How European Workers in Britain Are Preparing for Brexit

(A protester at a demonstration attended by European workers – including nurses, social workers and teaching assistants – outside the Houses of Parliament. Photo: Stefan Rousseau PA Wire/PA Images)

Last week saw more headlines about the uncertain status of European Union citizens in the UK. The Observer reported that MEPs believe Europeans may be left in a "legal no man's land" after Brexit because the Home Office does not have the information or infrastructure to "select who can stay". A document leaked from the European Parliament to the Guardian pointed out that foreign nationals in the UK are having a "particularly difficult" time obtaining permanent residency status – a fact that may "colour member states' approach" to the British citizens within their own borders.

For the many European workers in the UK's service and hospitality industry – who are already dealing with low pay, precarious contracts and poor working conditions – this to-and-fro between the British government and EU is taking an emotional toll.

Speaking to a few working behind the food stalls at one of London's busiest wholesale and retail food markets – where, according to a rough estimate, 30 percent of the workforce are EU citizens – I found a curious mixture of anger, anxiety and optimism.

"I find myself thinking about it every day with each notification on my phone and every new headline about Brexit," says Vanessa, a 28-year-old French citizen who moved to the UK six months before the referendum and works on a stall selling Scotch eggs. "Pre-Brexit it was really lovely here – and it still is in London, don't get me wrong – but since the 24th of June it's completely changed the game. I started to feel unwelcome."

As some politicians have pointed out, the main problem is uncertainty. The Prime Minister has repeatedly refused to guarantee the rights of the 3 million Europeans living in the UK.
"The main stress I have is whether I'm going to be kicked out or allowed to remain in the country," Vanessa says.

What does she think about Theresa May's intransigence when it comes to her future rights as an EU citizen?

"It makes me so angry. I know she's – if I put it politely – a reserved person, but she seems to me a bit of a coward for not standing up. Deporting people is just… the very word makes me angry."

Lina, a Slovenian who manages a stall of Indian street food next to Vanessa, came to the UK to do a Master's in International Law at Metropolitan University. Citing the country's housing crisis and crumbling infrastructure, she says she understands why some people wanted to vote Leave. But she has less sympathy, like Vanessa, for the way May has used Europeans as "bargaining chips".

"You can't just exit Europe, not pay anything and expect everything else to be the same. It's ridiculous," she tells me.

Since Lina has been here for more than five years she's entitled to apply for permanent residency. There has reportedly been a 50 percent increase in people trying to do so since the referendum. Is she one of them?

"Not yet, but I will, probably. I just don't like being pushed into it," she says.

Ulrike, a German who's been working on the German deli stall for three months, but living in the UK for eight years, has already started the process. While deftly composing sausage sandwiches for tourists, she tells me about her bureaucratic travails.

"To get your citizenship you have to do a language test, a life in the UK test and you have to get the documents of certified residency," she tells me. "And for that you have to send so much proof of where you've lived, where you've worked, all your tax forms, where you've been on holiday over the past five years. I sent my documents off last year in November and I'm still waiting to hear back. And then you're not even guaranteed to get it."

What does she think about May's refusal to guarantee the rights of her fellow Europeans? "I almost feel like all non-UK citizens should just stop working for a day so they'd realise how many of us there are working here," she says, describing a strike of the kind envisaged by the #OneDayWithoutUs campaign.

As with everyone I spoke to, it's the looming sense of the unknown that cuts the most.

"No one has thought it through. No one knows what's going to happen. It's not nice to have that sword looming above you," says Ulrike.

Michael, a 33-year-old from Poland, has worked for six years at different markets across London. Above a slowly rotating roast hog, he tells me that he's quietly optimistic about his prospects for staying on because he's been in the UK for 12 years and has visited family here since he was five years old.

That said, he's aware there have been Europeans who were born in the UK receiving letters from the Home Office telling them to "prepare to leave".

Again, uncertainty looms large. "It's the worst thing about it. If you know what's going on then you can think about moving or start saving money. But we can't," he says.

For many non-European migrants, this anxiety has been a fact of life for decades. New Labour presided over the expansion of detention centres like Yarl's Wood – whose existence has been brought to attention by abolitionist campaigns led by activist groups like Sisters' Uncut – which were consolidated under Theresa May's tenure as Home Secretary. The main targets of this kind of state violence were West and East African, South Asian and Caribbean asylum seekers, locked up for years and then spirited away on chartered flights. So it's important to see today's situation with EU workers not as an aberration, but a development of something that already exists.

Brexit, in this sense, means the re-deployment of repressive state mechanisms onto a new group of people. Some have noticed a hypocrisy: the media and political class are more interested in deportations and forced emigration these days – when the potential victims are more likely to be middle-class and white – than before.

But the lesson of this isn't a race to the bottom where some migrants are considered more worthy than others. As Brexit corrals more people from different backgrounds into uncertainty, a political subjectivity of collective belonging is needed more than ever. As a campaign for migrant workers' rights recently put it: "Everyone who is here is from here."

For the Europeans slogging away in 12-hour shifts in London's service industry, the idea of being forced to leave the country they've chosen to call home is, for the first time, thinkable. Nonetheless, they're determined to stay.

"I don't think I would like to stay here indefinitely, but I don't want to leave just yet, and I especially don't want to be forced," Michael tells me. "I have plans. I have business ideas. I'm not ready to leave yet."

@Yohannk

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