Universidad de Costa Rica - Sede de Occidente
Revista Pensamiento Actual - Vol. 24 - No. 42 2024
ISSN Impreso: 1409-0112 ISSN Electrónico 2215-3586
Período Junio - Noviembre 2024
Cultura y Pensamiento
23
DOI 10.15517/PA.V24I42.60258
023. - 033.
“I came home. Is this home?”: Post-Brexit Migration and Emotions in Years and Years
1
“I came home. Is this home?”: Migración posBrexit y Emociones en Years and Years
Pedro Mora-Ramírez
2
Departamento de Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, España
DOI 10.15517/pa.v24i42.60258
COIDESO, Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, España
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1604-7159
Fecha de recibido: 17-8-2023
Fecha de aceptación: 23-4-2024
Resumen
El auge de las producciones audiovisuales sobre fronteras en las últimas décadas se entiende como una posible con-
Years and Years 4, representa cómo el Brexit ha fomentado vulnerabilidades, como la persecución a refugiados, al
exacerbar diferencias raciales como la nacionalidad. Debido a la complicación en los tránsitos fronterizos, Years and
Years
las vulnerabilidades. Partiendo del trabajo de críticos poscoloniales y de afectos como Caroline Koegler, Pavan Kumar
Malreddy y Marlena Trocnicke, y Sara Ahmed, analizo críticamente los episodios 4 y 5. En este artículo, propongo
-
Brexit
Palabras clave: Years and Years, Brexit, emociones, migración, nostalgia
Abstract
Years and Years
Years and Years (2019) reconsiders the role of borders to claim that they are fundamental in inciting fear, hate, and
vulnerabilities. Drawing on the scholarship by Postcolonial and Affect critics such as Caroline Koegler, Malreddy and
Tribucke, and Ahmed, I analyse critically episodes 4 and 5 of the series. In this paper, I propose that a study of fear,
and causes individuals to verbalize hatred toward what unsettles them.
Keywords: Years and Years
1 A very preliminary and much shorter version of this paper was presented at the BrexLit: Writing the British Border in Times of Crisis
conference (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 6-7 July 2023). I wish to thank the participants in this event for their feedback.
2 Department of English and North American Literature, Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, C/Palos de la Frontera s/n, 41004 -
Seville, Spain.
Pedro Mora Ramírez
Revista Pensamiento Actual - Vol 24 - No. 42 2024 - Universidad de Costa Rica - Sede de Occidente
24
I. Introduction
The oppression suffered by refugees and racial-
ised minorities has been represented in audiovisual
productions in recent decades as a logical conclu-
-
disparities, including the denial of asylum to refu-
gees or their persecution. This is exactly what the
Years and Years (2019) does. The
withdrawal from the European Union (EU) posed
obstacles to entering the UK. Through the denial of
aid to refugees, the series foregrounds the trauma
-
ner Daniel Lyons. Years and Years mirrors how the
-
formed into familial nostalgia, adamantly provoking
unsettlement in refugees and immigrants. Draw-
such as Caroline Koegler et al., and Sara Ahmed, I
in episodes 4 and 5. Therefore, I analyse fear, hate,
and hope in the series. In addition, I provide a brief
to show how imperial nostalgia is transformed into
familial nostalgia.
2016 marked a historical moment and resulted in
hegemonic discourses on border control, globalisa-
tion, and Euroscepticism (Shaw, 2021, p. 1). Robert
Eaglestone underlines that there exists a tradition
of political sovereignty and diminished post-war
role of the word stage from a dominant from a dom-
inant player to a disempowered European member
of its academic criticism has been examined from
the perspectives of imperial nostalgia (Koegler et al.
2020, Mora-Ramírez 2022, Saunders 2020, Tinsley
2020), BrexLit and literature (Alonso-Alonso 2023,
Eaglestone 2018, Shaw 2018, Shaw 2021), race and
-
gy and politics (Outhwaite 2017, Roe-Crines 2020).
-
withdrawal” (18). I would like to suggest that the
-
texts also respond to these concerns.
Caroline Koegler et al. analyse the colonial relics
pass and hate speech a broader acceptance in so-
ciety” (2020, p. 586). Along the same lines, Robert
nostalgia by highlighting the connection between
-
complicates how national and migrant identities are
identity in the UK has rekindled imperial nostalgia
for control.
Years
and Years, Teresa Sorolla-Romero has analysed its
visual motifs regards to political populism, econom-
ic instability, and migratory crisis. While academic
nostalgia, no study to date has examined the affec-
nostalgia is driven by emotions such as fear and
hate.
-
25
Cultura y Pensamiento
fare, it has exposed vulnerabilities and affected
are all subject to accidents, illness, and attacks
the distribution of vulnerability, as there are pop-
others” (2004, p. xii).
emphasised vulnerable otherness as the basis of
humanity. However, in rethinking vulnerability and
resist various forms of state and economic power
are taking a risk with their own bodies, exposing
themselves to possible harm” (2016, p. 12). In ad-
also resisting those very powers; they enact a form
of resistance that presupposes vulnerability of a
-
vulnerability is extremely ill-distributed” (2016, p.
vulnerability as the capacity to be affected (p. 286).
-
ysis is the study of emotions. In The Cultural Politics
of Emotion (2004), Sara Ahmed offers the vision that
what endangers the nation. Similarly, she pinpoints
in a later work, The Promise of Happiness (2010), that
multiculturalism might become happy if it is part of
a national ideal. In this way, multiculturalism is read
as something unsafe to the nation, and it seems clear
that the national identity is under threat when there
are political struggles. She stresses that there tends
to be a concern when political struggles expose that
national belonging is compromised (Ahmed, 2010,
p. 159). However, she also describes the political
dimension of emotions and how they shape and in-
are rooted in social practices, altering nationhood
uses to demonstrate how discourses on hate are
as the circulation of signs of hate that happens when
or are distributed across a social as well as psychic
and of objects that have been othered and threatens
hate) whereby the object becomes part of the life
of the subject even though (or perhaps because) its
threat is perceived as coming from outside” (p. 50).
Therefore, there is an attachment between the sub-
ject and the hated object, and it is pertinent in the
creation of defensive uses of hate.
confrontational mechanism that protects an object
object as a defence against injury” (Ahmed, 2014, p.
42). Therefore, analysing the defensive uses of hate
signs, but circulates or moves between signs and
bodies” (p. 60). The defensive narrative of hate often
community of val-
ue” (p. 2), those individuals who have shared values
and are integrated into the community. Anderson
-
viduals and groups who are imagined as incapable
of, or fail to live up to, liberal ideals” (2013, p. 4).
-
ers (burglars/bogus asylum seekers) is felt as the
violence of negation against both the body of the
2014, p. 48).
Revista Pensamiento Actual - Vol 24 - No. 42 2024 - Universidad de Costa Rica - Sede de Occidente
26
and border control in the UK may problematise the
-
der control in the UK strictly permits the crossing
of documented citizens who meet the standards es-
not accepted by the political system. This image is
been designed as a system that rejects otherness.
refugees as asylum seekers who go after their re-
of hate and fear to illustrate how these emotions
mobilise individuals to act in the way they believe
necessary.
II. Navigating Hate and Fear in Years
and Years
Years and Years
It spans 15 years, from 2019 to the 2030s, and offers
a dystopian vision of the near future through the
prism of the Lyons family. The central characters
are siblings Stephen (Rory Kinnear), Daniel (Russell
Tovey), and Edith Lyons (Jessica Hynes)
3
. Stephen is
and their sister, Edith, is an activist who returns
to the family after years abroad. Years and Years
a businesswoman who rises to power through her
for his sexuality.
-
-
es and challenges similar to those of the nation at
-
ain, the loss of power on the world stage, the rise of
3 To avoid repetitions, the name of the actors and actresses will
migration crisis. In parallel, the Lyons family also
Years
and Years presents a dystopian yet realistic vision of
Soon after they meet, they develop a romantic
the one who stands in the way of his relationship
with Daniel. National identity itself may generate a
sense of belonging and pride that, when threatened,
produces an emotional wound similar to the loss
Ralph experiences. He feels a sort of familial nostal-
gia grounded in melancholia as he wants to regain
interactions and decisions, seeking to return to an
idealised past in which he was with Daniel while
facing their separation, as Daniel fell in love with
-
rial nostalgia for control translates into the family
sphere. Ralph suffers from the separation and, as a
acts in the name of love against him. Ahmed aptly
in the
name of love
of line or connection between the others we care
for, and the world to which we want to give shape”
(2014, p. 141). Acting out of his love for Daniel, Ralph
-
through movement (p. 11). She also adds that:
I become aware of bodily limits as my bodily
dwelling or dwelling place when I am in pain.
Pain is hence bound up with how we inhabit
the world, how we live in relationship to the
surfaces, bodies and objects that make up our
much what is pain, but what does pain do. (2014,
p. 27)
27
Cultura y Pensamiento
Pain is an unsettling emotion and can lead to
triggering other actions. For this reason, the series
-
tions play a fundamental role in our bodily actions in
that they generate physiological reactions. Emotions
express emotive choices that trigger future reactions
-
ing their interaction with the world. Or as Ahmed
being moved, we make things” (p. 25). Exemplifying
that, Daniel goes through different situations that
cause his emotions to change throughout the series.
Nonetheless, as Ahmed (2014) underlines, one can
-
ident – we all know our own pain, it burns through
us – the experience and indeed recognition of pain as
pain involves complex forms of association between
Emotions like hate, pain, and fear lead the char-
A clear example o