Europeans in London ‘I’VE NEVER FELT
LIKE A FOREIGNER. SADLY NOW I DO’ Eva
45, Muswell Hill
I’VE LIVED IN LONDON for 23 years, since coming from Spain as an Erasmus student in 1993. In all that time, I’ve never felt like a foreigner, but sadly now I do. My partner is British, my children
are British. For me as a parent, it’s been a massive blow. One of the reasons we like living in London is because it’s such a multicultural society. My partner is British but of Chilean descent and I’m Catalan. Our children have strange first names and foreign surnames, and that was fine before. Suddenly it’s not fine any more. People are like: ‘Oh, what kind of a name is that?’ and ‘Why are your parents speaking with a funny accent?’ All of a sudden everything we took for granted has been pulled away from us. As well as the nasty xenophobia,
I’ve faced accidental patronising xenophobia. One friend said to me: ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll keepyou here, we’ll try to protect you.’ They were trying to be kind but to me that was even more hurtful than someone saying ‘Go home’. I don’t want personal protection, I want the laws of the country where I have lived, worked and paid taxes for 23 years to be fair to me because I have the right to be here. It shouldn’t be ‘Well, you’re nice, you look a bit like me, so you can stay!’ That is wrong. Most of all, I don’t want my
children to be confronted with such limited prospects. Their future has shrunk. They have lost – just like that – the opportunity to go and study or work in 27 European countries. To think that their lives will be more limited than mine is hard. It’s making my family ask questions we thought we’d never have to face.
Time Out London July 5 – 11 2016 40
ANDY PARSONS
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