Not sure if I am welcome, or whether I want to stay

06/07/2017 - Experiences of an Italian in the aftermath of Brexit.

It’s a strange thing to wake up one morning and suddenly feel unwelcome in the country you’ve called home for 25 years. It was just gone 6am on June 24, 2016, the day after the Brexit referendum, and I was still in bed when I checked the news on my phone.

At first, I could barely believe what I was reading: the polls, predictions and pundits had all been wrong. Britain had voted to leave the EU. I exchanged startled text messages with a dear friend, Catherine Jenkins, a British art historian living in London.

“I have never felt so out of control of events around me,” she wrote, perfectly summing up my own feelings. I switched on the television and sat transfixed in front of the screen for hours, trying to make sense of the new political landscape. I didn’t get much done that day: I was supposed to be working on an article but my disbelief got the better of me.

I am an Italian citizen living in Britain and, for the most part, have found this to be an open, tolerant and outward-looking nation. So the referendum result was profoundly unsettling for me. I was shocked, of course, that Britain would choose to divorce itself from the largest trading bloc in the world, an assembly of nations that has presided over 60 years of peace and stability. But for me and the other 3 million EU nationals who came here legally to study or work, the most pressing question was: would we be allowed to stay?

Four days later, I joined a pro-Europe demonstration in Trafalgar Square – not because I wanted to overturn the will of the British people (for the record, I believe Britain should respect the results of its referendum and leave the EU; the question is how), but to surround myself with people who embrace the values I had always thought to be intrinsically British: inclusivity, openness, and appreciation of different peoples and cultures.

The crowd was boisterous and diverse: gay, straight, black, white, Asian, young, old. Everyone stood together. One French woman held a sign which instructed readers to “Hug an immigrant”, while Catherine, whom I met there, wore a T-shirt which simply read “STAY”. “I feel totally disenfranchised,” she told me. This, the first of many marches in the months to come, was a gathering that truly represented the multiplicity of London, a city which joined Scotland and Northern Ireland in defying the national mood and voting overwhelmingly to remain in the EU.

I have lived in London for decades without ever discovering all of its secrets. Italian cities may have more beautiful architecture and better weather, but none has the depth of contemporary culture or excitement of the British capital. Here, you can experience the best of global art or music without travelling more than a few miles from your home.

At White Cube in Bermondsey, one of my favourite galleries, you are as likely to see a spectacular show by installation artist Ibrahim Mahama of Ghana, an exceptional new talent, as you are work by British stalwarts such as Gilbert & George. Multiple perspectives, side by side, their juxtaposition leading to unexpected conversations.

Moving to London was entirely fortuitous. I came here at an age when I had no say in the decision, but I’ve spent most of my life in thrall to Britain’s music and art. Most of my earliest heroes were British. When I was 12, growing up in New York, the city to which my family had moved for my father’s corporate job, I fell in love with the eccentricity of British bands like Depeche Mode and Culture Club, the ambiguous sexuality of David Bowie and the flamboyant, glamorous creativity of New Romantic groups.

Later, aged 14 and living in Genoa on the Italian riviera, where we had relocated for another parental assignment, I would sometimes skip school (sorry, Mum) to jump on trains and stalk airports and hotels in the hope of meeting my idols. This teenage fandom culminated in a pilgrimage across Italy with a friend in pursuit of Spandau Ballet, who were touring the country.

In a flash of inspiration, we phoned a newspaper to speak to a music journalist who had interviewed the band; our pathetic pleading must have moved him because he revealed the greatest of secrets to us, the holy grail of teenage obsessives in the pre-social-media era: the address of the hotel in Rome where the group was staying. And, yes, we did go there, and, yes, we did manage to meet the band, albeit briefly (an encounter chronicled in full, glorious detail in my Spandau Ballet diary, which remains one of my most prized possessions).

So when I was finally sent to England to finish my schooling, aged 16, I was already fully immersed in British popular culture. I was disappointed to discover, however, that music videos were not a reliable guide to the prevailing teenage fashions of the time.

As my entire knowledge of British dressing was based on the frilly shirts, multi-layered leather jackets, studded accessories and copious eyeliner sported by bands such as Duran Duran, I was disillusioned by the boring Laura Ashley prints favoured by the girls at the boarding school I attended for my A levels, and the drab outfits worn by the boys from the local school we met at social events.
When I was sent to school in England, aged 16, I was fully immersed in British pop culture

The English girls I encountered at school were cliquey and more than a little unwelcoming, so the friendships I forged there were with other outsiders, girls from the Gambia, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Israel. And it was there that being Italian became a badge of honour, a defence mechanism to protect myself from the slights of those who looked down on us foreigners. It wasn’t until I moved to London to attend university two years later that I finally found a place where I fitted in.

By then, my cultural tastes had evolved. I was now a theatre junkie, directing all the energy previously reserved for Simon Le Bon, Boy George and Gary Kemp at William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett. I took a job as an usher at the National Theatre, paying the rent on a succession of student flats across London by working there in the evenings throughout much of my university education.

I was there to see Daniel Day-Lewis take on Hamlet (before he ran off stage mid-performance, never to tread the boards again); saw Rufus Sewell forget his lines while performing in Stoppard’s Arcadia and recover with such aplomb that he received a round of applause from the audience; watched the European premiere of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America; and sat through so many performances of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel that, decades later, I can still sing huge chunks of them from memory.

I saw hundreds of plays in the National’s three theatres, from the classics to the newest writing. An incredible theatrical education, it convinced me that London was one of the most thrilling cultural capitals in the world. Even though my job was a lowly one – checking tickets, showing punters to their seats and selling them ice creams in the interval – I was no longer an outsider there but a member of a larger creative team. London’s cultural universe was a place where all nationalities were welcome, where anyone and everyone could truly call themselves a Londoner.

Even if we’re given leave to remain, something has profoundly shifted in our relationship
When I later secured work as a junior reporter at The Art Newspaper, a trade publication for the art world that I eventually went on to edit, I became part of another diverse and international crowd. There, I had a front-row seat as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and the other YBAs crashed into popular consciousness with their irreverent, humorous, provocative offerings, and when Nicholas Serota, then director of the Tate galleries, presidedover the opening of Tate Modern, which has become the most popular museum of contemporary art in the world.

Nearly 20 years on, London remains a world capital for all forms of culture, and a home for people from around the globe. Every newspaper think-piece which laments the city’s takeover by Russian and Emirati billionaires, equating this with a sort of cultural deadening, can be rebutted by the rise of multicultural areas such as Peckham, now one of the most exciting destinations for lovers of new art. My job as a freelance journalist has often taken me there to seek out the work of countless new talents in young galleries such as The Sunday Painter or in the flats of emerging curators who stage ambitious exhibitions in their living rooms, part of a growing trend in London for art shows in people’s homes.

This is the city I love: endlessly resourceful, responding to the challenge of rising rents with irrepressible innovation. When I am away from London – visiting my father, for example, who lives in Rome – I miss the city’s cosmopolitanism and cultural complexity. I miss the sprawling parks where I spend many hours in every week walking my dog. I even miss the innate British ability to form an orderly queue – anyone who has ever experienced the chaos of an Italian post office will know what I’m talking about. If I had to reduce my identity to just one thing, I would describe myself as a Londoner, a term so catholic that it encompasses and accommodates my Italian heritage.

I am at my most Italian during major football tournaments such as the World Cup, which brings out the tribal allegiances in all of us. Every four years, I watch Italy play with my two brothers and assorted Italian and British friends; even my mother, who usually disdains sporting events, is roped in to cheer on the Azzurri.

At these family gatherings, it’s often my sister-in-law who cooks. A young opera singer from Milan, this year she joined Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s renowned Monteverdi choir, which is currently on a world tour to mark the 450th anniversary year of the great Italian composer’s birth.

One evening in April I attended an open rehearsal in London for Ulisse, one of Monteverdi’s three surviving operas. Sir John told us that the singers hail from across Europe – England, Italy, Spain, France, Poland – and that he is deeply worried that, post-Brexit, it will be much harder to gather together such an ensemble to travel to multiple countries. Music and art should know no borders, he said.

At other times, though, the opposite view has been laid out before me: the full prejudice and ignorance of some Brexit voters. A few weeks after the referendum, a taxi driver told me that the animosity and even violence directed at migrants post-Brexit was “understandable” because “people have had enough”.

I pointed out that I am Italian and asked if he would like me to leave the country, too. “No, you’re all right,” he said. What he meant was; “You’re not Eastern European.” A Polish friend who has lived in Britain for over a decade tells me that when she is out in public now she is too scared to read Polish news on her phone. “I’m on edge all the time,” she says. The hatred fuelling this racism is rooted in prejudice, not fact. Immigrants from the EU contribute far more to Britain’s economy than they claim in benefits. To cite just one report, in 2014 the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at UCL concluded that EU citizens from Central and Eastern Europe contributed 12 per cent more in taxes than they claimed in benefits.

To witness the bigotry of some Brexit voters has been confusing and upsetting. And, for me, it has hit very close to home. The people who voted to leave Europe because they’ve had enough of foreigners are not just strangers I see interviewed on television: they’re the wheelchair-bound residents of a nursing home I visit as a volunteer with my registered therapy dog, Daffy. I listen to their stories, make them tea and coffee and run errands for them while Daffy enjoys the attention lavished on her by dozens of sick and elderly disabled people.

Every single one of them I talked to about Brexit in the weeks after the referendum told me they had voted to leave Europe “because of the immigrants”. Their country has been swamped by Europeans, they said. Europeans like me. Europeans who make up a sizeable proportion of the permanent staff of the nursing home. Some of these dedicated workers told me they are now thinking of leaving Britain. So will many of the Europeans who make our NHS work. The continuing uncertainty over their futures combined with the very real prejudices of the people they serve is too much to cope with.

We, the Europeans who protested in central London that day last June, alongside British friends and strangers, expected early assurances that our future in this country was secure. But none came. And as I write this article, the issue has still not been definitively addressed. We’ve been offered platitudes by Theresa May’s government about our contribution to Britain’s economy and communities, but the underlying message is clear: you are not one of us and you do not matter enough for your place in this country to be guaranteed. Instead, you will be used as bargaining chips to help safeguard the rights of British citizens who have moved to Europe.

The only salve to this distressing new reality has been London itself. This city is one of the few places in Britain to be represented by a politician who has consistently given voice to the concerns of Europeans since the Brexit vote. That politician is Sadiq Khan, who was elected mayor one month before the EU referendum by more than a million voters, including me.

The day after the vote, Khan tweeted: “My message to the Europeans living in London – you are welcome here #LondonIsOpen”, a sentiment he has expressed repeatedly since then. It remains to be seen whether he will hold any sway over British government policy. But talk matters. Europe is not just about trade and tariffs, and Khan has achieved something the Tory government has spectacularly failed to do: he has made us feel appreciated.

My British friends ask why I haven’t applied for a British passport – I’ve been here much longer than the requisite five years, have always paid my taxes and have no criminal record. I should qualify. “Just get it over with,” they advise me. But who wants to be part of a club that openly despises you?

In my gloomiest moments, I contemplate the prospect of having to leave London. Where would I go? Perhaps to Scotland, if they would have me. But I don’t want to move. It is in one of these moments that I begin the arduous process of applying for permanent residency. Many of my European friends here have applied for this status in the hope that it will enable them to remain in the country, whatever happens in the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

I call Natasha Hotson, an immigration lawyer at the City firm Lewis Silkin. She tells me that the government is likely to implement some form of registration for Europeans living in Britain and that we will most likely have to document our activities in Britain regardless of whether or not we wish to obtain British citizenship. Many of her European clients are thinking twice about taking longer trips abroad or cancelling overseas secondments because they fear this will hinder their application for permanent residency. Others have been so alienated by Brexit and its aftermath that they are contemplating packing up and leaving.

I download the 85-page residency application form. It is hugely complicated and confusing. I am asked to give the exact date that I first entered Britain and then to list “any absences from the UK” since that date: 25 years’ worth of work trips and holidays abroad. I despair. I can barely remember what I did last week, let alone all the trips abroad I’ve taken over the last three decades.

I call the Home Office. “You only need to list your trips for five years, not 25,” a spokesman tells me. I point out that this is not what the application form asks for. “We assume you know we mean five years,” he explains. How, I wonder? Then he says there is no need to fill out this application form at all.

“We fully intend to protect the rights of EU citizens living in Britain,” he informs me. Really? What power does he have to influence government policy, I ask. Silence. The answer is none. I suspect he is simply trying to dissuade Europeans from overwhelming the Home Office with paperwork.

Over the course of the past year I have felt transported to a strange new land where I have completely lost my bearings. Even if we, the Europeans who live in Britain, are given leave to remain here, something has profoundly shifted in our relationship with this country. Some of us will choose to leave even if we’re allowed to stay.

Many of the Continent’s best and brightest who would have come here now never will. And those of us who remain will not forget that many British people resent us being here, that our contributions to this country don’t matter to them. And that the government could have stood behind us, and chose not to. Europeans like me once felt part of this great country – now, we do not. And Britain will be diminished because of it.

Written by Cristina Ruiz.

Fonte:http://www.europeanscom.eu/not-sure-if-i-am-welcome-or-whether-i-want-to-stay/

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