The aptly titled In Limbo: Brexit Testimonies from EU Citizens
in the UK, by Elena Remigi, Véronique Martin, and Tim Sykes (eds.), is a
2017 compilation of responses by EU citizens living in the UK to the Brexit
vote, and very sad and moving reading it makes.
The entire Brexit shambles is embarrassing for the UK anyway, but Remigi
and her colleagues have outlined its human cost. These are perspectives Brexiteers ignore, and
probably don’t care about, but they need to be heard.
Since the vote, the UK’s stock in
the world has diminished: it has been shown to be run by an incompetent
government more concerned with keeping the Tory Party together than about the
country, a country which is xenophobic, arrogant, small-minded, full of poorly
educated people who do not have a clue about how the modern world works, and possessing
contempt for what it sees as ‘the other’.
Who can blame outsiders for seeing us this way when many Britons do?
The foreword by George Szirtes
mentions a leave voter saying he wanted to prevent all illegal immigration, as
if it were synonymous with EU freedom of movement and would stop with Britain
leaving the EU. Many people believed the
malicious propaganda, and still do, not realising how critical the role played
by EU nationals in the UK economy. They
surely will, when it is too late. In the
meantime, this book shows the human cost, and anybody who is not concerned by that
should be ashamed.
In
Limbo
is full of testimonies of hard-working people who have made a significant
contribution to this country. It is not
totally representative, because it is drawn from accounts posted online, excluding
many people. Others were afraid to participate
because they feared repercussions (which says something in itself) and also
unrepresented are those involved in low-skilled work who perhaps have poor
English skills. Naturally I checked to
see if there were any Romanian entries, and found three.
Nicoleta (pp. 27-8) came to the
UK as a ‘highly skilled migrant worker’ before the UK labour market was open to
Romanians, and had to obtain a visa waiver after being headhunted. She had previously worked in the USA and
South-East Asia, resulting in her being highly skilled at no cost to the
British taxpayer. Her assumption that
her identity as eastern European would indicate someone strong who had
prospered despite growing up in a repressive regime was shattered when
Romanians and Bulgarians were characterised to her as an ‘invasion’ of ‘third
world Europeans,’ despite her significant contribution to this country. She has too many friends to quit the UK, and
is going to fight, because she feels ‘the Europeans, East and West, share a
dream with the 48% [of Britons who voted remain] that is worth fighting for.’
Teordor Lingurar (p. 144) had
been living in the UK for ten years but still found it difficult to gain
permanent residence, his application having been turned down twice despite
providing evidence of National Insurance for that period. ‘The reason given to me by the Home Office was
that they could not establish that I was residing in the UK.’ It is perhaps
more cock-up than conspiracy, but shameful either way.
Diana Wright (pp. 171-3) grew up
during the Communist period, in difficult times for the country and in
straitened circumstances for her family.
Aged 13 in 1989, the UK government’s ‘authoritarian approach to Brexit’
has caused her to think back to her childhood memories. She achieved a post-graduate education, and
when moving to the UK created her own job, rather than ‘stealing’ it from a
British citizen. She has a British
husband who loves Romania and they lived there for six years. They moved back for their daughter’s
education, but found the system wanting and home-schooled her. Diana is upbeat, because there are other
places to live in the EU, not least Romania itself, with a good standard of
living and protected by EU standards.
Those behind the book run a blog, https://www.inlimboproject.org/,
which continues to collect testimonies and highlight the problems and
uncertainties EU citizens in the UK face.
What an indictment of this country as supposedly civilised and
outward-looking. In 2018, Remigi and
colleagues published a follow-up, In
Limbo Too: Brexit Testimonies from UK Citizens in the EU, a less-well publicised
part of the fiasco.
