Whose Freedom of Movement Is Worth Defending? Sarah Fine ‘Should the UK remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’, the British government asked the electorate in a referendum on 23 June 2016. On 24 June, we awoke to the momentous news that a majority of voters had opted for ‘LEAVE’ (Brexit). Against this backdrop, the informative EUDO Citizenship debate on the relationship between EU citizenship and freedom of movement could hardly be more timely, and obviously has even greater poignancy following the historic Brexit decision. Since the referendum question did not directly ask voters about migration, the Leave result itself cannot be interpreted straightforwardly as a rejection of EU freedom of movement. However, long before the votes were counted, commentators were connecting Brexit’s popularity with widespread negative attitudes towards the free movement of EU citizens and net immigration figures (among many other factors, of course).1 The dominant view was that Leave voters tended to be particularly swayed by concerns about immigration control, as distinct from Remain voters who tended to prioritise economic arguments.2 As the Economist wrote several months ago, ‘immigration is one subject on which Leave campaigners have a clear lead. The correlation between hostility to immigration and support for Brexit is high, so if they can turn the vote into one about migration, they will win’.3 Though analysts are still collecting and examining important data about vot1 2 3 ‘EU referendum: Concern over immigration delivers a “significant” poll boost to the Leave campaign as voters react to claims over UK border control’, The Telegraph, 31 May 2016, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/2016/05/30/ concern-over-immigration-delivers-a-significant-poll-boost-to-th/. Hobolt, S. & Wratil, C. (2016), ‘Which argument will win the referendum – immigration, or the economy?’ LSE BrexitVote blog, available at http://blogs. lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/06/21/ which-argument-will-win-the-referendum-immigration-or-the-economy. ‘Let them not come’, The Economist, 2 April 2016, available at https://www. economist.com/news/ britain/21695958-hostility-large-scale-european-union-migration-coulddecide-referendum-let-them-not-come. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89905-3_26 129