Between East and West and Digital Elsewhere: Polish Queer Migrants Making Sense of Brexit

On the 23rd of June 2016, the day of the Brexit referendum in which the UK was deciding about leaving the European Union (EU), I was living in Antwerp (Belgium), planning my move to London later that year. I was excited to go to the UK to start my new research project, which was focused on identities, migration experiences, and social media use of Polish lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people (LGBTQs) in the UK, and was funded by the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. I found it unlikely that the UK would choose to leave the EU and therefore the Brexit news that reached me the next day shocked me. I felt sad and disappointed. I started thinking about the practicalities related to my move. Would I still be able to go to London to conduct my research? I expressed my feelings and worries on Facebook, the social media platform that I used regularly at that time. I shared a link to a BBC article about the referendum results with the comment "Britain! ... [frowning emoji]" and a meme where the then Polish Prime Minister, Beata Szydło, was advising the then British Prime Minister, David Cameron, “not to print” the referendum results, a joke referring to Szydło's refusal to print the sentence of the Polish Constitutional Court to avoid making it legally binding.