Description
This article examines affective bonds between British migrants and political values through the lens of migration. Where rising populism foregrounds national politics in the UK, it exists within a global context of outward migration and growing diaspora of British migrants abroad. I argue that political populism, often focused on the domestic sphere, is better understood when expanded to a transnational level. With far-right nationalism embedded with affective messages of ‘home’ and (white) Britishness, I examine what these messages and relationships mean specifically to those who willingly migrate to non-democratic, non-white countries like Singapore. Within which, I explore political identities and affective connections to the nation, home and belonging. Understanding the appeal of non-democratic countries lends insight into how populist ideas are processed, if they recognise them as values and how they impact everyday lives through intersectional experiences. An understudied group, British migrants live within different political and cultural contexts, and are shaped by the politics of home and host nations. How they reproduce or resist populist narratives on local and global levels as a migrant speaks to the affective afterlife of domestic nationalist discourses, their salience abroad and how they feed back into political participation as citizens, and migration trajectories.
