‘Confused and angry’: Brexit unsettles EU citizens in the UK
LONDON >> Anxious, angry, abandoned. Brexit elicits strong emotions, and as Britain’s departure from the European Union approaches, more than 3 million U.K. residents who are citizens of EU countries are feeling the impending separation more strongly than most.
Brexit is a huge economic and social experiment, and the U.K.’s European residents are among the guinea pigs.
The U.K. government says they can stay and carry on with their lives as long as they apply for confirmation of their “settled status.” For some, that process is easy, or mildly annoying. For others, it’s deeply alienating.
Tanja Bueltmann, a Northumbria University history professor who has studied the experiences of EU citizens in Britain as they grapple with Brexit, said many felt the country’s decision to leave the EU as a “real rupture.”
“People were promised that nothing would change for them. Yet for a good number, even the process already changes everything,” she said.
Free moveme nt for people among the EU’s member states is a core EU principle and Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the bloc was, in part, a reaction to high levels of im migration from other EU nations. More than 1 million EU citizens moved to the U.K after eight formerly communist eastern European countries joined the bloc in 2004.
Britain’s departure from the EU on Friday night will end the rights of citizens from the 27 remaining EU nations to settle in Britain, and of Britons to automatically live elsewhere in the bloc. To prevent people having to uproot their l ives and their families, the U.K. government says EU citizens already in the country will be given “settled status,” protecting their right to live, work, study and receive benefits.
Other EU countries have made similar arrangements for the estimated 1 million U.K. nationals who reside there.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that EU citizens are welcome and valued, but many say they resent being forced to prove their right to remain in a country they call home.
“I feel strange, really unsettled,” said 78-year-old Elly Wright, a Dutch citizen who moved to the U.K. with her late husband in 1969. “It has moved me to the core. What has been happening with Brexit and the fact that someone like me, who has lived here for over 50 years, that my status here has to be secured when it always was secure — it makes you feel confused and angry, and also infinitely sad at times.
“My circle of friends, the people I share sadness and happiness with — they’re all here,” she added.
“My son lives here. My husband is buried here. I’m as much part of the fabric of this society (as) anyone else.”
Wright is not alone. Bueltmann’s study of more than 3,000 EU citizens found some had experienced “mental health issues that range from depression to suicidal thoughts.” When respondents were asked how they felt, the most frequent words were “angry,” “anxious” and “unwanted.”