Sociologickż časopis / Czech Sociological Review | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2026.008

Volatile Boundaries: The Decline of Anti-Polish Migrant Moral Panic in Post-Brexit Britain

Rafa³ Smoczyński ORCID...1, Ian Fitzgerald ORCID...2
1 Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland
2 Northumbria University, School of Business, Newcastle, United Kingdom

This paper examines the waning of the anti-Polish migrant moral panic in Britain after the Brexit referendum, focusing on how a prolonged episode of moral panic lost its public intensity and legitimacy. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Polish migrants conducted in northern England and complemented by a contextual analysis of mainstream media coverage, this study traces changes in the affective framing through which Polish migrants had previously been constructed as social threats to the employment security of the indigenous population. While the panic endured for an unusually long period, its decline cannot be straightforwardly attributed to structural improvements in labour market conditions or to the realisation of post-Brexit economic promises. Rather, the findings show that once anti-Polish narratives ceased to be actively reproduced by mainstream media and political actors, collective outrage lost its coherence and mobilising force. In the aftermath of this institutional disengagement, hostility towards Polish migrants persisted only in fragmented, low-intensity forms and was largely confined to informal interactions and online spaces. By analysing this specific case of decline, this article reaffirms the relevance of the volatility parameter in Stanley Cohen’s moral panic framework, highlighting the continued centrality of mainstream media and political actors in the reproduction—and dissolution—of moral panic.

Keywords: Polish migrants in the UK, anti-Polish resentment, decline of moral panics, volatility of moral panics, employment insecurities, collective emotions

Received: June 17, 2024; Revised: February 27, 2026; Accepted: February 27, 2026; Prepublished online: March 10, 2026 

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