Brexit Reflection

By Emma Endres


Throughout the course of this semester, my group and I worked together to following the constantly developing economic and social events resulting from the United Kingdom’s referendum and decision to leave the European Union. Although the situation is still developing, we discovered a lot about the consequences and motives behind Brexit. Our first post discussed a general overview of Brexit and those involved, as well as the relationship between Britain and the European Union, setting the scene for our following posts. Our second post focused on the economic impacts of Brexit, both internally and internationally as well. We explained how the United Kingdom’s economy will be affected by the retracting of capital by foreign investors, and how trade restrictions will limit productivity and possibly result in another global recession. In our third post, we explained the social and political consequences of Brexit, focusing primarily on immigration and xenophobia. The vote increased tensions already rumbling among the countries in the European Union, and was primarily focused on restricting immigration into the country. The future of the United Kingdom and the European is yet to be revealed to us, but we can already see some of the repercussions of the split, especially when we look at Scotland.

To research our topic, we began with general discussion and information from various news sources and brought everyone together to decide who will focus on what part of the consequences of Brexit. Half of us focused on the economic impacts and the other half of us explored the political and social impacts, and thus our blog posts were divided up. We found most of our information from popular news sources like Independent and the BBC, but we also found many books and videos, as well as interactive websites as well to further enhance our research. Personally, I was given the task of correctly citing everyone’s sources, and through that I discovered many resources that I would not have initially thought of, and learned much about the APA citation process itself.

This project taught me many things about working in a group, especially a group full of people with different interests and academic focuses. My group worked well together because of our differences, and were able to produce a finished product with a variety of opinions and perspectives that contributed very positively to the overall project. I also learned a lot about global events as well, and how many times there can be a domino effect where one country makes a decision and many others follow suit. I have learned how greatly a single event can get the entire planet talking and contribute to global discussions about important issues, and how important it is to stay informed and knowledgeable about what the consequences of my own votes are.