11 April 2021

Idealist me and the Brexit referendum - the feeling of being “othered”

[Part 2 of the "My Story - SylkeWeb" series.]

For me the concept of Freedom of Movement (FoM) in the EU is one of the greatest accomplishments ever. How can you not like it? What's wrong with being able to move from one country to another, almost like moving from one city to another in your own country? Nothing. It's liberating. There are so many experiences to be had. As far as I am concerned, it is actually still not easy enough.

I've only recently learned that until not too long ago people in Germany could not even leave their villages to look for work someplace else without some authority allowing them to do so first. OK, this rule was abolished quite a while ago but until the EU came into being, it was still somewhat difficult to move from one European country to another for work, and travelling outside of a select group of countries that had deals with each other often required visas. As soon as you want to move outside of the EU, things still get a lot trickier and often very expensive. And even more so for people without an EU passport.

With that in mind, the referendum on 23 June 2016 about whether the UK should leave the EU was something I was not happy about. As a non-British EU citizen I was not even allowed to take part in it, despite the effects it would potentially have on my family.

The referendum result was the opposite of everything I had learned to hold dear over the years. The following day when I heard about the outcome I was mainly in tears and had much to think about:
  1. First of all, I wondered why people would vote that way. There are many who would love to leave their hometowns or countries and can't because of the rules of the country they are living in. Or because of the rules of the country they would like to move to. The EU allows us to move (almost) freely between its member states. For me not wanting to have this freedom means to prefer to live in self-imposed shackles as movement of citizens could be controlled tightly again. Looking back, it seems many Brits simply did not understand at all what FoM means.
  2. Were there really that many people in the UK who wanted their country to be out of the EU? I got some solace from the fact that only a certain percentage of the population had voted and that the Brexit voting group was in real numbers roughly just a quarter of the whole population of the UK - much like the result of any election. Still, they had won. Albeit on a tight margin that other governments in other countries most likely would not have allowed for such an important question. The referendum was labelled as 'advisory' but the UK   government has been completely disregarding this and is taking the result as 'the will of the people'.
  3. What exactly people had been voting for: what kind of Brexit did they envision when they made their choice to leave the EU? Nobody really knows as the question on the ballot paper was far too general. For two years after the referendum the government kept insisting that people wanted a withdrawal agreement (a 'deal') with the EU and set 'red lines' that often didn't have much to do with what was talked about in the actual campaign leading up to the referendum. The next PM claimed that people voted to leave without a 'deal'. 
Emotionally the outcome was like a kick in the teeth. 

Many of the non-British EU citizens living in the UK have described what happened to them after the referendum as emotionally similar to discovering their partner had an affair and now suddenly wants to break up with them. They were still in the honeymoon phase of moving to another place, still so in love with it (and possibly had no big interest in politics) that they didn't see the writing on the wall at all. It's a feeling that I can completely understand but it wasn't exactly like that for me after ten long years in the UK, in my role as secretary in a community group I had been following the news over the past years quite intensely.

Even though I don't read the widely popular British right wing papers, I got to see enough of the signs of general dislike of immigrants, just by reading about the laws and rules Theresa May implemented in her role as Home Secretary; keyword 'hostile environment'. I remember telling a British acquaintance about this and the terrible detention centres which can lock up people forever. She didn't seem to believe me. If this kind of news hardly makes it to the Brits, I'm not surprised that others don't see it either. It's the kind of news most people will not seek out voluntarily, and that gets ignored in most countries by the natives as it usually doesn’t affect them.

At that point of my deliberations a feeling of dread started to settle on me.

I got painfully aware of the fact that I most likely was seen by the people who voted for Brexit as an unwanted immigrant rather than the fellow EU citizens with (almost) exactly the same rights as them. I started to feel worried about open xenophobia and that the number of hate crimes could be rising.
I had two conversations directly after the referendum that really didn't help:
  • On the day after the referendum, a neighbour knocked on the door. She acted as if nothing had happened and innocently asked me how I was. I answered truthfully that the referendum result didn't sit well with me. She was puzzled as to why I didn't like it and in the conversation said something along the lines of  'it's not right that all those people come here' (referring to Romanians). I said to her that I was an immigrant (of sorts) too, I was also a young person once who came to the UK without money and asked for income benefit. I made the best of it, found a job, earned money. I'm pretty sure most of those other people coming to the UK want to do exactly the same. And they don't only come to the UK, they also go to other countries. Just like British (young and old) people move around Europe. She looked a bit taken aback and said 'hm, I didn't think of people like you'. (Did she change her mind? I don't know, I tried to avoid her afterwards. In one other conversation that I couldn’t get out of she said that everybody was lied to before the referendum. Sorry, I can't agree with that.)
  • The other one was with an older man who when passing my garden, made a comment about my beautiful flowers and then picked up on my accent. We had a sort of OK conversation until the point where he was going on about people who don't earn money - fully knowing by that time that I was a family member of an EU citizen (I was not in employment). In his opinion these people should be imprisoned. I felt very uncomfortable about this turn and asked him to leave as we clearly had nothing in common. He made me feel sick in my stomach.
This was the point where I started to think about our safety as a family in the UK. I had never felt like that before living outside of my home country in various places - despite the Germans not always being loved. It uncomfortably dawned on me, that this was how many 'foreign looking' people must feel every day. I got very angry and depressed at how awful humanity really is.

About a year later I also got a Facebook comment that I should be speaking English with my son when going about my business in the UK. Apparently this person was also trying to speak the language of every country she visited... Yeah, right. I reminded her that English wasn't the only language spoken in the UK and that it was entirely my business in which language I speak to my child.

All of this was nothing compared to the xenophobic events I read (and still read) about, school children being taunted, some EU citizens being beaten up for no reason other than not being British enough. Yes, these are exceptions and I do have lovely British friends who are through and through European, and you find horrible people everywhere, but it just felt really overwhelmingly wrong to live with that (and inflict it on my son!) if I didn't have to. 

I was also concerned about my democratic rights and became aware that my status in the UK wasn't as secure as I had thought.

As a German EU citizen I was not allowed to vote in the UK general elections (only German ones), but as an EU citizen in the UK I always had the right to take part in local elections and, of course, in European elections. That was fine with me. Then I discovered that as a German I could lose the right to vote in German general elections after 25 years of not living there (there are exceptions but I was not sure at all that they would have applied to me). So I was in the same situation as Brits who live abroad (they have an even shorter limit of 15 years): I was going to lose a very important democratic right and unless I took citizenship in the country I lived in (or move to Germany), I couldn't get it back.

Acquiring another national EU citizenship wasn't something I ever thought about as we were in the EU where we have citizen rights everywhere (apart from the general election voting rights), it simply didn’t seem necessary. The UK government had always assured us that there was nothing we needed to do to live there. And as you don't register yourself locally in the UK (like we do in Germany), that was that, everything seemed sorted.

If it hadn't been for Brexit, this voting situation still wouldn't have bothered me that much, even though I think that this is a big democratic gap in the EU project that needs fixing. Unfortunately, it has been left to the member states to decide who can vote in their general elections and they all have different rules.

Still, setting my worries about xenophobia aside, for a while I entertained the thought of taking on British citizenship in addition to my German one, becoming a dual citizen and protecting my democratic rights and status that way. I soon found that this was a quest with a lot of what-ifs (there was no 'settled status' then).

I realised that time was running out for me to obtain dual citizenship. I was thinking, all I need to do is to apply for permanent residency (PR) and then British citizenship (and pay something near to £2000 in the process, language test etc. included). However, due to my special circumstances as a non-working family member of a (working) EU citizen I most likely would not have been granted PR  then, only after about five years’ time. The reason for that was that I hadn't registered myself as a family member because I simply didn't know I had to do that (believing what the government said  that everything is fine). By the time I eventually would have accrued my five registered years that I needed to obtain PR, the UK most likely would have left the EU - which would have made the dual citizenship quest impossible as Germany only allows to have dual citizenship with another EU country. So by the time I would have got PR the UK most likely would have been out, and there would have been no dual citizenship for me (unless the German government changed the law). Now with the new 'settled status' set up especially for EU citizens in the UK my situation maybe could have worked out differently but I'm not so sure (as comprehensive private health insurance is still an issue when applying for British citizenship).

One thing was clear, I was not giving up my German (EU) citizenship, so an attempt to get PR in five years’ time was useless to me. However, staying in the UK I would become somebody who could NOT vote in a) any UK general election, b) possibly any EU election, c) most likely in local UK elections, and d) in German general elections any more. It looked like I would become completely voiceless. A frightening outlook.

My working husband (who could have had dual citizenship easily) was faster than me in making up his mind, he just wanted to go, almost straight away.

At some point, I realised that I could not react openly anymore to people who I did not know. There was always the question in my head whether they voted for Brexit and if so, how they would react to me being a foreigner. The referendum result was slowly poisoning my social interactions and my life.

Despite living in a very non-Brexit area of the UK, in the end I decided that while *I* could maybe stick it out as a second class citizen, I simply cannot have my son grow up somewhere becoming so openly xenophobic at an alarming rate. I would never forgive myself if something happened to him because he was not British born (despite actually having been born in the UK). However, I was able to make sure that he got registered as a British citizen (at the stately fee of around £1000), so that he has the freedom to live in the UK should he ever want to.

After 12 years in the UK the thought of moving country yet again was half dreadful, half exciting. I always thought we would stay forever and absolutely hated that I would have to leave behind my network of very valued friends. But I was happy about moving house (it was too small), getting closer to my relatives (especially my rapidly ageing mother), and being able to get my son into the German education system where he would finally learn proper German. I was very worried about my son not liking a move away from his hometown but he took the whole thing on the chin and never complained.

As a family it took us about 18 months to finalise our decision. We were going to leave for Germany.

Summer 2018


15 August 2019

A love of languages and Free Movement

[Part 1 of the "My Story - SylkeWeb" series.]

To understand who I am and possibly why I am saying what I'm saying, I thought it would help to give a little background. I am doing it in English so that I can share it with friends in the UK. Maybe I'll add it in German afterwards.

Born in the 1960s, I grew up in Germany. I always liked languages and as a teenager my parents sent me on some language-related group travel; I ended up in Folkestone, near Dover, together with some other teenagers who I hardly knew. It was a bit of a mixed experience. After that I took part in the student exchange programme between the twin cities of Hanover and Bristol, twice. I loved this despite staying with a family outside of Bristol, in the sticks. They took me to some places that were well known in the UK but I didn't know anything about them at the time and I guess I was a bit blasé about them (typical teenager). Over time (and with more knowledge) I started to appreciate their efforts a lot more. I sadly lost all contact with the family.

After school, I decided to study languages at university. During that time I also spent half a year as a visiting student in Reading. At this point I was a bit more clued up and made sure to take part in whatever excursions were possible for me financially.

In 1992, after finishing my studies in German and English linguistics, I left my home town Hanover for the UK. I wanted to stay for three months in London. I stayed for three years...

I went there without anything apart from my suitcase. A friend recommended I should go and see if I would be accepted as a job seeker and I received income support without any fuss (which enabled me to rent a room). A little while into this, they put me on an IT course (email was still a new thing at the time!). After I had finished my run, I was asked to teach the IT course myself, and was eventually hired by a small tech company to do technical support for German customers.

Living in London was exhausting and I didn't like the city that much after the initial honeymoon period.

Life then took me away: the small tech company was bought up by another bigger one and they moved all of us (who wanted to go) over to the Netherlands in 1995. With the offer to double my salary that was a no-brainer. I stayed there for seven years (living first in The Hague, then Leiden), in which I also learned a bit of Dutch and met Frank who is now my husband.

Once again, work made a decision for me. In the early 2000s the company decided to move us all over to Dublin in Ireland, which again had a good monetary incentive, so Frank and I went along. I loved my job as a supervisor for a small web admin and translation team. After three years, I got pregnant and Frank had found a new job within the same company, but over in the UK. So another move happened, to a smaller town this time, and I stopped working and became a full-time mother.

Having a baby is a great way to get to know local people. We bought a house in Winchester, I made many good friends and we stayed there for twelve years. I was well integrated, even volunteering in school, for the local Scouts and as secretary for a local community group, met with local councillors every month to discuss community issues, after a while often knowing more about how things work than the people who lived there long before me... Life was fine even though there were some niggles (that I simply ignored as you get them everywhere).

And then the 2016 referendum happened. The result was something I had not anticipated and it gave me plenty to think about. One thing was clear: after 26 years living in other EU countries, I felt through and through European!




Final considerations…

It has been building for a few years. When the children were born and my husband Rob and I went to Germany for our annual summer vacation, sitting in the evening sun, on the large garden patio, overlooking my mum and dad’s huge garden, the conversation often turned to ifs and whens and whether it would be possible for us to come to live in Germany.

I am an only child and when my children were born, there were many fears of what would happen to them, if anything happened to me and my husband. Who would look after them and who would ensure the “family on the continent” had access. Sufficient access.

But the years drew in and, as both my husband and I were in employed jobs, with a mortgage, cars that were still owned by the bank and kids in education system, the ability to make a decision and move to Germany seemed less and less of a possibility. We made the best of it, went during the holidays and sent the children across on their own, once they were old enough for assisted flights.

We played with the idea of retiring in Germany, hoping that our family here would hang in for that long, so we could look after them. And looking after them … it became more and more of a factor that sat niggling in the back of my mind, the older I got, and the older my mum and dad got in Germany. How easy would it be to come across and look after them for a number of weeks or months. Could I leave my life in the UK for that amount of time, when it became necessary.

We made the best of having family in a different country and relished our multicultural life. For a long time we thought we had the best of both worlds.

Then things changed, we left our beautiful home in a rural setting in East Lothian, Scotland, where we were firmly integrated into church life and had a lot of friends and moved to Fife. We wanted to be nearer Rob’s parents and we also wanted to be in a urban setting to allow the children more flexibility in terms of schooling and hobbies when they grew up.

From the moment we arrived the small town mentality started hurting me. I had, and still have friends that are open, honest, educated and do not care what your skin colour is or where you come from. But there were many people, increasingly more, where I could here a slight “undertone”. Quintessentially British, it was quiet, hardly noticeable, but it was there. It was the mental equivalent of the turned up nose. A slight hesitance to sit next to you at school performances, a wry smile when the children told of our “different Christmas”, a raised eyebrow at window boxes with hanging flowers. Just an astonishment that it was important to us to preserve our cultural inheritance whether Scottish or German. It got worse the older my children got, especially in primary school. From pointing out how “Germanic” they looked to being openly bullied in football and other sports clubs … my children were always given the feeling they were different and they did not belong. They were overlooked and side passed for others, less talented, but more Scottish. My husband began to suffer, developing feelings from rage to exhaustion, but never able to put a finger on what exactly was going on and why it was going on.

Then the Referendum came. In the run up, I tried to talk to as many people as possible, trying to make my voice heard, as I did not have any say. I implored why ask the question in the first place. Coming from a divided country – I could not understand. It seem illogical and backwards, wanting to cause divide, especially as Scotland in particular voted against exactly that in their own referendum for independence a year or so earlier. When the news came – it seemed surreal. When the time passed, nothing changed. Life went on, the teenagers turned into young adults and created their own futures.

But something niggled away. With every visit to Germany, it became harder to return to the UK. With every visit to Germany, time spent with family there seemed to become more important.

I can no longer remember what the final straw was – but everything was wrong – and then, everything was right. I was now self-employed and could take my job with me. My parents would move in with us and finance a new home – to allow us the financial ability to live on one wage, for my husband to learn German and to give them the security to know they are looked after for the rest of their lives. The children were in two minds – one wanted to go straight away, the other did not want to go at all. And we told them it would take time – it is not easy to find a house that would fit all six of us, two dogs and three horses, who of course had to come too.

The perfect location.
But there it was. Three weeks later, the perfect property in the perfect location. Hills that my dad loves so much, a friendly neighbourhood, a brilliant location with easy access to larger cities, in case my mum needs more intense medical care.

It was all too quick, too intense, too emotional … but it was happening. At this time in 2018 we decided to buy a property in Germany and started getting our house in Scotland ready to get sold. And while family and the promise of a better lifestyle had a huge part in the decision, the uncertainty of what the future would hold for me in the UK was our trigger. We were leaving.


22 Juni 2019

Rückkehrerfahrungen - worum geht es hier?


Herzlich willkommen bei unserem neuen Blog!

Dies ist ein Ort, den wir für Mitglieder der geschlossenen Facebook-Gruppe "Deutsche Rückkehrer aus Großbritannien" angelegt haben, die gerne ihre Erfahrungen auch außerhalb der Gruppe beschreiben und teilen wollten.

Es geht uns im Allgemeinen darum zu beschreiben, wie wir die Rückkehr von Großbritannien nach Deutschland empfunden haben, was uns leicht fiel, aber auch was wir nach den Erfahrungen im Ausland auf einmal anders als vorher betrachtet haben. Dies können positive wie negative Berichte sein. Es geht hier um ganz persönliche Erfahrungen, die nicht unbedingt von allen geteilt werden. Bitte bedenkt beim Lesen immer, dass jeder Mensch anders ist, und mancher sich vielleicht auch mal ein wenig unbeholfen ausdrückt.

Die Kommentarfunktion zu den einzelnen Einträgen bleibt erst einmal ausgeschaltet, weil wir zur Zeit schlichtweg nicht genug Zeit haben, uns regelmäßig um Kommentare zu kümmern. Es besteht aber der Plan, ein Kontaktformular einzurichten.

Wer hier etwas beitragen möchte, kann uns fürs Erste über die Facebook-Gruppe finden.

Einträge können auf Deutsch und auf Englisch erstellt werden, je nachdem, welche Sprache dem/der Teilnehmenden mehr liegt.

Ich hoffe, Ihr findet hier etwas interessantes!

Sylke