Hundreds of Londoners gather in Parliament square for the One Day Without us Campaign, to highlight the contribution that immigrants bring to the UK, February 20, 2017. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.One of the most interesting developments to come out of the Brexit referendum was that, far from being demotivated and resigned, many of those who voted to remain in the European Union began organising to reaffirm internationalist values in the UK, pushing back against the populist, anti-immigration dog-whistle politics that came to dominate so much of the debate around the EU.
Indeed, one of the greatest (and still unresolved) issues raised by Brexit concerns the status of immigrants in the UK. Even after almost two years, the British government has still failed to give any definitive guarantee that EU migrants would be allowed to stay post-Brexit, despite the fact that the EU has stated multiple times that free movement of people is a non-negotiable issue for any post-Brexit deal.
On February 17, 2018, the campaigning organisation One Day Without Us held its second day of action, in which thousands of people across the UK came together to celebrate the contributions of European migrants in the UK. The first event was held in February 2017, as a direct response to the scapegoating of migrants and foreigners, and the “shameful willingness of Theresa May’s government to pander to these sentiments,” as the organisers write in a blog post.
