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The Black Women Who've Left The UK For The Rest Of Europe

Often, when we express our desire to one day leave the UK, it’s phrased as a return to our motherland; leaving behind the UK government’s ever increasing hostile environment and insidious racism to return to the homes of our parents to be greeted with better weather and a slower pace of life, surrounded by family and people who look like us. But some of us have managed to escape this dusty island by choosing to sprinkle our magic in countries a little closer to the UK, across other parts of Europe. 

In 2019, there were around 3.7 million EU nationals living in the UK but only around 994,000 British nationals living in other EU countries, excluding Ireland. There are many reasons British nationals will choose to remain in the UK, especially in this period of limbo and uncertainty created by the country’s decision to leave the EU, but “the propaganda that we regurgitate and also consume in the UK of the UK being ‘Great Britain’ and it being a great nation is really sold well to us,” Rachael Moore explains to me.