EU families & Eurochildren in Brexiting Britain

Who are the baddies? Diary of an EU citizen in the UK (29)

Originally posted on Postcards from …:
Not a good start to my day. I’m on the train reading one of the many stories of EU nationals packing and leaving Britain. This time is a French woman, a mother and grandmother of UK-born children, who lives in the Canterbury district and feels forced out of the country –…

Brexit fatigue: Diary of an EU citizen in the UK (28)

I have kept quiet lately on Brexit. Somehow I needed a break from it and the endless series of press conferences and leaks, grand posturing and ego-pleasing bravados, real or alleged negotiation failures, and the whole set of uncertainties that they project on us, EU nationals in Britain. By now it is clear that the…

EU citizenship: talking across borders

Nando Sigona is interviewed by Michaela Benson (Goldsmiths, University of London) for the Brexit Brits Abroad podcast series exploring commonalities and differences in the experiences of EU nationals in Britain and Brits in Europe. How do we rethink questions of identity and belonging in a dramatically changed and changing political landscape? In the conversation, Nando and…

Back to school? Barriers for UK Eurochildren

Helen McCarthy, a doctoral candidate at Middlesex University and a trustee at the Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation (IRMO), writes about her experiences supporting EU families in London. Maria* thought she was doing the right thing, bringing her daughter, Laura, 8 years old, with her when she moved to the UK from Spain. Maria, originally from…

Eurochildren and the art of belonging

Shannon Damery, writes about her experience of researching European identity and belonging of Eurochildren in Brussels, highlighting the complexity and shifting nature of these terms. She is a PhD student at Université de Liège. I’m terrible at ceramics. I have not talent for it whatsoever, but I spent several months in Brussels, Belgium making malformed…

“This is a disgusting political lie”: EU parents respond to the Children’s Commissioner’s letter to Michel Barnier

by Nando Sigona [originally published in LSE Europp Blog, 14 July 2017] Unhelpful, patronising, misinformed, politically motivated, disgusting: shocked parents of EU children living in the UK took to Twitter to react angrily to the intervention of the Children’s Commissioner for England in the Brexit debate. What did the Commissioner Anne Longfield say? And why…

The Tragedy of Brexit: Pro-European Mobilisation After the Referendum

On 25th March 2017, a pro-EU march – the March for Europe – took place in London, with crowd estimates ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 participants. Similar, smaller-scale marches took place in other cities across the UK such as Edinburgh and Newcastle. The march was organised by ‘Unite for Europe’, one of a number of…

The quest for home of European Somali families in Britain

Brexit has created many challenges for EU families and their children who had made the decision to migrate to live in the UK. More importantly, it has unsettled their notions of ‘home’ for the majority of them. The questions of ‘where home is?’ and ‘where one belongs to?’ hit hardest particularly upon the secondary-migrant Somalian…

Analysis: what is the UK proposing for EU citizens in the UK and EU citizens in the EU?

On 26 June 2017, over a year after the Brexit referendum result, the government finally published its proposals to “safeguard the position of EU citizens living in the UK and UK nationals living in the EU”. Colin Yeo, Eurochildren legal expert, takes a look at the details of the proposals. It is important to remember…