Miriam Weber

“The first thing that comes to mind is that I sometimes get asked by other immigrants, usually from Eastern Europe, why I choose to live here when I could be in Germany where according to them everything is better. It also often comes as a surprise to other immigrants that I in fact am not from this country. My English is good and they can’t hear the tell-tale accent.

When I then reply that I am here because my partner is from here, they react either with a condescending attitude about the British inability to speak other languages or that it’s a bit pathetic to follow a man around. I sort of agree with all these points.

But apart from deliberations about feminism and social care, I’m starting in this roundabout, somewhat self-aggrandising way to say that in all my experiences as an immigrant I have found that I am the ‘right kind of immigrant’: I am white.

I am 35, work as a teacher for modern foreign languages and Latin and am engaged to an Englishman with whom I have a baby. So after nearly 7 years in London I feel as if I truly have arrived and even started a new international family. I met my partner while we were both at Aberdeen University, myself through the EU’s Erasmus program. My heart broke when the government announced that it was to be replaced as this made the world a little bit smaller again. And then the pandemic hit, making it impossible to travel home. With Brexit came a few other impracticalities like horrendously expensive postal fees, but again, I was sort of alright as an immigrant - because I am white.

I am not a Muslima, who’s looked down upon for wearing a headscarf.

I am not East-Asian, who was blamed for the pandemic.

I am not black, for whom life holds all sort of difficulties.

In a lot of situations I can even ‘pass’ as not-an-immigrant, as long as I don’t speak. And even if they recognise my accent as German, I’m mostly congratulated on for being from there. German organisation, German engineering and so on...

While this of course makes life easy for me, it also brings home the message that only certain people are welcome and truly accepted.“

“Das ist hausmacher Weißwurst im Glas, das wohl deutscheste Lebensmittel. Gegen das Heimweh versuche ich immer, ein bisschen Deutschland dabei zu haben. Das geht mit Essen am besten, aber seitdem ich ein Baby habe, ist er sozusagen mein Deutschland to go - obwohl er selbst ja hier in London geboren wurde und erst ein paar Wochen in Deutschland war.”