Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom: The 2016 European Union Referendum

It is noteworthy that European integration is a divisive issue for the United Kingdom (UK) since the very beginning of the integration process. Although the UK supported European integration, it was not among the founding members of the European Union (EU). Furthermore, the UK, following its accession, renegotiated the EU membership conditions and carried its membership to the referendum; and during its membership, it did not hesitate to express its concerns about the direction of integration and opted out of some common EU policies. Hence, the UK was called the Eurosceptical member of the EU throughout its membership. In the EU referendum that took place on 23 June 2016, the UK finally voted to leave the EU membership (Brexit) with 51,9% of the votes and ended its forty-three-year-long membership. This study, which analyses Euroscepticism in the UK through the example of the EU referendum and specifically scrutinizes the referendum campaign, is based on the political cue approach. The political cue approach is one of the approaches that explain public opinion on European integration. In that regard, this study focuses on the discourses and discursive strategies of pro-leave Vote Leave and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) that actively campaigned to form public opinion and persuade voters to vote for Brexit. The method of discourse-historical approach is adopted in the analysis of discourses of these pro-leave actors. Discourse analysis that is conducted by employing the analytical tools of the discourse-historical approach deals with the immigration dimension of Vote Leave's and UKIP's EU-related discourses and attempts to determine how the phenomenon of immigration is reflected in discourses in the process leading up to the referendum. This study seeks to answer the following question: "How did Vote Leave and UKIP strive to legitimise Brexit in the EU referendum campaign through discourses that they produced on immigration?". This study, also, intends to reveal the EU-related political cues that Vote Leave and UKIP transmitted to the public and the main EU representations that they constructed. The findings expose that Vote Leave and UKIP problematised the EU by using immigration as a propaganda tool to secure Brexit. Moreover, it is found out that these pro-leave actors constructed four negative EU representations based on Eurosceptical narratives to legitimise and justify the Brexit decision. These four negative representations are as follows: the EU that limits sovereignty, the EU that causes security problems, the EU that puts pressure on the economy and public services, and the EU that has a negative impact on the national workforce. Keywords: Euroscepticism, EU Referendum Campaign, Brexit, Pro-leavers, Discourse Analysis.