja (UCL) - It was our former Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, who said that people are bored of experts. That's insane!
Irene (AUR) - Experts are the ones accused of bringing up the crisis, of financial deregulation. The people don't know who they can trust anymore. So perhaps they are trusting the stupid!
Jake (UCL) - People want simple answers.
Keshia (AUR) - My friends said it's great that Trump is not a politician! I'm Native American, I don't want him in control of everything!
Flo (UCL) - I read a good article on the rise of Trump in America, saying it's not that unbelievable that Trump is rude and not politically correct. For people who like him, he speaks like they speak. In some way for them he's not a product of meritocracy or the cultural elite, like Clinton. He's accessible that's why people like Nigel Farage, even though they are elite, come across as a bloke who drinks pints and speaks his mind. He's popular for that.
Irene (UCL) - Donald Trump was a friend of the Clintons not long ago! They are creating a non-truthful narrative. People say that Donald Trump is successful but he went bankrupt 6 times!
Rob (AUR) - American people want the truth. There are so many lies that Hilary Clinton told. There is so much media manipulation too. Donald Trump is telling people how much the Democrats control of the media, so "build a wall" sounds like a very accessible argument. His arguments against the Mexicans holds because the drug problem is so huge. The demographic of Trump voters reflects the demographic of Brexit voters, it's the older generations. They have a certain "we know everything attitude". Does the UK feel more separated now because of the Brexit result, with it being 52%/48%?
Eduardo (UCL) - I think it's about how to pull truth from media. Anthropologists as professional strangers not (supposedly) aligned in any political direction. It's our job to find a way to make people understand what mechanisms are behind what people do. The problem of the media is still to be tackled that's something that anthropologists could do. Then again, nobody would read anthropology in the build up to referendum like Brexit. It's not sensational enough.
Irene (AUR) - Are you claiming to certain amount of objectivity, as an anthropologist?
Eduardo (UCL) - These are historical currents and studying these is an anthropological endeavour.
Irene (AUR) - I agree that we need to take a step back and look at what has happened.
Elexsa (AUR) - It's easy for some people to say one side is bad: Clinton so I'm voting Trump or being in the EU so I'm voting leave. What do you guys think is going to happen from here?
Katja (UCL) - A large portion of the population believed that once we voted we would leave the EU immediately, which is not the case but that is the way it was marketed. Article 50 hasn't been triggered yet, the process hasn't even started.
Jake (UCL) - And now we have to decide between a "hard" and "soft" Brexit...
Irene (AUR) - You are assisting with the fight within conservatives as to how the negotiations are going to go. Now is the time to talk about it and ask for the best outcome possible.
Rhemi (AUR) - What is "hard" and "soft" Brexit?
Jake (UCL) - Soft Brexit is like Norway (where we stay in the Schengen Area), and hard Brexit means severing more ties with Europe. Scotland will probably leave the UK in that case, and London could even become a city state!
Katja (UCL) - With a "soft Brexit", no one gets what they want, and with a "hard Brexit", Leave voters will get what they want.
Irene (AUR) - Have you seen on the news recently that Teresa May (British Prime Minister) had given a speech in May of this year talking about how Brexit would the destroy economy and so on, but she is now calling for "hard" Brexit.
Rhiannon (UCL) - As I understand that it was just her tactic to become leader of the conservative party. It's all party politics. For instance, Boris wrote two articles saying he was for and against Brexit.
Amy (UCL) - I was looking online after the referendum to find out how much the EU actually costs us, since that was a big argument of the Leave campaign. It was Professor Christian Dustmann from UCL who said that the EU is economically beneficial for the UK, that immigrants contribute more than they take out. How do you convince people, like many of my family in Derby, who say "things will get better", that actually leaving the EU is likely to be very bad for our economy?
Francesco (UCL) - People say those who voted Leave were not educated enough, but the Remain voters are also not educated on their perspective. I too have family who voted Leave because they haven't seen her wage increase and the economy of their towns are stagnant. It's the same as those who support Trump. He is saying that he will bring money back to these families and increase wages. These people don't care about the facts of the wider economy, they are looking out for themselves. We need to focus on their perspectives rather than villainise them.
Irene (AUR) - Those who voted to remain, the younger generation, are the ones who are benefiting from the EU the most. They are taking grants and have the possibilities to move around. The older generation don't have this kind of freedom.
Student (AUR) - This is a question for the British people in the room. Does the vote to leave change your identity in any way?
Ella (UCL) - I've always felt that the UK was very separate to Europe anyway, so my identity doesn't feel that different.
Irene (AUR) - Yes, Britain has always had one leg on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean!
Katja (UCL) - The freedom of movement issue, immigration from other parts of Europe played a big part in the Leave campaign. But we still have lots of restrictions that stop people moving here, we're not part of Schengen and you can't just wander into the UK. Britain's always been fairly insular. There's always this feeling that "We were an Empire!"
Sandra Wallman PhD (UCL) - I am part of the older generation who voted Remain. The anthropological (academic) perspective seems too complicated for all those people who were disaffected. The Brexit vote gave those people a simple solution: if we get out of the EU, you will no longer be disaffected. The economy will be fine and there'll be no more immigrants, or war. It sounds like the same thing with Trump. He is offering very simple solutions to people who feel they've had a bum deal.
Irene (AUR) - There was an idea that if Britain left the EU, it would be wonderful, like a fairy tale.
Jake (UCL) - Cameron gambled his whole country on this. He was on the Remain side, did we really want to rally behind him?
Elexsa (AUR) - There was a lot of anxiety was about immigration around the referendum. How do you deal with that issue?
Freddie (UCL) - The people who are most scared of immigrants are the ones who don't live with them. The predominantly white areas of the UK. Look at London who are the least worried about issues of immigration.
Ella (UCL) - I'm from Cornwall. Over 95% of the population there are white British and a third voted for UKIP and are afraid of immigrants.
Andrea (UCL) - I'm also from Cornwall. Farmers were receiving billions of pounds in funding by the EU yet 56% voted to leave. A farmers market events held each year is funded by the EU, yet people still didn't know that their farms were funded by all this money. I think that if we had a revote a lot of people would vote to stay now knowing this.
Irene (AUR) - The UK have campaigned against this farmer subsidisation.
Susanne (UCL) - It seems it is not the population that is to blame but the information given to the people. Those in power had a responsibility to give people enough information. My husband, who is Cornish, is now writing letters to his MP asking him what he's going to do about this malaise that he's caused. We are going to be in big trouble if the vote is not turned around by the New Year, if people don't realise it was a big mistake by then.
Irene (AUR) - Now it is time for those who want to Remain to lobby for the UK to not leave the EU. Those who want to stay need to create a noise about this and make it a high priority issue. You need to say: "We don't want to exit". You need to create a social platform to raise these issues. It's like situation with the Heathrow runway.
Student (AUR) - What have been the effects of Brexit, other than the pound dropping? I haven't seen any.
Rhianon (UCL) - That's because it hasn't happened yet.
Irene (UCL) - It depends on the kinds of deals that the UK will make. But there is uncertainty and instability now. Small banks are saying that they are moving to the continent before Christmas, and big banks are moving by March. If you don't know what kind of country, politically, or what kind of laws or trade agreements there will be, then it's very difficult for banks and companies to stay in this country. Banks and those who invest need stability. If the UK is not part of the EU then doesn't benefit from the EU laws and has to renegotiate all of the agreements it has with other countries.
Sandra (UCL) - Many of companies that were started in Britain are no longer owned by Britain, they've been bought up.
Irene (UCL) - Britain has a big service sector. Moreover, 60% of the economy depends the business with EU countries. So if you break economic relations with EU countries, you are taking a big hammer and putting it on your foot. Even if you create your own regulations, in order to trade with the EU, you have to respect EU regulations! You're not actually saying we want to live in isolation and we don't want to trade with anybody, you're saying we want to liberalise our trade once we get rid of the EU, but if you trade with others, you have to respect their regulations.
Student (UCL) - I did my PhD eel fishing. Eels are an endangered species so there are lots of EU regulations on how you can fish them and who you can export them to. These are very strict. UK can only fish these is certain areas. If the UK gets out of the EU the eel market completely dries up and those fishermen are out of work or they would have to go against the scientific listing of the species as endangered and begin trading to China and Japan and eels are on the road to extinction. Do fishermen give up their livelihoods, or begin trading to China for a few years until stocks go extinct?
Irene (AUR) - It is really a matter of political debate, they will never change all those regulations. There are too many deals to renegotiate. So the UK will try to have a soft change. In the long term it won't change a lot but it will create a lot of confusion, so companies will move out of the UK.
Keshia (AUR) - I want to go back to what you were saying about most of the people who voted Leave do not mix much with immigrants. In the US we have witnessed an extreme rise of prejudice and racism, mixed with fear, and there have been riots, has this occurred in the UK? In the US I fear for my fellow people of colour.
Katja (UCL) - I was an immigrant until two and a half years ago. In the build up to Brexit my German mother began to worry about the status of being an immigrant in Britain, so began filing for citizenship. It was a long and laborious process, even when the UK was part of the EU. We did this out of fear that we would lose work, education possibilities etc. I'm also an ethnic minority, so that makes it worse! As I understand it, the people who are experiencing the most prejudice at the moment are the Eastern Europeans since these are the people who are currently "taking our jobs". In the past it's been Indian communities and Jamaican communities but now it's the Polish, and the Islamic communities for the increased islamophobia and xenophobia.
Keshia (AUR) - Is this getting worse? Do you see this changing depending on whether Britain has a soft or hard Brexit? I ask because I have two parents who survived the civil rights era and a grandfather who worked very closely with Martin Luther King. Internationally it seems we are witnessing a different era of isolationism and a more intense segregation. With the UK being an island, there is limited space. If you stop immigration, you're still stuck with the people who are here and you either mix with them or you don't.
Sandra (UCL) - Hate crimes are supposed to have risen.
Amy (UCL) - I'm from Derby and there are warnings on the website for Derbyshire constabulary saying that hate crimes are rising. I also saw a video just after Brexit that was being spread on social media. It was an incident on a bus in Manchester. There was a coloured American man on a bus and a drunken man got on the bus and told him to eff off back to his own country. It was awful and shocking but I think it's useful that we can spread these kinds of videos on social media and condemn the people who commit hate crimes.
Mahalia (UCL) - There were also plenty of ethnic minorities in the UK who voted to Leave. Many who are really well established here in the UK. Their immigration patterns are quite different and they don't often see themselves in each other. For example, my grandmother who is South American and somebody from Bangladesh who first came here in the 1970s and 80s, who have experienced institutionalised and other types of racism, don't see themselves in each other. Younger people of colour have more affinity with each other. The older generations don't see themselves as immigrants. My grandmother who has been here for 60 off years sees herself as British through and through, she was from a British colony. She is British Caribbean. With respect to the increase in hate crimes I think that the people who are committing the crimes feel like they can express themselves even more because the Brexit vote has just supported them.
Ziad (UCL) - I want to go back to what Anthropology can do, specifically in the area of uniting immigrant communities?
Irene (AUR) - It is possible that the UK has broken a taboo in saying we don't like the EU we have now. The questions is, how can we (still be part of that but) change it from the bottom up. The EU has always been an elite project.
Ziad (UCL) - I have some friends from Latin America and we were discussing whether we can spin this in our favour. Can UK develop some new global links with places further away?
Irene (AUR) - But why should you break with one to be the other? How can this be a global answer? We cut the bridges here to be global over there.
Ziad (UCL) - I'm playing devil's advocate, but if you believe that immigration needs to be controlled at some point then a lot of (non-EU) communities, the Latin American community as one example, might benefit from Brexit.
Irene (UCL) - In this climate you hate everyone who is going to challenge your own status of living.
Susanne (UCL) - The problem is also that Brexit will cause such economic downturn and a massive loss of jobs. The idea of a new immigrant wave is too optimistic. There will be resentment in a different direction.
Ziad (UCL) - One of the arguments of the Leave campaign was that Brexit will create more links with China, South East Asia and so on.
Irene (AUR) - The attraction that the UK had for investment was that it was very integrated with the EU; it was very liberal and had a strong financial sector. The reason why the EU is so important is because it is the richest market in world. China is a on the rise but it is still a developing country, so if you look at the GDP of China per capita it is ranked at 122. All the companies are interested in the richest, most developed market in the world. China will be looking at Germany because it is part of this market, not the UK. From an economic perspective they are really telling you lies!
Katja (UCL) - People overestimated Britain's own importance. In the days of the British Empire it was a powerhouse but it isn't anymore.
Eduardo (UCL) - People are against this market, the EU, on ideological grounds. Reforming the EU on different grounds might be difficult because it is bound by a common market.
Irene (AUR) - I agree with you. The only reason I'm happy about Brexit is that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), may fail with the UK not being part of the UK. This is a horrible agreement, I don't know if you have followed what it means? European MPs can't read agreements between EU and United States regarding the TTIP. They have only 2 hours to access a room to read only the parts of the agreement on which the EU and the US agreed and signed. They have a sheet of paper and a pencil, no phones or laptops. Somebody is looking at them reading and the MPs cannot report to the citizens that they represent what they have read on the TTIP. Lobbies are invited to negotiate the terms of the TTIP and MPs are not but MPs can't tell the citizens what the TTIP can look like. It's a good thing that the TTIP will not exist and a new trade policy will be negotiated.
Sandra (UCL) - Let's follow the question, what can Anthropology do? This is all a bit gloomy! It's all very complicated and multivariate and anthropology demonstates this. But we do have a few theories that are quite neat, the understanding of scapegoats and exchange, for example. Could any of these theories that we take for granted be made more populist?
Francesca (UCL) - One question that has always struck me how little we are engaged in politics, how difficult it is to get right people into politics. Why are we so relaxed? There are demonstrations but it's very difficult to engage people in the long term. We need an education that teaches about how to be engage and build a better world. We talk about to but we don't do it. We leave decisions in the hands of people in power, we let politicians be and that is wrong.
Irene (AUR) - There are lots of new ways, such as social media, to trouble the government.
Ella (UCL) - Getting involved in political movements and demonstrations is often too intimidating and exclusive. I feel that since I wasn't educated about politics then I don't have the knowledge or the confidence to get involved.
Mahalia (UCL) - I disagree with your point about it being our role to educate people. Politics will always be elitist; an exclusive place for rich white men. The lives of the people who I went to a state school with in East London are being dictated by all these massive policies. How do you engage people like that who are being governed and who don't know how to deal with that. Council women and men can only do so much. I think it's much more than just providing education, I think it's about empowering people. It's about letting people know that they can make change. There has been nothing in British history in recent years that has showed us that we, the citizens, can make change.
Rhianon (UCL) - I disagree. Isn't UKIP and Brexit the epitome of that? It's allowing people who are not highly educate to mobilise politics in a way they want. They have an idea of what they want Britain to look like and they voted for that, we just disagree with what they want.
Keshia (AUR) - Why can't we then mobilise the educated in liberal ideology? I personally think that we are on the brink of WW3 and on the brink of some much bigger issues. We need to educate ourselves and the civilians around us, whether or not we agree with their point of view. Negotiations need to happen in civil contexts as well as political ones. Where do you see this happening in the UK?
Rhianon (UCL) - UKIP, who has only one MP in Parliament, were able to mobilise so much of the British population. It is up to smaller parties, the Green Party, Women's Equality, who are becoming more popular, are pushing politics in a certain direction with only a small elected number of MPs. That was the failure of the left in the Remain campaign.
Freddie (UCL) - That's why we need to have education system that allows people to think for themselves.
Keshia (AUR) - How does your education system directly relate to how people voted? In the States, California and Texas have the biggest say in what goes into the textbooks, and Texas wants to completely erase Thomas Jefferson out the books! How are you taught in UK, private schools, public schools? Is there freedom for these conversations other than in universities?
Freddie (UCL) - I don't this there is much. It's a class issues too. Working class people are turned off education. They have to go to school but they don't participate. These are the people who are most sensitive to right wing influence. They don't think for themselves, they just read the papers.
Andrea (UCL) - It's all very well saying people don't have a voice and are left behind by the state, but there were also a large percentage of people who didn't have a say, who didn't vote. Saying nothing also makes a statement.
Katja (UCL) - I think we have a problem with the neoliberal left. We want the left to be better, to speak up and motivate the people who would vote Remain. We have a lot of apathetic students who cared very much but who think their vote won't make any difference. Also, stop being so fascist! There are so many liberal intellectuals who make being nice to people sound aggressive, and I just don't understand it! You don't want to call yourself feminist because there's an image of crazy image of women who hate men. You don't want to call yourself left wing because it's all Trotsky's and Stalinist. I don't think the left help themselves.
Elexsa (UCL) - I have to feel uncomfortable with Trump becoming president as Hispanic American, but my white roommates don't want to talk about it, they don't want to feel uncomfortable. It's happening in our back yard but why are we not talking about it?
Katja (UCL) - A lot of people think we are talking to them personally when I bring up issues like civil rights or gender equality. If I say to white men that I experience sexual harassment on a near daily basis, I am not saying that it's their fault, I'm saying that it's a systemic problem. When you bring up sexism with certain people, they always say "Why are you talking to me about this, I don't do this!" I'm not saying "you do this" but they are implicitly part of the problem.
Irene (AUR) - Or part of solution! Let's not create opposition.
Elexsa (UCL) - If you want to create change, you have to make people uncomfortable.
Irene (AUR) - We don't want to create opposition. Let's talk about what we can do.
Katja (UCL) - But I hate that that's my responsibility!
Irene (AUR) - It is! You have to take action because you are a citizen. You have to change the messy world that you inherited. I'm very sorry.
Katja (UCL) - But as a woman I don't want to protect a man's fragile ego. If he feels I'm attacking him, it makes him uncomfortable. I don't want to be touched in public, it's uncomfortable!
Irene (AUR) - You don't have to create another enemy.
Francesca (AUR) - Let's get back to Brexit. Politics intentionally produces crude people. In this country, there are 48% of people who voted to Remain, and what are they doing? The time to get active is now, it's not in 3 years' time. I don't see any activism from the Remain side.
Katja (UCL) - There have been petitions.
Francesca (AUR) - The real form of activism doesn't come from clicking.
Katja (UCL) - Active forms of protest, like going out and standing in front of parliament is economically restrictive. I am paying £9000 per year to study at UCL and I don't have time to stand outside in Westminster.
Irene (UCL) - My dear! Once upon a time people fought for the right to vote. They didn't worry about having to go to class.
Amy (UCL) - But what made people go out and do? If you said, "Hey Amy, stand outside parliament with me every Saturday until Christmas to protest the vote to Leave the EU", I'd say "No, sorry, I have things to do."
Irene (AUR) - We are in an environment where we have options. You can emigrate to the rest of Europe or the world. You are cosmopolitan students, you won't be affected by Brexit. You can study in any city you like.
Student (UCL) - It's quite a stereotypical British thing to be apathetic. Brexit hasn't hit us yet, the affects haven't hit us. People who thought they knew what was going on were laughing saying, "Who would vote leave?" The education system fairly standardised and that means you don't get people who think outside the box.
Irene (UCL) - You are in an environment where you won't actually feel the effects of Brexit.
Freddie (UCL) - I think we will. Or at least, our family and our friends will.
Irene (AUR) - Brexit might not affect you directly, but you'll know somebody who has been affected. You will finish your studies, maybe do a master's or a PhD. I'm not sure whether you yourself will ever feel restricted by Brexit.
Student (UCL) - I am from biology background. We know that there are multiple climate change catastrophes on the way but we can't seem to find the motivation to do anything about it. As humans we have a hard time taking action on something that's not right there in front of us.
Irene (AUR) - We call this the collective action problem in politics. Very few people are able to mobilise against the interest of the majority. If your local supermarkets increase the price of their products very slightly, you will still shop there. That company is getting huge revenue from this. The people, the citizens, are dispersed. They have a collective action problem in promoting their own interests: I have to go to class, I have to wash my hair… I can't talk about Brexit today, I have to have my cup of tea. This is the challenge to democracy. The economically affluent have power and ability to promote their interests. The majority of citizens are not represented by these. We have to mobilise to promote what we think, to make them respect our values. The EU doesn't exist by itself, it is created by nation states, by the people who lobbied their governments to do something different. People need to mobilise. Those who have mobilised are the ones with interests, and that does not always represent the interests of the citizens.
Keshia (AUR) - Considering how many British people are living abroad now, and with the Brexit vote, do you see yourself and your peers leaving Britain and looking for citizenship elsewhere? Do you see emigration causing issues in terms of future demographics?
Amy (UCL) - This was an emotional vote for British people, as we said. It's such a complex thing and nobody understands the EU in the way that we should before we vote, but I voted to Remain anyway. After the results I thought "Yes, I want to move abroad, or to Scotland who largely voted Remain and want to leave England!" It's not a problem for me, I would be really happy to move abroad if my country is not doing what I want it to do, but that is quite sad in a way. That was just an initial reaction without knowing about all the politics behind it.
Sharon (AUR) - What stops people taking to the streets or complaining about what is going on? I think it has a lot to do with being selfish. There's a huge difference between having apathy and being selfish. If I have the opportunity to go somewhere else then I'm not really concerned about Brexit but if I'm one of those old people who voted to Remain in the EU, but we can't, then I might be really concerned about Brexit. This is probably what has happened to our generation. Most young people voted to Remain in the EU but they won't do anything to really stay there.
Francesca (AUR) - I'm sure as anthropology students you're aware of the concepts of agency and structure. Even in Giddens theory (the man who was behind Tony Blair!), he talks about how society might be made up of individual agency and social structure. You might not be able to change entirely, but you can upset it. What is apathy? It could be that you just inherited a world and we have been socialised into it, so we don't challenge things. From students, you can expect that. You have time to study and think about these issues. I don't think the solution is in mobilising the working class who voted for Brexit. They have made their vote and done their bit. Now it's up to other people, to mobilise in the same way and make their voice heard. I don't know what is best in the long term, but I don't believe that a country can stand on its own in 2016. How do we instil this notion in education, I would like to know?
Ella (UCL) - I don't think it's a lack of motivation. I think it's a feeling of "Why would I be able to change anything? It's always the same elitist group of people in politics, or who write the national curriculum. How could I have an effect on anything?"
Ziad (UCL) - Because you're at a university! So many students at UCL say that! We've got a body of 18,000 students, imagine what could be achieved with a little organisation!
Sandra (UCL) - Think of the Arab Spring!
Irene (AUR) - If you decide, at UCL, to start a mobilisation campaign on this, we can help you! You have so many students here. You start across departments, you say "We will start a mobilisation campaign on this". People will start to talk about it. Journalists will come and talk to you about it. You cannot change the world, but you can choose an issue, even a tiny issue, and work on that. Gender, Brexit… whatever. You don't have to do everything, just what is most important to you.
Sandra (UCL) - A journalist once said that there are two superpowers in the world: the USA and public opinion. If you can make people buy toothpaste or Coca Cola, then it should be possible to mobilise people.
Irene (AUR) - The real power of the USA is not the military, although the US spend more than all countries put together on their security, the real power the US has is the soft power. The ability to make people do what you want them to do, what is best for you. Soft power is not making people do what you want by using a gun, but by socialising them. They want to do what you do, they want to drink your Coca Cola, and they want to buy your Starbucks coffee, even though they have their own traditional coffee. This is soft power, and this is how you shape the opinion of the people. How do you do that? Through the media, pop singers, movies, Hollywood. This is political. Hollywood has a political impact. It shapes your mindset, what you think is good or bad.
Amy (UCL) - How can students change things if the media have so much power?
Irene (AUR) - You will attract the media! If you mobilise 18,000 students then the media will talk about it. If you create a link between all the universities in London centering around one single issue that you think is relevant to all students, you will create a big noise.
Elexsa (AUR) - I'm a women studies minor. Something that my feminist professors have said that stuck with me is that not everyone is going to agree with feminism or identify with feminists, but if you plant the seed, put your idea there, and it sticks with someone then you can let that seed grow by itself. Regardless of anything else that you say, that's going to stick with someone. Let somebody have the truth and do what they want with it. That's an important start. It has worked with feminism. Whether people talk about it for bad or good, people talk about it!
Francesco (UCL) - Going back to mobilisation, let's say we manage to mobilise people and remain in the EU, what happens to that 52% of people, that majority, who voted to leave? We don't listen to their problems. This is the same with Trump supporters. We say they're all racist. The daily show used to be a great comedy show, but now they go to Trump rallies and make Trump supporters look like villains and look stupid. What do we do about the majority of people?
Francesca (AUR) - I don't know, but there is a difference between letting this happen without participating in the process and fighting for democracy. It's good to have different points of view, it makes the world exciting and makes us human. But we need to move people to think about what kind of country we want. Do we want Brexit to happen? It might make democracy a bit more alive. We expect democracy to give us a good life. It won't give us a good life if u don't renovate it.
Irene (AUR) - You're putting the issue in terms of winners and losers. Now, those who voted Leave are satisfied. What Brexit has shown is that there are a lot of people who are unhappy. They've suffered an economic crisis and the liberal model has not benefitted them as was promised. It's up to the people to ask politics to deal with that in a different way, it doesn't necessarily mean Brexit. There's no answer to what a mobilisation will bring. It's a process that asks people who you are, what you want in the future, what kind of country, national policy, health policy, relationship with European partners you want… People didn't even know what EU was so they started Googling it after Brexit! Maybe you should start talking about what it is, which is incredible for a country who has been taking most of the funds for research from the EU. Now academics are fearing because nobody wants British academics in European projects. You need to start talking about the European Union.
Sharon (AUR) - The 52% of Leave voters had no other choice because they have only been informed on what it would be like to leave the EU. But there was a weakness of Remain side to show people what it would be like to stay in the EU.
Francesco (UCL) - Perhaps we should shift away from how to stay in the EU to how can we combat issues of social inequality in this country. Firstly, many of the EU countries say they won't have England back. Secondly, 17 million people did vote to Leave and you might say that 7 million people didn't know what they were doing but what about the 10 million who did vote to Leave? We should shift our focus on how to make them happy, how to make them accepted in our society.
Irene (AUR) - Before Brexit, there was a letter saying that if Brexit happens, labour will be pressed towards a more conservative agenda and the rights of the people in the UK will be under threat because there will be a much harder liberal push. The working class will be not be better off at all.
Francesco (UCL) - We've always survived economic crises (The Great Depression, the 2008 crash) but we can't survive social divide within the country. That is going to continue whether we stay in the EU or leave.
Irene (AUR) - But leaving will not necessarily bring people together in that respect. I have no solution, it's really complex. That's why the country is ready to debate, because it didn't do that before.
Thank you to our guests from the American University in Rome.
That just leaves one question: What will you do about Brexit?