The UK in Search of a New "Imagined Community"? Social Cohesion, Boundary Building, and Social Policy in Crisis Periods

This chapter considers how the framing of the UK’s social policy response to the Covid pandemic has been used to rejuvenate the British ‘imagined community’, contextualized by the UK’s new position as an ‘independent’ nation state outside of the EU. It argues that the Covid pandemic presents the government with an opportunity to renew and bolster a sense of nation, not only in terms of the UK re-asserting its position in the international order but also in terms of re-asserting what it means to be a British citizen in the post-Brexit era, and in a ‘union state’ in which multiple nations within the state have varying levels of autonomy and integration is ‘less than perfect’ (Mitchell, 1996: 608). It also considers how elements of public health, labour and economic policy, developed in the context of both Brexit and Covid, are framed, legitimised and facilitated by the rejuvenation of the imagined community. It draws upon in-depth qualitative analysis of policy literature and speeches focused on (public) health policy and social security policy during the pandemic, analysed through a theoretical framework that highlights the role of social cohesion and, to a lesser extent, nation building strategies, to understand how the UK’s policy response to Covid contributes to social cohesion within and across the nations of the UK.