My Neighbor is Lesser: A Look At Xenophobic Social Borders That Would Lead To Brexit

Abstract

When thinking about Brexit, it is important to dive into the preexisting social borders among those who lived in pre-Brexit Britain. These social borders are represented in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things. These works not only convey these social divisions between neighbors, but also reveal the cultural circumstances that led up to the vote for Brexit. In this essay, I highlight how these texts work to do just that.