Why independence? Understanding lived experiences of secession in Wales

Recent decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the field of territorial politics, and in particular literature that aims at explaining secession and secessionism. Scholarship in comparative politics have predominantly focused on the determinants of voters’ support for independence. This field is rich in survey and experimental quantitative studies that tend to focus on economic and identity factors. However, most of this work is constrained by the availability of data, and its deductive nature – with explanatory factors often based on normative work that made assumptions in the mid XXth century. Moreover, the causal mechanisms that link these determinants and individuals’ final preference are often left as assumptions, with little empirical efforts to disentangle them. In-depth qualitative research of everyday experiences of secession can help overcome these limitations, and add new insights into the factors driving individuals’ support for secession. This paper applies this proposal to the case of Wales, with a combination of visual and textual techniques.