Hammersmith, London is a bustling neighbourhood where many Poles live and work.
Since Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the area has seen a rise in xenophobic attacks.
Shortly after the referendum, English extremists stormed a Polish deli on King Street, insulted its owners and told them to leave the country.
The British pound has also lost value, which means it is now more expensive for the shop to import gherkins and other delicacies from Poland.
But owner Izabela Pluszczok laments that what hurts her most is the atmosphere since the June 23 poll.
“At the moment it is not very pleasant to be here – we feel like the British do not want us,” she said.
“We had some customers, kind of posh, they said: ‘We want to leave the European Union because we do not want the migrants here’... But then, a few minutes later they say: ‘Yeah, I’ve got a Polish cleaner, someone Polish is looking after my kids… So (I say) if you do not want us here, who is going to do these things for you?”
Izabela says she will not apply for a British passport. If things get worse, maybe she will move elsewhere in the EU – or even return to Poland.
Becoming British, by the book
When Poland joined the EU in 2004, Britain did what most other member states would not do: it immediately opened its borders without restriction to these new migrant workers.
Since then, the number of Poles in the UK has risen eight-fold.
Monika Nawrot, a Polish office manager, came to the UK in 2005 and lives in Lewisham, a diverse neighbourhood in southeast London. She wants a British passport as soon as possible.
But how do you become British? Monika has studied the codes with an official textbook filled with questions about the nation’s history and culture.
“The Brexit situation makes me worry a little bit, because of the uncertainty,” she said. “Am I allowed to stay? I have a mortgage… what is going to happen to that? Will they force me to sell the flat and go back? I really don’t know.”
With migration as a central issue, the Brexit debate reinforced a climate of antagonism towards Poles lsebrexitvote https://t.co/hbPsIzaVx4— LSE Brexit blog (lsebrexitvote) September 29, 2016
Uncertainty – the driving force behind the rise in passport applications since the Brexit vote.
But to become British you need to dig deep into your archives.
Monika spends her weekends looking for the paperwork that can prove she has lived here without interruption for the past five years.
“I have to go through all of my trips taken over the last five years. So I have to write down all the dates exactly – when I went on holidays to Spain, Italy, whatever… so I need to have exact dates, not only months. I need to go through that, go back, find, remember those dates… Then obviously I have to find all my P60s (documents showing her annual income), payslips, whatever will be required, maybe confirmations of job contracts…”
To support foreigners anxious about the consequences of Brexit, Pawel Warg
