Growing Up as a Foreigner in the UK

When I think back to the day I left my home in Poland for the UK, I remember tears. I had turned 5 only a few months prior, went to nursery, had friends on my street and my adoring grandma who helped my mother raise me, and suddenly I was being put in a car and taken to an airport to move to a country where I didn't understand the language and didn’t know anyone there.

Of course, at that age I didn’t understand why we had to leave all that I knew behind, but my mum believed that I would have better opportunities in the UK. At the time we left, Poland was facing extreme joblessness and lingering poverty as the country tried to recover from communism, while the UK boasted a stable economy and was the dream place for many Poles and people from other post-Soviet countries.

When I moved here, I was very lucky to have experienced teachers who took their time with me to ensure I could learn the language quickly, although my English teacher often complained that my handwriting was terrible for a Pole (apparently we’re stereotyped to have nice penmanship). My primary school was also very mixed in both race and nationality, so I don’t remember experiencing any xenophobia during my first years in the UK.

What I do remember is not having as much free time as my English peers, with Saturday morning being taken up by Polish Saturday school to ensure I didn’t lose my language skills, and while my family isn’t super religious, I still had to attend church on Sundays and stay after for my first holy communion preparation classes.

The xenophobia really started in secondary school. I had a few Polish friends in my school, and I remember a time when me and a friend were talking in Polish; I’m pretty sure we were making sleepover plans, when one of the English girls came over and started yelling at us for not speaking English and telling us the typical line of “go back to your own country.” From that point, it was a phrase I heard relatively often when speaking my native language.

In my first year of university, I was the only foreign person in my flat. The people I lived with were typical Tories and often voiced their negative opinions on foreigners, especially leading up to the 2020 general election. A few weeks into living there, the boys hung up a huge British flag in the living room, which at the time felt quite targeted. I was almost glad I had to move out early when COVID hit. 

Eastern European food also became a big joke to people, which I think most non-British people have experienced. People would say our food smelled or looked weird, even though many of the foods they joked about were meals that were now rarely eaten or were created to preserve food in times of extreme poverty.

I feel like xenophobia towards Eastern Europeans hit its peak just before Brexit, with many Politicians labeling us as alcoholics, criminals and job stealers, with hate crimes spiking after the 2016 Brexit referendum, with a Polish man being murdered in a xenophobic attack only two months later.

Now the Polish economy is booming, and the Brits seem to love us. The food that was once mocked is now celebrated, and trends online are pushing the “Slavic doll diet” (we don’t actually eat like that, I promise), and cities like Krakow and Warsaw are big holiday destinations. I often open social media to see people who once picked on me for my nationality now posting things like “trying pierogi for the first time” or uploading photos from their trip to Poland saying how much they loved it.

But now that we are considered acceptable foreigners, racist and xenophobic politicians have turned their attention to non-white immigrants as their main group to hate. And for some reason, many Polish people have forgotten how we were treated during the lead-up to Brexit (which the UK has lost around £100 billion a year because of). Many Polish people are now eating right into the words of hate, with many posting about wanting to get non-white immigrants out instead of standing up for them, despite the fact that we at least know a fraction of what they feel. 

Every person who comes here seeking a better life should be able to do so without fear or discrimination.

Written by, Nat Synak