How being a Brit Abroad has changed since Brexit

I was about sixteen years old when the dreaded referendum came about. One of the single handed most life-changing turn of politics was brought about: Britain's controversial exit from the European Union. But I had no idea how devastating its effects would be...

Fresh into sixth-form college, I was completing my A levels: Biology, English, and... French. Not being entirely conscient of Britain's role in the EU at that point, or of the freedoms the EU afforded us (freedoms that I’m still not sure Brexit voters were actually aware they would lose!) I continued my French classes in the blissful ease that this was simply another tedious round of politics that didn’t concern me. Fast forward six enlightening years later, and the truth must be learned the hard way!

Losing freedom of movement

Say what you must about EU law and the potential restraints it enforced upon the UK, but one thing that is certain, is that the British people lost their continental independence, and by that I mean their right to enter and work in EU countries and territories. Not only can we not be on EU territory for more than 3 months in a 6 month period, with a visa being required to stay for longer periods, or to seek work, but studying abroad has also become much more restricted, and I won’t even go into how extortionate the fees have become for ‘international’ students wanting to study in the UK, who were previously given the same rights as ‘home’ students. We’ve also witnessed the devastating impact to trade and to ‘foreign’ workers who have been expelled from the country they call home, just because the UK is no longer ‘European’ soil. I could go on, but the list would be endless. Instead, you might be wondering what it’s like as a Brit on EU turf one year after the agreements kicked in.

Visas

First stop: visas. I never thought I’d even be in a position where I would have to apply for one to study in a country that I’ve always considered a neighbour (a foreign neighbour still, but one who always left the door open for us, and is now firmly shut). Not only is the process drawn out and tedious, but it costs you a few bob as well. Applying for a student visa meant we needed to provide a whole host of paperwork, including but not limited to, letters from both home and host universities explaining your period and reason for study, proof of accommodation for the duration of your stay, return plane tickets to ensure you wouldn’t overstay your welcome, even your bank statements to prove you will have sufficient funds during your time. The problem with this for us as students meant that it was pretty difficult to prove you would have funds at the time of the visa appointment, as Student Finance (the company that loans UK students money to cover their university fees and maintenance costs) doesn’t usually top up your account until the academic year has already begun, with the Visa meetings themselves being held in the summer (meaning many of us had to borrow from parents to make it look like we already had money in our accounts- a very flawed system if you ask me!)

Border Control

Secondly, border control and all its many difficulties. Gone were the days when we all just used to swoop through the EU lane, no questions asked. Nowadays, there are questions asked, and a lot of them. Often met with solemn grimaces, I would have to remind the border control staff to check through my passport thoroughly until they find the visa page, at which point they still questioned what my motive was for entering the country. To complicate things further, in order to reach the city of Grenoble in France, which was where I was based on my study abroad, I used to fly to Geneva in Switzerland first, and then commute to Grenoble via train, which only added to the confusion on both parts. Does having a French visa also give you free access to Schengen countries like Switzerland? I still am not entirely sure. I think that’s the whole process summed up really: confusing. And even my home university staff did not know the answers, claiming they were also ‘learning on their feet’.

My Personal Life

And did I forget to mention that I was ironically doing all this with my partner who is fully French?! I met my boyfriend nearly four years ago now in 2019, when I was on my gap year in the Charente region of France, and before I started studying at university. We spent a lot of that year seeing each other, and I eventually started working in his mother’s bar. In 2019 I started my degree in the UK and continued to see him during holidays, and cut to 2020 and I ended up spending most of the academic year with him in his apartment in France due to flight cancellations back to the UK, pandemic related of course. I had actually spent a good part (the majority probably!) of my first and second years at university online in France, and this was before Brexit restrictions came into place, so I was actually cruising along quite peacefully in that sense. It wasn’t until 2021, when I was due to start my study abroad, that I finally felt the full weight of being an outcast in the EU, and started to think about how this would impact my future.

Essentially, as our relationship grew stronger and stronger, I couldn’t help but ponder what the future had in store for us as a ‘cross-country’ couple. It always seemed crazy to me that your background, where you're currently living, your heritage, anything like that, could determine where you were allowed to spend time in the world, and who you were allowed to spend that time with. I had no idea that my relationship would essentially have a ‘shelf-life’ when in a certain country. I wanted to check out my options for both France and the UK in terms of visas for the future after graduation, and was shocked by what I discovered. To obtain a working or a spouse visa in the UK, you have to pay upwards of £5000 for a visa that only lasts a couple of years. And the process to get one seems convoluted and entirely unfair. For example, you have to pay to even apply for a visa, and if that application is rejected, you don’t get your money back (so when people have this rhetoric that emigrating to the UK is easy, it couldn’t be farther from the truth!) So I looked at my possibilities in France, to find that a spouse visa cost significantly less (less than a hundred euros if I remember correctly), but this option leads me away from my family who are all situated in the UK. And to be considered ‘spouses’, to get some sort of civil partnership for example, you have to prove you’ve already been living together for a certain amount of time. Considering a French person can only be in the UK for six months out of a year, and a British person can only be in France (or the whole of the EU for that matter!) for three months in every six, how are you supposed to wrack up the time lived together, to apply for a civil partnership, to then apply for a visa, that affords you the legal right to spend time together and live together in one country, without restrictions?! Luckily, my student visa gave me the chance to spend an unlimited year in France with my partner who accompanied me, but as you can see, the process has made any freedom of movement entirely unfeasible, and a vicious circle, not to mention families with children who have been affected, or people who had jobs in either the UK or EU who are now displaced.

The future

As you can appreciate, the complications of being a Brit abroad are a lot to do with bureaucracy, but also I will mention, a little to do with hostility in attitudes to the country so famous for exiling itself from all its European friends, which I have also felt whilst being in France (and which I do understand). Additionally, my future has become uncertain and far more complicated than it ever was, but if I have to keep being the ‘Brit abroad despite Brexit’ (with a visa!) in order to continue fulfilling my European dreams, as well as living with my partner, than that’s a hat I will happily wear (although can I get a label on that hat that says I didn’t actually vote for Brexit and wholeheartedly disagree with it?!)