The Anxiety of Political Uncertainty: Insights from the Brexit Vote

• DOI: 10.1177/00027162211058389
• Author: Carlos Vargas-Silva,Isabel Ruiz
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Published date: 01 September 2021

ANNALS, AAPSS, 697, September 2021 81

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211058389

The Anxiety of

Political

Uncertainty:

Insights from

the Brexit Vote

By

ISABEL RUIZ

and

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA

1058389ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYTHE ANXIETY OF POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY

research-article2021

Anxiety is driven by cognitive uncertainty, and large

political events can change levels of uncertainty in a

nation’s population, including among individuals in

migrant groups. This article explores the association

between the Brexit vote and the relative anxiety levels

of various sectors of the UK population: the UK born,

EU migrants, and non-EU migrants. Self-reported high

anxiety levels among these population groups six

months before and after the referendum suggest differ-

ences in social and economic uncertainty. After the

Brexit vote, EU migrants reported high levels of anxiety

at a rate that was 1.8 percentage points lower than the

UK born; this suggests economic rather than social

anxiety, given that the UK born were losing access to

EU opportunities. The reduction in anxiety for EU

migrants was marked in regions with greater support to

remain in the EU, suggesting its importance in reduc-

ing their social uncertainty and therefore anxiety.

Keywords: immigration; Brexit; mental health; anxi-

ety; uncertainty; political events

Massively shared societal events—such as

terrorist attacks (Huddy et al. 2005),

natural disasters (Beaglehole et al. 2018), and

pandemics (Fetzer et al. 2020)—can have wide-

spread cognitive and affective effects. This

article examines the massively shared psycho-

logical experience after pivotal political events.

Some disruptive political events, such as the

Correspondence: carlos.vargas-silva@compas.ox.ac.uk

Isabel Ruiz is a fellow in economics at Harris Manchester

College and adjunct faculty at the Blavatnik School of

Government, University of Oxford. She is also the prin-

cipal investigator for the project Understanding

Attitudes and Policy Preferences in Response to South-

South Migration and an associate editor for the Oxford

Review of Economic Policy.

Carlos Vargas-Silva is a professor in migration studies

and the director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and

Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. He is

also the director of the doctoral program in migration

studies at the University of Oxford and editor-in-chief

of the journal Migration Studies.

82 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

2016 election of Donald Trump, have been followed by widely shared negative

psychological experiences (Hoyt et al. 2018). For example, after the Trump elec-

tion, premature births increased among Latina women, a factor linked with

increased anxiety among the U.S. Latino population (Gemmill et al. 2020).

However, the evidence linking political events to psychological factors, particu-

larly to uncertainty and anxiety, remains small.

Anxiety is an emotion driven by cognitive uncertainty, and political events can

increase that uncertainty in multiple ways that range from insecurity about future

social status to economic prospects. Several implications exist for society because

of this increase in anxiety. First, anxiety may affect many life outcomes by impair-

ing cognitive performance (Raghunathan and Pham 1999; Wetherell et al. 2002;

Linder et al. 2020). Second, substantial evidence exists that anxiety can have

negative implications for labor market outcomes and productivity (Chatterji et al.

2007; Frijters, Johnston, and Shields 2014; Banerjee, Chatterji, and Lahiri 2017).

Knowledge of the implications of these political events for mental health can be

useful while prioritizing health services for different sectors of the population.

To provide insights into the association of political events and anxiety, this

article explores the changes in anxiety levels before and after the Brexit vote for

different groups of the UK resident population. We compare the changes in

reported anxiety levels of EU migrants, non-EU migrants, and the UK-born.

EU membership, and the associated freedom of movement within the bloc,

has been a major political issue in the UK at least since the mid-2000s when the

EU expanded to include ten new countries (Vargas-Silva 2011). Faced with

increased pressure from EU sceptics, within his and other political parties, Prime

Minister David Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership. The EU

membership referendum took place on June 23, 2016. It was largely expected for

the Remain option to win, and this option received support from several of the

main political leaders at the time, including Cameron himself; Nicola Sturgeon,

the First Minister of Scotland; and Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. However,

the Leave option won by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent.

Antidepressant prescriptions increased after the referendum (Vandoros,

Avendano, and Kawachi 2019; Liew, Goodwin, and Walasek 2020), although only

small effects appeared on average life satisfaction of UK residents (Powdthavee

et al. 2019). However, we have less understanding about how the changes in anxi-

ety levels differed across groups of the population. This is an important differen-

tiation to understand the wider mental health implications of the referendum and

political events more broadly.

Anxiety levels of EU migrants as a group are particularly likely to have been

affected by the Brexit vote. The concerns of this group might well emphasize

social uncertainty. The vote was seen by many as a repudiation of high levels of

EU migration in the previous decade, and it created substantial uncertainty

NOTE: The data used come from the secured access version of the UK Annual Population

Survey produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and supplied by the UK Data

Service (UKDS), but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of

the ONS or UKDS.