Narrating Experiences of the Brexit Divide: Empathy, Tolerance and Avoidance

It is widely contended that after the Brexit referendum, the labels of ‘Leaver’ and ‘Remainer’ became dominant political categories, polarising UK society and restricting people’s ability to understand or deliberate with the political other. However, in this article, I show that when narrating experiences of the ‘micro-realities’ of everyday life, voters on both sides of the alleged Brexit divide make situated (inter)personal decisions, and employ different social practices – empathy, tolerance and avoidance – to navigate and resist socio-political division. Focusing on participant narratives, gathered through qualitative, guided interviews, I illuminate the ways in which core components of affective polarisation, notably ‘in-group’ bias and ‘out-group’ prejudice, are generally weaker in these narratives, and in the experiences of everyday life, than currently assumed by macro-structural and quantitative research on Brexit, while empathy and agreement across the Brexit divide is commonplace.