Immobility and the Brexit vote

Neil Lee, Katy Morris and Tom Kemeny

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Popular explanations of the Brexit vote have centred on the division between cosmopolitan internationalists who voted Remain, and geographically rooted individuals who voted Leave. In this paper, we conduct the first empirical test of whether residential immobility – the concept underpinning this distinction – was an important variable in the Brexit vote. We find that locally rooted individuals – defined as those living in their county of birth – were 7 percent more likely to vote Leave. However, the impact of immobility was filtered by local circumstances: immobility only mattered for respondents in areas experiencing relative economic decline or increases in migrant populations

Keywords: Brexit; globalisation; mobility; populism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-int, nep-mig, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Published in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 4, January, 2018. ISSN: 1752-1378

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86367/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immobility and the Brexit vote (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:86367

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