3 reasons for independence/insulation/secession & how to handle them

Catalonia wants independence, the UK has voted for Brexit and the United States under Trump wants to break up free trade agreements and "bring jobs back home". I believe one can see three different reasons for wanting to have independence, or wanting to secede or insulate oneself.

1) Being oppressed - if you cannot speak your language or cannot conduct business and other societal functions in line with your old traditions and customs, or if your religion is suppressed, then you may qualify for being oppressed.

The solution here is to liberalise society so that people can speak and worship what they want. If EU regulations lack in this respect, they must be revisited and improved, so that freedom prevails. A trickier take on this is if you are a minority within an oppressed area. Gaining independence may not necessarily be good for you. There are also demographic trends over time, such as in Singapore and Kosovo.

2) A large part of the population feel they are losing out to free trade and freedom of movement. This is what fueled Brexit and got Trump elected. The solution here is to keep the majority of the population happy.

If the discontent is due to immigration, you may eventually need to dial back on it. Free trade is so important that we do not want that jeopardized in the process! You will need to bring people into a structure that gives them leadership and hope. The best way to do that is to deregulate and make entrepreneurship do its work, and lots of training. If that is not an option, you may need to make a left turn and get people into jobs that way. But it cannot be ignored when it tips 50% discontent, for obvious democratic reasons.

3) A rich region does not want to pay for the poorer parts. This has been discussed in connection with Catalonia and also in Northern Italy.

The solution is to allow regions to "divorce", but they will have to pay alimony. In the EU the EU could set that sum. We do not want too many regions to gain independence, since it would risk a crumbling of the EU into nation states, which would then be somewhat of vassal states of the U.S., Russia and China. We do not want the development since it may be unstable, and wars may erupt depending on the power dynamics of the great powers. Russia is also not strong enough to play this in the long run, so the nation state scenario is inherently unstable.