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→ No European should be a foreigner in Europe – please share
I’M YOUNG, BRITISH AND EUROPEAN
As a young academic on the cusp of setting up a professional life, the threat of Brexit is very worrying indeed, writes Shama Adams.
I am in my twenties and have grown up with the notion that as British citizens, Europe is our birthright.
Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke once remarked, “No European can think himself as a foreigner in any part of the continent.”
And I, and countless of others, certainly don’t feel that we are strangers in Europe, or that fellow Europeans are strangers in Britain.
We British are free to pursue opportunities both in Britain and the continent, as other European nationals can do so in their home countries and throughout the rest of the EU, too.
In an increasingly globalised and integrated world, the benefits of this privileged exchange cannot be quantified or stressed enough.
Just as European citizens have moved to the UK to seek opportunities, many British citizens live and work in Ireland and on the Continent. Millions of people, in fact. This is the nature of reciprocal exchange.
I worry about Brexit, because it would threaten the future of all of those people who simply exercised their birthright as citizens of the European Union, and tried their luck in a fellow member-state. I am one of those people.
I am as British as I am European. There is no conflict of identity there. It seems untenable that this duality might be denied to future generations of otherwise cosmopolitan and worldly Britons, simply because of the myopic and narrow self-interest of a largely misinformed and misguided group of people.
EU membership is in our national, regional and global interests.
The top scholars from our best universities, the brightest analysts from independent think-tanks, and the important voices of business leaders who provide jobs and wealth to our country are saying the same thing: Britain will be best served by remaining in the EU and striving to reform itself and the institution from within.
#StrongerIn, stronger together, and still British. It is not our way to shirk from our commitments or responsibilities, or abandon our natural neighbours and closest allies, simply because we no longer want to play by the rules of the club.
We already have an exceptional deal within the EU. Leaving offers no guarantee of anything other than a reduced position of influence in our region and throughout the rest of the world.
If we left the EU, we would suffer from reduced terms of trade with our biggest trading market; a reduced vantage point in which to broker deals with the might of nations like China, India and the USA; reduced opportunities to study, work, live or even retire abroad, and reduced wealth per capita, and so forth.
Choosing to self-isolate under the guise of 'sovereignty' is not the answer.
We are still a sovereign nation that has had the good sense to pool its sovereignty with a group of our neighbours and cousins, and the good fortune that such neighbours, despite their recent problems, still comprise the wealthiest single market in the world.
Don’t believe the propaganda that the EU is a moribund institution, in terminal decline. Or that our interests would best be served running after a Commonwealth, which has long since moved on, and that collectively has not even 10% of the combined wealth per capita, and hence, trading and purchasing power of the so-called defunct EU.
Let us not retreat to an irretrievable past and imperial mindset, but instead look to the future. A future with our place at the centre and helm of our region, Europe. We can only do that within the EU.
● Shama Adams is a Mancunian born, proud British and Australian dual citizen who currently enjoys exercising her freedom of movement as an EU citizen. She lives between Leiden, in the Netherlands, and Perth, in Western Australia. Shama is a PhD candidate at Curtin University. A part-time optician by trade, Shama was also editor for the United Nation's Public Policy and Society Youth Journal, “Perspectives".