Ex-British Europeans and Their Stories

This contribution seeks to explore selected discourses related to motivations either to return or to stay in the UK, as voiced by EU nationals, particularly Poles, following post-Brexit economic, political and social changes. The study traces (self)identifications and the representations of “modes of being/belonging” of individuals considering whether to leave the UK and resettle in Poland between 2017 and 2020. These representations are mapped on the basis of stories from a triangulated dataset: official discourses of governmental agencies supporting returnees, semi-public discourses of below-the-line comments to a popular forum’s article dealing with “Brexodus,” and private Facebook support group’s posts devoted to sharing experiences and advice in the resettlement process. Rather than mapping a polarized community, the study reveals a spectrum of identifications that range from self-proclaimed transnational, cosmopolitan “citizens of Europe,” through community-oriented “British Poles,” to more ethnocentric, even patriotic, “Polish migrants.”