Thoughts from an anti-model migrant wading through Brexit

Abstract

Over some strong chai with a Turkish academic friend who teaches at a university in the Midlands, our conversation turned to our shared amusement from the reactions of largely White, Western European academics and activists since Brexit, who are demanding special rights to ensure that EU citizens can live in the United Kingdom. He recounted a story from a colleague of his, a White Western European lecturer from Luxembourg who has spoken many times to my friend ot her profound worries that she and her partner will be forced to leave the United Kingdom as a result of Brexit. My friend also has the same worries as his fellow EU academic peers when it comes to Brexit, and particularly as a person of colour, the emboldened and overt surge in racist violence against migrants of colour, especially those who are Muslim. However, unlike his White, Western European colleagues who have racial and passport privileges that prevent them from experiencing the full brutality of border controls, my friend has nowhere to go. Since the July 2016 Turkish coup, a report by Turkey Purge (2016) has found a total of 7,317 academics have been purged from teaching with an additional 4,811 academics dismissed from their positions. When my friend asked his colleague why she was not applying for citizenship, her reply was equally telling, 'I'm not British. I don't want to lose my Luxembourg citizenship. After all, it is the golden ticket'. We both reflected that had a Muslim, Black or Brown migrant student or university worker echoed the same response, this would be seen as proof by fascist, right-wing and liberal racists that these specific kinds of migrants are hostile to integrating and adopting so-called 'British values'. It would also be the very grounds used to justify the more heightened forms of racialised surveillance that we currently have in place in the United Kingdom, such as Prevent, and the strengthening of what Terese Jonsson (2017) aptly describes as 'British fundamentalism'- where 'whiteness is reinforced in the British values discourse through its erasure of structural and everyday racism faced by people of colour'. However, when a White, Western European academic makes such a response, she knows that her whiteness and class are also another 'golden ticket' that shields one from any direct questioning or awkward conversations about her geo-political and religious loyalties. The 'model migrants' we sympathise with: White, Western European and middle class As migrant-rights activism has intensified since the Brexit decision, unfortunately, a good percentage of mainstream activism has centred around protecting and advocating for special rights for EU migrants over that of safeguarding the ever-dwindling rights of all migrants, whether documented or not. Much of this particular kind of migrant rights activism is also racialised, in that the voices and concerns of largely White, middle-class EU migrants are both sympathised with and seen as uniquely deserving of fighting and advocating for in the face of Home Office restrictions. The media in turn has presented a number of stories that actively sympathise with the plight of White Western EU migrants. For instance, the Daily Mail, a publication known for its sensationalist racist and xenophobic diatribes against migrants who are Black or Muslim, recently printed a supportive piece centring around a White, middle-class Dutch-Spanish couple who after Brexit, decided to apply for citizenship for themselves and their children, who were born and raised in the United Kingdom. While the couple were granted citizenship, their children were denied citizenship on the grounds that the Home Office did not believe there was enough evidence to prove that the children lived permanently in the United Kingdom with their parents (Gordon 2017). A deep sense of suspicion that is consistently reserved for Black or Muslim migrants about the veracity of truth regarding their migration story was nowhere seen in this particular piece. …