This panel explores LGBTQ reactions to, strategies for, and perspectives on the outcome of the June 2016 ‘United Kingdom European Union membership referendum’ (commonly called Brexit) among Polish-born residents of the United Kingdom who arrived following the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, and whose life courses are influenced by their self- acknowledged membership in a sexual minority.  The papers, each drawn on lengthier research projects, consider a range of potentialities, including British naturalisation, return migration, EU or global mobility, and the formalisation of intimate partnership. 

In a white paper published in March 2016, entitled ‘Keep calm and carry on: what Europeans think about a possible Brexit’, authors Catherine de Vries and Isabel Hoffmann state that ‘age or gender do not have a pronounced effect on how one views these [sic] matter’.  The papers on this panel aim to explore whether sexual-minority identity, or identification, does have such an effect, and, if so, in what arenas – political, social, interpersonal – it is most impactful on individuals’ decision-making. 

Questions of sexual citizenship have occasionally arisen in the debate over Brexit, as they have over European integration at large, usually in the wake of pronouncements by politicians or policy makers. While journalists, and, to a lesser extent, scholars, have addressed such conflicts when they emerged, there has been a persistent blind spot where the unique positionality of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgendered, queer) Polish migrants in the United Kingdom is concerned. 

These subjects remain key stakeholders in unfolding developments.