Anywheres, Somewheres, local attachment, and civic participation

We use data from Understanding Society to evaluate several claims advanced by David Goodhart in The Road to Somewhere. We show that geographically mobile individuals are indeed more likely to support Remain in the EU referendum, as Goodhart suggests. But Remainers are no different to Leavers in how attached they are to their local community. And people reporting higher level of civic participation or those who are more trusting are actually less supportive of Brexit. Our findings suggest that the dichotomy between cosmopolitan Anywheres and communitarian Somewheres is a misleading one. Cosmopolitan Anywheres are just as communitarian as Somewheres, if not more so.