The Impact of Brexit on Black Women, Children and Citizenship

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Iyola Solanke
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13103

The Impact of Brexit on Black Women, Children and

Citizenship

IYOLA SOLANKE

School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Introduction

2019 is an important moment for thinking about the relationship between the EU and its

citizens. Throughout the Brexit countdowns between 2016 and 2020, attention was paid

to the impact of Brexit on adult EU citizens in the UK and adult UK citizens in the

EU. An intersectional approach to citizenship highlights, however, another group

enjoying citizenship rights under EU law –non-migrant EU infant citizens whose parents

are non-EU nationals, predominantly black women from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

These rights arose from the ruling in the Zambrano case of 2009 (C-34/09), where the

CJEU established two key rights: (1) EU citizenship rights for non-migrant Member State

nationals; (2) the right to residence to non-EU nationals in order to care for their children

holding national and EU citizenship.

The importance of EU law for these infant EU citizens and their non-EU parents

(Zambrano families) was overlooked during the Brexit period. Their interests were not

discussed in Brussels, even though the UK government had started to erode their rights

long before Brexit. They became targets of the Conservative ‘hostile environment’policy.

Stigmatized by the intersection of their race, gender and immigration status, national

immigration law was used to deprive them of welfare rights in 2012, long before the

EU referendum. Zambrano families were not mentioned in the Withdrawal Agreement

and no special consideration was made to their interests. Through political inaction in

both the UK and EU they lost their residency rights once the UK left the EU. Only in

2019 were these non-EU parents given the possibility to apply for residency rights

through the UK European Union Settlement Scheme. However, concern remains about

how these applications will be processed and reviewed in the Home Office.

Reflection on the marginalization of Zambrano families is important for both UK and

EU citizenship rights. At the time of writing the rights given in EU law to the non-EU

parents of black British citizens will automatically disappear at the end of the transition

period on 31 December 2020. This intersectional lens highlights first, the racial and

gendered meaning of citizenship, second, how EU citizenship is intertwined with national

immigration law, and third, the long-term detrimental effect of Brexit for infant black

British citizens and their families.

Intersectional Discrimination in the ‘Hostile Environment’

The concept of intersectional discrimination (Crenshaw, 1989) adopts a synergistic ap-

proach (Solanke, 2011) to discrimination. Set within critical race feminism (Wing, 1997),

JCMS 2020 Volume 58. Annual Review. pp. 147–159 DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13103

© 2020 The Authors. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies published by University Association for Contem porary European Studies and John Wiley &

Sons Ltd

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