Hugo’s Story | I can’t take my rights for granted

Timing is everything, and when I think about my story, I can’t help to think that I got lucky and I got the timing right.

I arrived in the UK three months after the referendum that changed the course of British history, after getting a scholarship from the French government to go to the French Lycée Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington. 

I made my decision to move in before the UK decided to move out. My last year of high school was the best in my life, so I decided to stay in London and studied at the LSE, on UK tuition that EU students were still entitled to. Good timing again. 

I was starting to feel at home in a city demographically stratified by all European nationalities, like an urban mille-feuille; I learnt so much about myself but also gained hindsight about my own country and Europe. I will never look back to where I came from the same way.

 
My studies were tainted by the uncertainty brought by the Withdrawal Agreement and what was going to become of my status in the UK. However, timing again allowed me to go on a year abroad. I was one of the first LSE students to be sent to the University of Michigan in the US, where I was far from the Brexit turmoil and did not have to witness Boris Johnson being granted an overwhelming parliamentary majority in December 2019. I was enjoying my exchange until COVID hit mid-March 2020, and I had to book a same-day single-way, returning to my European reality. 
 
But timing again and temporarily plummeting rents allowed me to get an amazing place in Central London for my last year of university, and I still live in it to this day. The tight post-lockdown job market was also good timing, since I got two graduate jobs and had way more ease and bargaining power than my peers from the years before. 

I now have a fun life, I could almost argue the life I’ve always wanted, but I cannot allow myself to be complacent in the immigration realm of Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, nor can I take for granted the rights I currently have when the government cannot hold its promises and threatens to disrespect the value and the meaning of its signature on international treaties.
 
I took advantage of my rights, I know my rights and I want to fight for the people who are victims of the timing of Brexit: be they Europeans who see their ambitions cut short by visa requirements, people on pre-settled status who can’t get settled status because of timing requirements, or even people who are unaware of their rights and cannot make the most of their time in the UK. We are not only in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, but also in a much longer cost-of-leaving crisis that we will all pay for in many yearly installments.
 
Brexit was a moment of reckoning for many European citizens who chose to make the UK their home, it sparked a sense of European identity among people who did not necessarily identify as such. 

We were showed arguments, sometimes legitimate, sometimes misleading, sometimes appalling, that led to this outcome. We have been weaponised and instrumentalised by politicians, treated like bargaining chips. This put us in the same basket, and also gave us power through this new shared identity: as EU citizens, we are the3million, and we will keep fighting for our rights and our futures in the UK.