The return of Citizenship?: An empirical assessment of legal integration in time of radical socio-legal transformation

Abstract

Intra-EU migrants have traditionally faced few pressures or incentives to formalise their 'permanent' residence or to naturalise in their EU host countries. Focusing on the United Kingdom and combining an analysis of secondary administrative data and primary online survey data (N=1,413), this article examines practices and attitudes to such legal integration in the context of the 2016 EU Referendum among five major EU nationality groups. The analysis reveals that British citizenship is the main legal mechanism of integration among intra-EU migrants in the UK and that while there is continuity in this respect with pre-Brexit processes, Brexit also has a strong but differential effect as a driver of legal integration. The article also identifies some of the main decision-influencing factors shaping legal integration, making a significant contribution to understanding the complexities of integrative processes in times of radical structural change.