As a migrant, London offered me freedom – now the violence unleashed by Brexit is taking that away

Brexit and the collateral damage it has created, is getting worse. People have been assaulted and verbally abused and we as a society must act now before someone gets killed, all because they come from another country, speak a language other than English or have an accent. Last week, a woman was violently punched by a man for talking on her mobile phone in Spanish while on the London Overground. In April, two women assaulted a Spanish-speaking woman on the tube because according to them she should “speak English in England”. Earlier this month, a man verbally abused an elderly woman on a London-bound Ryanair flight because she was black and had a Jamaican accent.

Brexit has given a small minority the right to be openly hostile. It is as if the divisive rhetoric of the Brexit campaign enabled them. In the past, such attitudes were kept behind closed doors, but in post-Brexit Britain, it seems as though hate has been legitimised by politicians and a certain sector of the media with a discourse disturbingly similar to that of the far right.

There were non-bigoted reasons why people voted to leave the EU and the vast majority of those who did so are not racist or xenophobic. However, Brexit has deepened the divisions between communities and it has made EU migrants as well as black and Asian ethnic minorities – some of whom also voted to leave – more vulnerable when it comes to racially motivated offences.

In the past, I have experienced “accentism” or discrimination because I have a foreign accent. However, I’ve never been assaulted or even considered I could be attacked for speaking my mother tongue. These recent London attacks are signs that Brexit has come at a high cost – literally and figuratively – to the lives of ordinary people. I wonder whether migrants like myself may eventually refrain from speaking their native tongue in public for fear of reprisal.

I had been living in the UK for 17 years when Brexit happened. This was my home and the place where I had connections to friends, places and memories. As it currently stands, there is a total lack of clarity regarding the details of what is going to happen or what the government is going to do regarding citizens’ rights. This is causing a state of worry and uncertainty amongst many people already settled here. The future is unclear.

As the mother of a London born toddler girl whom I’m raising to be bilingual, I question how I’m going to create a sense of belonging in my daughter in a place where she may feel unwanted and her presence here questioned.

During the Brexit campaign, EU nationals in the UK featured largely as unwanted figures and in the negotiations on the UK’s deal to leave the EU, as “bargaining chips”. The prime minister may now have committed to allowing EU nationals to remain in the UK after Brexit, but if those in charge of this mess don’t urgently end the xenophobic discourse on migration and foreign nationals in general, there is bound to be prejudice against people like myself or my daughter. And in fact, towards anyone who looks or sounds “foreign”.

This may cause children like mine to adopt “blend-in tactics” in the future and by doing this, rejecting their cultural heritage, losing their sense of self, their personalities, their confidence in being who they are and owning it. It takes maturity and strength of character for a person to build a sense of identity, particularly in their early, formative years.

London offered me freedom. It made me an open minded person, it gave me friends from all the corners of the world, it made me appreciate other peoples and cultures. It truly allowed me to be myself. Britain is a multiracial, multilingual and multicultural society; but this insular “Make Britain Great Again” kind of discourse has changed things for the worse.