Nationality, identity and being an angry Brit

9 months ago I wrote "How I became a Brit with a German passport, and why I no longer am", just as I was considering taking more serious step towards permanent residence and eventually citizenship.
My final paragraph read "It may just be that applying for British citizenship is my safest bet to ensure my future in this country. But I fear that even if I apply for and obtain citizenship, I will never feel British again in the same way I did when I was a Brit with a German passport.", and that has definitely turned out to be the case.

It is done. 16 months after I first tentatively and half-heartedly started the process, I have finally become a British citizen.

Please don't congratulate me. I have all kinds of emotions, but joy and pride are not amongst them.

Yes, I feel a sense of RELIEF. It secures me a future in this country and it gives me rights I have never had before. I will be able to leave Britain for any length of time without having to worry about potential changes in immigration rules. And of course I can vote!

I also feel a lot of ANGER. Anger for having felt forced to take this step, but also anger on behalf of all my fellow EU citizens who cannot or don't want to become British citizens and on behalf of my British friends - young and not so young - who never wanted to lose their rights as EU citizens either.

I also feel a certain amount of SHAME, because I feel that I have become a British citizen for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps I had some romantic idealistic ideas of taking citizenship, but I never thought I would end up doing it out of sheer self-preservation! Many people I have spoken to have told me to just do the thing and not to worry about it, and that I was doing it for myself and no other reason.

The thing is, I have taken every step with resentment.

In the process of becoming a British citizen, I had to prove that I speak English and understand British culture. I have had to prove my monetary worth. They have recorded my voice, taken the biometrics of my facial features and my fingerprints. They have checked my coming and goings from this country, checked for criminal records, and have taken £1700 in the process.

The final step was to swear allegiance to Queen and country - something which many of my British friends tell me they would never do.

Feeling already chewed over and spat out by the Home Office, I met that final requirement too. It didn’t seem to matter any more. I promised to "be faithful to the Queen". What does that mean anyway? We weren't told, so I took it to mean that I should not attempt to seduce Prince Philip. Fair enough!

I also promised to abide by British laws and values. What the **** do they think I have been doing for the last 27 years?? 😒 I've never even had as much as a parking ticket or speeding ticket! (Although my husband reckons that’s almost certainly suspicious and gives the impression of someone trying to fly below the radar of the authorities... 😎 )

I feel that Britain definitely had the best of me, and has squandered it!

What's left of me is an bundle of anger and resentment.

Paradoxically Brexit is creating a new breed of British citizens, and I am one of them - those EU citizens who until the EU referendum trusted the great British public to do and vote the right thing ... and who have now decided to take matters in their own hands. After the treatment they have received from the media, the government and certain groups and individuals, they are a highly politicised bunch. They will not forget how they were treated, and the lukewarm promises they got from their MPs. They will not forget which MPs and parties voted against guaranteeing their rights in this country. They will not forget the remainder of the 3 million who are still living with anxiety and uncertainty. And they will not forget that they are European first and any specific nationality second.

Make no mistake, they will take an active role in shaping the future of this country!

So here I am. German by birth, British out of necessity and European by my identity of choice.

Who am I? Societal attitude and the question of identity

How do we create our identity?
The UK has been my home for 27 years. I have always loved living here, have been part of my community and have felt totally at home and accepted. That changed a year ago when the EU referendum fuelled anti-immigration sentiment and for the very first time I felt unwelcome, anxious and insecure.

I want to explain what happens when people are marginalised and scapegoated, because even a year on I feel the effects very strongly. Of course I can only speak for myself, but I have spoken to enough EU immigrants and have observed friends from other minority groups to be fairly sure that this is a shared experience.
I expect that the simultaneous impact of the EU referendum result on 3 million people is probably a fairly unique event, but the sense of no longer (or indeed not ever) belonging into society happens to many groups of people for many reasons.

In my personal experience, when you no longer feel accepted by society as a whole, you lose your sense of belonging and security.
You may try to fight it, but how do you change society's perception of you, especially when it's fuelled by the media and political powers?
You begin to feel wary of other people, and you wonder what people really think about you - even people you have known and felt safe with for a long time.
You become more sensitive and more defensive about what people are saying and how they are saying it.
There is a temptation to withdraw and isolate yourself, because that's easier and more comfortable than managing your own feelings around other people.
So eventually you shed your old identity, and you take on a new one. Which new one? The one that you have been labelled with. First you carry that badge tentatively, then you carry it with pride.
Then you start to seek others who carry the same badge, and before you know it *they* are the people you feel safe and comfortable with.
And although you have perhaps never before felt disconnected from "everybody else", you have been pushed that way and you suddenly become it. You know longer belong, at least not in the same way you used to.

I say this because I felt so secure and assured in my life that I would never ever have imagined that anything could change how I feel. And yet it has.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

This post is not about me. I am just using my own experience to demonstrate how we affect others.
How society perceives us matters. How we allow politicians and the media to speak about whole groups of people matters. If we allow people to be set aside and scapegoated we risk driving them away into the margins of society where they may become lost and drift away.

We seem to be increasingly wary of people who are different to us, whether it's based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, or social standing etc. We don't like the very rich and the very poor. We accuse people who sound, look or behave differently to us of undermining our culture and way of life. We suspect whole groups of people of exploiting our system, to "just take" and not contribute to society. There is much talk about wanting people to "integrate", to be more like us and to take on the "British way of life".

I put up a different argument. I suggest that if as a society we accept and welcome people as they are, they will be much more likely to contribute to and be part of our society naturally. It's what most people are wired to do.
If we learn to draw people into the fold of our communities, rather than hold them suspiciously at arms length on the edges, we may just become a better nation.