BLEA.

Brexit Lived Experience Archive

Documenting experiences.

Personal experiences provide valuable insights into how Brexit is lived and understood by those directly affected. Recording these accounts helps ensure that the human realities of political change are documented alongside policy decisions and public debate.

Supporting understanding.

Individual stories offer perspectives that statistics and official records alone cannot capture. By bringing together a wide range of experiences, the archive supports a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the impact Brexit had on EU citizens in the UK.

Preserving memory.

The archive safeguards personal accounts for future generations, ensuring that these experiences are not lost over time. Preserving these stories helps create a richer historical record of a significant period of social and political change.

Voices from the archive

I find that I am going through some sort of identity crisis in the sense that I find it hard to see myself as an integral part of British society  […] but at the same time I feel like I wouldn’t be able to integrate back home as my life and experience in Britain have irreversibly changed me.

Context

EU citizen resident in England; had been resident in the UK for 12 years at the time.

London used to feel like home, particularly when coming back after being away. That feeling has subsided and I feel like I’m being allowed to be here. Colleagues and other social interactions do remind me constantly that I am “not from here” with the luckily only occasional “get back home” […] it’s othering.

Context

EU citizen resident in England; had been resident in the UK for 16 years at the time.

I am not very obviously “foreign” – I don’t have an accent, I know who the Wombles are and who was Christmas number 1 in 1997. But Brexit did make my foreign identity feel more like a mark on my forehead. I would be much less comfortable walking down the street talking to my mum on the phone.

Context

EU citizen resident in England; had been resident in the UK for 9 years at the time.