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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

How European academics are feeling about life in Britain a year after Brexit vote

“I remember very distinctly the morning when the final counting was done,” recalled Joaquín de Navascués Melero. “My wife and I – she is also Spanish and she doesn’t have a British passport – we were sitting in the kitchen after breakfast and saying, ‘well which country do we go to now’?”

Published: 29 June 2017 11:58 CEST

How European academics are feeling about life in Britain a year after Brexit vote

Photo: marcinwos/Depositphotos

For de Navascués Melero, a research fellow in stem cell biology at Cardiff University who has worked in the UK for nine years, the vote for Brexit came as a shock. Since then his life in the UK has been characterised by uncertainty and a heightened consciousness of his own “alienness”. He told me that for him “the most straining point is not knowing how the social situation is going to evolve: We are already seeing an increase in hate crime – that is all very worrying.”

As an academic from another EU country – though he also has a British passport – de Navascués Melero’s experience is not unique. In an online survey published by the Times Higher Education magazine in March, academics cited the hostile climate generated by the rhetoric around Brexit and a related sense of “diminished psychological safety” as the main reason for considering leaving the UK. The future rights for EU citizens were also a key concern. Of the 131 who responded, 53% said they were actively looking to leave the UK, while 88% indicated they were more likely to consider doing so in the medium to long term.

In a separate YouGov survey for the University and College Union (UCU) published in January, three-quarters (76%) of EU academics indicated that they were more likely to consider leaving the UK as a result of Brexit. A survey by the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK found that 43% of their members would consider leaving.

Attracting and retaining academics from other EU countries is one of the major issues facing the university sector after Brexit – fears have been raised of a potential “brain drain”. The latest indications point to a rise in EU academics leaving British universities.

There are three key reasons for this, which were highlighted by representatives of the university sector in evidence to a recent House of Commons select committee inquiry. First, the uncertainty over future status and rights of EU nationals in the UK for both staff and their dependants. Second, uncertainty over future access to EU research funding and, third, the perception that the UK is becoming a less welcoming place for people from abroad.

In order to understand more about the impact of the Brexit vote, I spoke with three fellow academics who, like me, come from another EU country: Gianluca Demartini from Italy, a data scientist at the University of Sheffield who has worked in the UK for three years, Monica Giulietti also from Italy, an economist at Loughborough University who has worked in the UK for 23 years and the aforementioned Joaquín de Navascués Melero from Spain. I asked them to share their personal experiences of how the result of the EU referendum has affected them. Their stories highlight the issues raised by the university sector and provide insight into the personal impact of the climate in the UK since the referendum – and the shift in social status of people from other EU countries living in Britain.

It’s personal

“All of a sudden the world has changed,” de Navascués Melero told me. “You may not perceive it all the time, but it’s there … you are more conscious of your alienness after Brexit.”

But the daily experience at university has not changed, as Giulietti, the Italian economist, emphasised:

In the kind of environment where we work, we are certainly privileged that there is a sense of being valuable. There is an international environment where it is just normal to have people of all different nationalities. You are respected for your role and no one questions your nationality.

All the academics I spoke to said they felt valued by their universities. The concern is with what is going on outside this “bubble”. Nationalist and anti-immigration rhetoric in public debate and media coverage has generated a sense of an increasingly alienating climate for those now categorised under a broad label of “EU migrants” and “foreigners”.

Life can be less friendly outside the university bubble .Photo: syda_Productions /Depositphotos

While it is often stated that EU migrants are valued for their contribution to society, the use of these terms define them as outsiders. This form of social categorisation can have a significant impact on people’s lives and sense of belonging.

As the anthropologist Fredrik Barth (1969) argued in his seminal work on ethnic relations, distinctions between people that emerge at the societal level, whether based on nationality, ethnicity or religion, have implications for everyday social interactions.

“It made me feel more different,” Giulietti told me. “Whereas in the past I never had to think about it, I was just a person doing a job and bringing up a family.” In the wake of the Brexit vote she “started questioning things, questioning whether I belong” – even within her British family. She found this feeling, and the new sense of vulnerability that came with it, very surprising.

“I’m a self-confident person,” Giulietti explained, “I don’t easily feel vulnerable, I know I can defend myself in any situation”. But now she feels “more vulnerable” than she has ever been. “Despite the fact that … as a rational person, I know that there is nothing dangerous, there is nothing really to worry about, but things are different.”

Demartini, the data scientist, talked about how he could feel this where he lives – a small town outside Sheffield. He said that when talking to people in the shop for instance, “you get questions, people asking when I’m going to be leaving and this sort of thing. It has happened to me and it has happened to a lot of my colleagues”.

De Navascués Melero said people in the Spanish community had started wondering if they could speak freely in Spanish to their children. “We do, we haven’t changed that, but we look around, just in case,” he said. Other European academics have spoken about being abused in the street for speaking German.

Meanwhile, Giulietti raised a different, but related reaction: “The argument everyone makes is: it’s not about you, it’s about the others.” But as she says, there may be another family just down the road telling another European person it’s not about you. “So it could be about me. It depends on who is looking.”

Cosmopolitan to the core

The sense of alienation potentially produced by such a climate can change the way you see yourself in relation to society. Until last year, Giulietti was a member of a panel of technical experts for a government department. She was in the process of interviewing for the same role for the following year, but decided to pull out. This was in the aftermath of statements by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, at the Conservative Party conference in October 2016 about further curbs on immigration and proposals such as companies having to publish the number of international staff they employ.

“I had been mulling over it because of the rhetoric about foreign workers generally. Basically this idea that all of a sudden people are no longer welcome. Useful members of society, who have been contributing, are no longer relevant. Why would I want to help make decisions for a society where I’m no longer considered a fully functioning member.”

Statements by leading Brexiteers such as Michael Gove that the country had had enough of experts contributed to this feeling. She said: “As an intellectual, as an expert, you are not allowed to talk. Yes, the experts should be challenged, but they should not be kept quiet.”

Immigration became a key theme of the referendum campaign.

The Leave campaign and the debate in parts of the media was also rife with strong appeals to patriotism. “The concept that seems to be underpinning that rhetoric is difficult to accept,” said Giulietti. “This idea that you have to be attached to the place where you were born.”

Research has shown that migrating career professionals from a range of occupational groups often identify with some sense of being “citizens of the world”. My own research shows that those who develop such a cosmopolitan identity have a strong preference for social environments that are open, diverse and international and tend to feel alienated when the opposite is the case. They embrace the idea of transcending national attachments, but this does not mean they are rootless. They also maintain their national identities as part of a broader cosmopolitan sense of community.

As Giulietti put it: “I see myself as Italian, European, part of a bigger picture than what is being proposed here.” She feels that, in the current climate, the message seems to be that there is something wrong with what she was trying to achieve by going elsewhere to seek opportunities.

De Navascués Melero also emphasised that he is attached to Spain, but not that strongly. “I’m Spanish the same way I’m a man or heterosexual or white – it’s an accident of birth. I build my identity through what I do, not what was bestowed upon me.” As a result of this personal stance he said he found it “uncomfortable to be in a country where identity is something that goes with the accent, with the colour of your skin and with your culture”. He added: “I may be over-dramatic, but unfortunately that is something that is happening worldwide, it’s not just in the UK.”

Will I stay or will I go?

Demartini has decided to leave. He is in the process of moving to Australia where he has accepted a new position. He told me that the decision was a complex one.

“I’m not saying that I’m leaving because of Brexit, that would be too strong a statement, but out of many reasons this is one as well. The plan was to stay for a longer period of time. So things have changed.”

De Navascués Melero is staying for now but hinted that his longer-term intention might also change. “We will see how things evolve.” Putting things into perspective, he said:

“If we were going through this in Spain, for instance, my immediate reaction would be to leave the country as soon as I would have a professional opportunity – and in that sense I feel the same in Britain. So if things become too untenable and this is a society that turns its back on reason, I would just leave. I’m not going to subject my family to that.”

For Giulietti, who has a British husband and two daughters, leaving is not on the cards – although she has started to wonder whether this is an environment where she wants to work. Whereas before she would not have thought about moving back to the continent, she now considers it a possibility. “To be honest for many of us there are other opportunities in more fulfilling environments, so I started doubting whether I did want to continue. Certainly, I decided I didn’t want to work for the government.”

The life and career choices of highly skilled migrants tend to be closely associated with the characteristics of the social and organisational environments where they live and work. The professionals who participated in my research study actively sought environments that were culturally diverse, international and where cosmopolitan values of openness, tolerance and mutual respect were collectively upheld.

Citizens’ rights and research funding

Uncertainty related to future immigration status and rights is also a significant part of the issue – although the impact of this varies depending on individual circumstances. Giulietti decided to apply for permanent residency, but was rejected in the first instance – a relatively common occurrence. Along with the extent of the bureaucratic burden, the process can end up feeling like an insult as other academics have highlighted. This further contributes to the perception of the UK as an unwelcoming place.

Successful in her second attempt, Giulietti is now in a position to be able to apply for British citizenship.

“I feel in the short term it has to be done. I think in light of the fact that I don’t know what is coming around the corner – what if I’m diagnosed with an illness, what if I had to retire? I think it’s better to address it while at least I know what the rules of the game are. Yes, they are likely to sort it out, but it could be in a way that is even more difficult or complicated for all we know.”

There are other factors influencing the career choices of academics, particularly access to EU research funding and collaboration, which Brexit has also made uncertain. “If it becomes difficult for the things we need to do in order to have a career, a meaningful, successful career, then I could question the professional choices and also become more open-minded about alternative options,” said Giulietti, who described to me how an EU funding application she was involved in with partners in other European countries collapsed after the Brexit vote. Other scientists have described being dropped from research collaborations and hesitations about applying for EU funding proposals.

Thousands of EU nationals are planning to leave with their #citizensrights in limbo #Brexit1yrOn. Hurting research and economy. https://t.co/LxS0KFwwJP

— the3million (@The3Million) June 19, 2017

University leaders have called for science and research to be prioritised in Brexit negotiations – in terms of future rights of EU staff and students, access to EU research funding and ensuring that Brexit does not result in barriers to research collaboration.

In a speech in March, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michael Barnier, emphasised the top priority of citizen’s rights on both sides and also indicated the importance of research collaboration. The government’s Brexit white paper set out similar priorities. It also stated that “we will remain an open and tolerant country, and one that recognises the valuable contribution migrants make to our society.”

An open society?

While citizens’ rights and the framework for research collaboration are concrete matters for Brexit negotiators, if Britain wants to remain an open and welcoming country, politicians need to take action. Future immigration law and policy should move away from the government’s current hostile environment for migrants and the singular focus on cutting immigration numbers. More also needs to be done to prevent discrimination as well as hate speech and hate crime. And there would need to be a change in rhetoric on immigration and less focus on playing politics with identity.

Brexit will influence the rights, social status, identity, family life and careers of millions of people whose life is intertwined with free movement. The big question is how. For some EU citizens in Britain, the shift in social status brought about by the Brexit vote and the rhetoric around it is profoundly unsettling. It goes to the core of subtle but fundamental matters of belonging, particularly for those who have, perhaps for decades, been fully integrated members of British society.

My own experience echoes much of what the academics I spoke to shared. What I felt that day after the Brexit vote was a sense of loss. Free movement and the rights that come with it has fundamentally shaped my life. Because of it I was able to study, build a career, make a life and a family across several European countries. My British husband is also set to lose his EU citizen rights. For us, this is about what it means to live a life that transcends national borders. Freedom of movement makes it possible in a way that is unique. As a European family we cherish this more than we realised.

Now in light of another unexpected election result, the political debate on Brexit seems to be opening up and shifting. It is becoming even less clear what Brexit will mean and other models are again being discussed. I feel a glimmer of hope, not just for openness and tolerance, but also – however far-fetched – for the preservation of freedom of movement for generations to come.

By Irene Skovgaard-Smith, Senior lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Good tourist, bad tourist: How to travel responsibly in Spain

Barcelona resident David Mar doesn’t travel, but he thinks about tourism every day.

Tourists crowd the buses — essential for movement in a hilly neighbourhood like his. They leave trash for residents to discover in the morning. They shout and sing at night and wander drunkenly through the residential streets, ambling into backyards and pulling down laundry on clotheslines.

“It’s a disturbance that goes from when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night,” he told The Local Spain. “You don’t feel welcome in your own neighbourhood.”

Mar lives in Turó de la Rovira, on a 262-metre hill that towers over the city.

A viewpoint atop the hill called Los Bunkers de Carmel has gone viral on TikTok for its sweeping city views, bringing hordes of tourists to come drink wine, watch the sunset, and sometimes party into the early morning.

But for the residents of the surrounding Carmel neighbourhood — among Barcelona’s poorest — the consequences of this tourist explosion have been severe.

Mar was involved in a physical altercation with a group of four Australians, after he confronted them for tipping over parked motorcycles.

And last June a 76 year-old man was assaulted by a group of seven English-speaking youths after he tried to stop them from jumping a fence that had been put up around the Bunkers.

Such events are commonplace in Carmel, Mar says, with the post-pandemic massification of tourism provoking an unstoppable flow of Instagram-like-hungry travellers, fuelled by an increasingly lucrative industry whose interests often conflict with those of local residents.

“It collides directly with the most basic rights of those who live here,” Mar says. “Our right to housing, our right to transportation, our right to rest peacefully.”

With some 1.3 billion international arrivals globally in 2023, more people are travelling for pleasure than ever before in human history.

But as excessive crowds stress infrastructure and locals find themselves pushed out of their own communities, prevailing attitudes towards travel must be reconsidered if global tourism is to continue growing sustainably.

“Tourism isn’t a right, it’s a decision that you make,” Mar says. “And if you do it, you must be aware of the consequences it can generate.”

A couple uses a selfie stick to take a picture next to a banner warning tourists on drought alert in Catalonia, near Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Empathy abroad

Bartolomé Deyá Tortella, a researcher and the Dean of Tourism Faculty at the University of the Balearic Islands, says few tourists consider such consequences.

Instead, they embrace their inner hedonist and focus their vacation time on maximum pleasure for minimum price. This mindset might cause a tourist to forget their values and do things they’d never do at home.

“We all become capitalists when we practice tourism,” Deyá told The Local. “You think, ‘I paid for this, I’m on vacation, I’m having my moment of pleasure, I worked the whole year for it.”

Such thinking could explain why someone might respect quiet hours in their own neighbourhoods, but shout drunkenly in the streets late at night while on vacation.

Or why on a trip to Mallorca, where Deyá lives and works, a tourist might feel compelled to take a 10-minute shower — despite the water-stressed Mediterranean island’s near-drought conditions — while residents routinely shower in a minute or less.

Failure to consider saving water or respecting quiet hours comes down to lack of empathy, Deyá says, and our tendency to other the people whose communities we enter while traveling.

“Act as if you were in your own home,” he says. “If when you’re in your own city you don’t shout in the street because you know your neighbours are sleeping, why do it when you’re traveling?”

Social sustainability

Much has been said about environmental sustainability, but it’s easy to forget the social impacts of travel; how our interactions with local people and economies can change that society.

“When every one of us travels, it implies that the places where we came from are transformed, the places we pass through are transformed, and obviously, so are the places we arrive to,” Manuel de la Calle Vaquero, Vicedean of the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism at Complutense University of Madrid, told The Local Spain.

With this in mind, the most sustainable way to travel is by using one’s presence to positively impact the local community.

Or in other words, to leave a place better than you found it.

“When you jump on a plane, it’s important to make sure that trip counts for something positive,” says Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, a holiday company that collaborates with local partners to plan socially and environmentally sustainable vacations.

“I advise people to fly less, keep short trips flight-free – and, when you do fly, stay in a place longer and travel in a way that does as much good as possible,” Francis says.

Anti-gentrification banners addressing were already hanging from balconies in Barcelona back in 2017. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

Neighbourhood colonisers

One of the most significant ways in which tourism can alter the social landscape is through accommodation.

Not long ago, tourists and residents in Spain did not typically mix, with tourists sticking near their hotels, rarely straying into residential zones, Deyá says.

But today’s tourist has matured, and now expects novelty; an “authentic” experience that they can convince themselves distinguishes them from the thousands of other tourists expecting the same.

Nowadays they live among residents, in apartments instead of hotels, utilizing short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, which has led to the dissolution of boundaries between a city’s tourist and local zones.

Vaquero describes this new kind of tourist as the “anti-tourism” tourist, in the sense that they’re not interested in the sort of tourism promoted by governments and travel agencies, but instead consider themselves the explorers of new “authentic” destinations outside the typical tourist sphere.

“The one who wants to leave the traditional tourist circuit and supposedly goes looking for ‘authentic’ neighbourhoods — that tourist is obviously the coloniser,” Vaquero says.

The boom in short-term vacation rentals has led to what’s been dubbed the “Airbnb effect” in neighbourhoods worldwide, in which residents are slowly replaced by a constant flux of tourists. For landlords, vacation rentals can be far more lucrative than renting to residents, thus incentivizing them to evict long-term tenants in order to list their properties on Airbnb.

This is exactly what happened to Emanuele Dal Carlo. His landlord didn’t want to renew the lease on his small Venice apartment because they could make more renting it out on Airbnb. Like so many other Venetians, Dal Carlo had to move to the mainland.

To better understand the cultural erosion he saw happening to his city as a result of Airbnb, Dal Carlo enlisted the help of researchers to conduct a study, through which he discovered only 2,000 of the 3,300 Airbnbs in the city were registered with the government, and many were rented by foreign hosts with zero connection to Venice.

This means that much of the money tourists spend on accommodation never lands on the ground, thus eliminating any potential benefit to the local economy.

“What’s wrong is that the money available from tourism is not fairly distributed between workers and residents,” Dal Carlo says.

Dal Carlo now runs Fairbnb, an ethical Airbnb alternative which promotes “community-powered tourism.” Hosts are certified local, and the platform fees are put directly towards a social project in the local community, like food redistribution or sustainable energy initiatives.

As a tourist, the best way to avoid feeding the problem is by avoiding short term rentals when possible, Dal Carlo says, and instead booking accommodations with local businesses, like small independent hotels or traditional bed and breakfasts.

And if you absolutely must use Airbnb, Dal Carlo suggests booking with local hosts.

“If you’re traveling to Venice and your host is from Finland, ask yourself some questions,” he says.

An elderly local man on crutches waits to cross as a group of tourists using Segways squeeze by and into the narrow streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Whose fault?

In Spain, anti-tourism protests have crescendoed in recent weeks. The travel industry, it seems, has grown beyond its means, and locals are taking note.

To some degree, the problem can be traced to poor planning on the part of local governments and the unchecked expansion of algorithmic platforms like Airbnb.

Deyá points out that many government entities in Spain have welcomed tourist money, pursuing marketing campaigns without investing in adequate preparation.

“Tourism is the typical sector where many governments say, ‘ok, let’s leave it, because this works. Don’t touch it,’” Deyá says. “But there’s been no planning, there’s been no strategy.”

Back in Barcelona, the city’s public transport authority was involved in the promotion of the Carmel bunkers through its Bus Turistic webpage, encouraging tourists to come see the “spectacular views over Barcelona.”

The promotion was taken down on April 16th after continued anti-tourism protests from the Turó de la Rovira neighbourhood council, of which Mar is a member.

But as is the case with so many industries in a crowded world full of contradictions, the individual cannot be absolved of all responsibility, as one’s choice to participate in harmful systems enables their continuation.

No law or tourist tax will compel tourists to act with empathy, and the absence of such regulations should not be used to justify one’s bad behaviour abroad.

“The problem is that we’re hypocrites, and we think that it’s someone else who has to solve the problem,” Deyá says.

Mar, who’s never been much of a traveller himself, is no longer interested in traveling internationally after seeing what tourism has done to his city.

“So much of my city has become inhospitable for residents,” he says. “Because we’re truly suffering from it here in Barcelona, the concept of tourism disgusts me more and more.”

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