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
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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.
-
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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).
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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)
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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 of this is when Ralph is happy with
-
-
wants to regain his family unit, and to do so he has
-
ness. The power of emotions is so vast that Ralph
with him. As Ahmed (2010) aptly explains in The
Promise of Happiness, the traumatic events caused
by melancholia could move to happiness if there is
a self-erasure of grief:
This is how happiness becomes a forward mo-
tion: almost like a propeller, happiness is imagi-
ned as what allows subjects to embrace futurity,
to leave the past behind them, where pastness is
To become an individual is to assume an image:
becoming free to be happy turns the body in a
certain direction. (p. 137)
-
come pain could be read as a refusal to embrace
resilience and to forget his past with Daniel
4
. This
may be because melancholia could erase the pos-
sibility of bouncing back.
5
Therefore, I claim that
-
promised and the ability to bounce back is erased.
Thus, as Ralph acts individually instead of seeking
help in a group, he ends up not only not overcoming
Even though hate and pain negate Ralph, as
shown in the series, the possibility of happiness, fear
emerges as a defensive use of hate to resist pain.
6
get him into a country that grants asylum but to do
2019, Episode 3, 09:25-09:27). In this example, fear
-
Hope becomes meaningful to the degree that
-
ternatives to an age of profound pessimism,
reclaims an ethic of compassion and justice,
and struggles for those institutions in which
of the ongoing struggle for a global democracy.
(p. 39)
persuade his sister Edith Lyons (Jessica Hynes) to
4 For a comprehensive study on resilience narratives, see Ana
M. Fraile-Marcos (2020).
-
ponse to the lack of resilient capacities to bounce back from adversity
(p. 170). However, she also underlines that in colonial, postcolonial,
and decolonial contexts, there are two modes of resilience, namely
subaltern resilience, and creative resilience (p. 171). Nonetheless, in
this study, I pay some attention to broken resilience.
-
se of the restrictions in border control, deportations, and the dangers
of immigrating without documentation. In this way, the dystopian
-
bility to achieve happiness.
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to an unnamed place in the series to get fake pass-
-
to copy. He gives it to her, but then she leaves with
that from this moment Daniel Lyons becomes an
undocumented citizen (Mora-Ramírez, 2022, p. 8).
In addition, his undocumented status makes
him vulnerable, but he could also be considered a
resilient character since he adapts to adversities
and mobilises his vulnerability to try to survive. As
therefore, linked to the capacity of beings—human
or nonhuman, individual or collective—to withstand
having lost his passport. He loves and feels compas-
on the mobilisation of positive emotions, such as
seeker or the undesirable immigrant holds fewer
enter the country illegally. However, in this scene,
other migrants board, and the boat gets full. He
knows that he is in an even more vulnerable posi-
tion, but he decides to risk it. They cross the border,
but Daniel ends up drowning and his body is left on
against him because of restrictive migration policies
it transforms into familial nostalgia.
III. Brexit and the Revival of Impe-
rial Nostalgia
An analysis of these emotions can also be used
to examine the role of nostalgia in the series. The
-
ugees encounter several racial disparities in living
in the UK. For example, it accounts for politics that
-
enne Rook (Emma Thompson), the Prime Minister of
promise you freedom and the ability to enjoy that
freedom! An emboldened society with the strength
to enable itself!” (Davies, 2019, Episode 5, 01:06-
originates in the belief that the UK can play once
again an important role as a global power. Conse-
directly impact the lives of the Lyons family. Thus,
the viewer could see how national crises such as
Through the creation of exclusionary slogans
such as those inciting to take back control, the series
shows how its dystopian vision ceases to be specula-
tive and resembles reality. It is therefore important
to note that imperial nostalgia is based on the re-
and refugees among others. An illustration of this is
when former Prime Minister Johnson (2020) advo-
cates for the control of legal and illegal immigration
of national trial, when for months this whole
-
this country. If you want to change the urban
landscape, you can stand for election, or vote for
someone who will. (Johnson, 2020, 1:49-3:14)
It is remarkable how this 2019 series advances
the events that occurred in 2020, advocating not
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futuristic one. The problem with this speech is that
the PM blames black and racialised communities
7
However,
-
other words, the former PM states in his speech that
he will not allow the situation to get out of control.
However, he may not have considered that people
belonging to minority communities were born in the
UK. Therefore, this fact demonstrates a nostalgia
for the imperial past in which it is felt necessary
to return to the UK where white, powerful people
controlled everything.
-
from outside by exclusion, and from inside by failure,
but the excluded also fail, and the failed are also
excluded” (2013, p. 5). The campaign to leave the EU
allows it to generate the effects that it does” (p. 49).
This imperial nostalgia for control in turn pro-
vokes the rejection of minority groups. The imperial
back control” create the rise of hatred as a response
is a tendency to control and harm which threatens
national identity when national identities in the
UK are seen to be under threat. In other words, the
of hatred about what is different since the fear of
7 See Pedro Mora-Ramírez (2022) for further information on
this speech.
Years and Years illustrates how policies taken by
the limited series, she is a controversial media ce-
lebrity who ends up founding the populist Four Star
Party, taking advantage of public discontent with
her to eventually be elected Prime Minister of the
UK, embodying a populist and authoritarian style of
government. Her policies are confrontational, focus
on immigrants, and promote nationalist feelings.
Rook successfully manipulates public emotions such
as fear and nostalgia to consolidate power, exem-
plifying the use of defensive hatred described by
Ahmed. She presents herself as a defender of the
nation in the face of threats, thereby justifying her
extreme measures and causing unrest and uncer-
tainty. Her political measures include the creation
of Erstwhile facilities, and detention centres with
poor sanitary conditions to control immigration
and leave refugees and immigrants to die. This is
originated in the belief that when there are too many
immigrants it is necessary to remove them so that
they do not destabilise the prosperity of the country.
At the beginning of the series, Stephen Lyons
relatively stable life. His main concern is the safe-
ty and well-being of his family. As the political and
economic situation in the UK decays, especially
-
ly, including compromising with policies passed by
immigrants and refugees to detention centres. Mo-
detention centre to let him die. This comes as a
and resentment within the family. These tensions
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familial nostalgia, as he wants to regain his family
-
ial nostalgia turns into suffering and hatred when
people suffer a family loss. Just as in the series, it is
him to an Erstwhile detention centre. According to
-
defensive uses of hate within fascist discourse” (p.
a sense of revenge and as an attempt to heal the
death of his brother.
-
ical wing leads to a tightening of border control.
to return to the UK is to travel by boat illegally as
their papers were stolen. Thus, by banning entry
-
factors such as culture, ethnicity, race or the place
of belonging” (Mora-Ramírez, 2022, p. 16). In the
citizens without documentation as they have no way
-
of Daniel Lyons. What the series does not clarify is
hatred when individuals face traumatic experiences.
because they believe he is the one who convinces
Daniel to help him. However, Daniel does so because
he believes it is the right thing to do and because
he hopes to live happily with the person he loves.
IV. Conclusion
An analysis of the series Years and Years (2019)
society. The characters offer representations of fear,
pain, and hope and the episodes deal with recurring
themes that integrate identities and different affects
protect an idealised family identity, can tear apart
internal relationships when perceptions of threat
and protection become points of confrontation.
-
because he believes him to be the one to blame for
dismantling their family unit.
While Stephen manages to do this by working for
-
what it once was, verbalising imperial nostalgia. It
imperial nostalgia are dismantled by the fact that
is also the same country that needs immigrants to
exist and to remain a world power.
It is vital to note at this point that the series
shows no difference between imperial nostalgia
and postcolonial melancholia since the latter re-
narratives of identity and narratives about itself in
the wake of empire and the critical interventions
of postcolonial studies” (Cummings, 2020, p. 605).
-
ebratory accounts of empire centre the attention on
to this need of forgetting the empire. However, this
narrative is often diminished by some whose na-
tional identity is intrinsically grounded in imperial
nostalgia.
Imperial nostalgia in the series is depicted to fos-
ter conspiracy theories, where secrecy and privacy
about taking back control over the country limit
8
How-
8 I am grateful to Jorge Diego-Sánchez for pointing this out.
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Escribir a Fronteira Británica en Tempos de
Crise. Servizo de Publicacións Universidade
Us and Them: The Dangerous
Politics of Immigration Controls. Oxford Uni-
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Precarious Life: The Powers of Mour-
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Vulnerability in Re-
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Union Jack? Race and Empire in the Era of
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Postcolonial Writing, 56(5), 593–606. h t t ps://
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Davies, R. T. (Writer), & Cellan Jones, S. (Direc-
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———. (2019). Episode 5 (Season 1, Episode 5)
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spective not only based on imperial nostalgia but
also on the fact that the whole socio-political dy-
namic of the contemporary UK transforms imperial
nostalgia into familial nostalgia. The representation
establish the role of emotions, opening a space for
how emotions cause people to act.
This article has highlighted that the series links
emotions and nostalgia, creating unease in the char-
acters. Years and Years
hatred towards refugees and immigrants. Through
policies when there is something that stands in the
way of the national body. Indeed, the series encour-
today. The series also displays the dichotomy be-
tween happiness and pain, in which one cannot exist
without the other. It is essential to note that one way
to resist unhappy emotions is through resistance.
The series advocates how Daniel uses his emotions
as a form of resistance to achieve happiness. Resis-
tance emerges, therefore, as a capacity to challenge
systemic racism and any form of oppression. Nev-
ertheless, much more conceptual works need to be
done to discuss the relationship between notions of
resistance, vulnerability, and agency. If the debate
is to be moved forward, a better understanding of
the mobilisation of vulnerability to wilful, resistance
subjects such as Daniel and Edith Lyons should be
developed.
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