This project ran from 2013-2017, and was funded by an ESRC Future Research Leaders grant. It pioneered the use of advice-led ethnography – giving advice and advocacy support to EU nationals and advice organisations, and in conducting an ethnographic study of the obstacles encountered. We found particular disadvantages affecting women and children seeking welfare support.

This method allowed us to ‘get inside’ cases, go behind the law, and produce rich, fine grained data on how the law was mediated and shaped by different actors and processes. We discovered decision makers saying ‘we don’t look at the law’, vanishing claims, departments that could not telephone each other and departments that disappeared.

We were able to challenge injustices, so giving greater security and stability for affected claimants and families, while simultaneously building up a picture of the reality of welfare rights for EU nationals in practice. Charlotte conducted training and knowledge exchange sessions with several advice organisations, empowering advisers, and raised public awareness of the problems through multiple public engagement events and publications. Findings also fed into high level policy making; Charlotte gave oral and written evidence to the Select Committee on Exiting the EU and the London Assembly, and has spoken at the European Parliament, and submitted reports to the EU Commission.

The study yielded a number of important academic insights, such as the ‘declaratory discrimination’ faced by EU nationals. These findings, and the innovative methodology, were captured in the book Unity in Adversity: EU Citizenship, Social Justice and the Cautionary Tale of the UK, (shortlisted for the BBC Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2018, and winner of the Socio-Legal Studies Association Best Book Prize 2019). 

The project was led by the EU Rights and Brexit Hub PI, Charlotte O’Brien, with research assistance from Jed Meers and Alice Welsh. More on the ‘impact case study’ based on this project here.