Brexit Testimonies

"Since the result of the referendum and the unending name-calling in the UK parliament and press, I feel that a connection has broken, dissolved, faded. Despite all of the technological changes that seemed to bring it closer, for me the UK is drifting away again, becoming a country of my past."

Growing up as an army child, I moved around a lot and never had one place to call home. By the age of 11, I had lived in several different parts of the UK, as well as Germany and Gibraltar. Eventually, my parents settled on the south-east coast of England. Not long after my getting a degree in modern history, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and with no full-time work on the horizon and no strong attachments to any particular part of the UK, I decided to train as an English language teacher. Moving to Poland to become an English instructor at a teacher-training college was one of the best decisions I ever made.

In 1993 there were no mobile phones, no cheap airline flights and no internet in Poland. It was not in the EU or NATO and it felt very far away from the UK, but the people were friendly and life was interesting. After some years of learning the language and the culture, I moved up to Warsaw to work in a higher education institution. Arranging visas and dealing with paperwork were never easy and always involved running around and adapting to ever-changing rules and regulations. In the end, however, there was always a way through the red tape…until Poland joined the EU.
Now I am married to a psychologist and we have two children of our own.

When the referendum was decided in 2016, Poland had become a modern Western economy, with all of the trappings of late modernity, including news 24/7, cheap and regular flights to different parts of the UK, Facebook, WhatsApp, and an increasingly diverse capital city. The country felt a lot ‘closer’ to the UK than ever before. I realised that I would probably never go back to live in the UK, but that was an unwritten page for later life.
I can’t say that Brexit is a major inconvenience to me, as my work and family are secure. I’ve even gone back to school in recent years. I completed an MA and I’m now in the middle of a PhD in Sociology. I feel I belong here. Poland is my home. There is no hint here of the sad situation in Britain where some EU citizens have been made to feel unwelcome.

Since the result of the referendum and the unending name-calling in the UK parliament and press, I feel that a connection has broken, dissolved, faded. Despite all of the technological changes that seemed to bring it closer, for me the UK is drifting away again, becoming a country of my past. Perhaps it was a sense that the UK could have been a home if I needed it, a place of sanctuary. Now I realise I have no voting rights and no pension, and that my wife and children would probably not be eligible to live permanently in the UK after Brexit. It seems the possibility of return was a reassuring myth.

Although my European identity will always have a core of Britishness and I have tastes which reflect half a life of food, fashion and music consumed in the UK, I have accepted the cord has been cut and I’m going to move on. I am lucky that, if necessary, I can apply for Polish citizenship, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.

I don’t think that my physical situation will change much, but the psychological impact has been huge.