Dealing with Enduring Uncertainty: Brexit During COVID-19

Following Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) faced a time of profound social, political, and economic uncertainty. Young people under 30 years of age have been members of the European Union their entire lives, but recently they experienced the disentanglement of the UK from the EU and a pandemic. Having to estimate and deal with Brexit’s consequences coincided with the need to calculate and manage the ramifications of a pandemic and their potential overlap of risks and uncertainties for individuals, member states, the EU, and the world. This chapter explores the discursive construction of Brexit during COVID-19 as a polycrisis expected to impact the UK and the EU in multiple ways: socially, politically, economically, legally, professionally, and educationally. This study provides a qualitative comparative analysis of the younger generation’s views on EU membership(s) and referenda, using the actual case of ‘Brexit’ and the hypothetical case of ‘Grexit’. The data of this inquiry stems from online focus groups with young UK and Greek nationals (18-30 years of age) during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020-October 2020). Drawing on insights from social constructivism, the study uses thematic and discourse analysis to shed light on the ways young adults make sense of and cope with unprecedented events and multiple crises.