ABSTRACT
Our contribution to this special issue brings the theoretical and empirical orientations of the Becoming a Minority (BaM) project into dialogue with the complex and charged post-Brexit geography of the North of England. We present findings from the UK ESRC funded project Northern Exposure: Race, Nation and Disaffection in 'Ordinary' Towns and Cities after Brexit, drawing upon a period of co-productive and ethnographic work with local authority stakeholders, voluntary sector practitioners and community actors in two urban locations in the English North: Halifax and Wakefield. We report on how shifting patterns of diversity and population change interlock with deindustrialised economies, fiscal austerity, the coronavirus crisis, and the predations of ethno-nationalist politics and policy. Amid these dislocations and risks, we find delicate, differentiated, and predominantly informal infrastructures of community governance and intervention attempting to build alliances and resolve tensions: a grounded, local-view that belies the kind of image of the North established in mainstream national understandings of the dramatic politics of Brexit and after. Taking a productive cue from the BaM study, we offer some fine-grained reflections on localised dynamics of diversity experience and the negotiation of inter-ethnic relations albeit in a sprawling urban region beyond the West-European metropolitan core. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)