Are British people friendly to immigrants?

The Brexit referendum was a big trigger of this question. The anti-immigrant propaganda created by some, so-called, media and a particular group of politicians did the job. It gave permission to be open about one’s intolerance towards immigrants. The media reported cases of assaults towards immigrants. Clearly, not a friendly environment?

But there is this friendliness which I described in Be nice and carry on. 

What is the true picture then?

Like any question which suggest that we speak about a nation as a whole, this one is also impossible to answer. We can only describe our own subjective experiences as immigrants in Britain, and recognise that these experiences can be different for others.

One thing you can tell for sure is that the British society is very diverse and represents people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Our feeling is that it is easier for immigrants to settle in such societies than in the homogenous ones. However, also within Britain you will find some more and some less diverse communities, which can affect your experience significantly. Liverpool, known for its diversity and friendliness, was a lovely place to live and we never felt that our nationality or a different accent defined us. What we did feel was that the locals were welcoming to us, newcomers.

When we bought a house in Liverpool, we moved into a new neighbourhood, inhabited mostly by locals. One of them, on the first visit to our house, said that we were the first Poles living in this street and that he was very happy about us moving here, ‘because this is how diverse it should be - because this is how Liverpool is’. We felt welcome from the start, and after a few years of having lived there, I can say that never before, or after, we had such lovely neighbours like our Liverpudlian ones.

It is very true that the Brexit referendum created some nasty atmosphere, which of course made all of us, immigrants, start to consider if Britain was the country we wanted to be in. But that was the politics and the media side. In our little world, we didn’t experience any intolerance or suggestions that we didn't belong there. Nothing changed in our community and city, at least nothing we could tell. Throughout all these years in Britain, there was only one single time we heard a suggestion, from a stranger, that we should perhaps ‘go back home’. Completely insignificant, given the number of all the positive interactions we experienced everyday, and I’m sure that all the British people we knew, would be ashamed of him saying that.

I suppose that, like everywhere, it’s all about the environment you are in, the community and relationships you build and the people you surround yourself with. You will have your own little bubble of immigrant experiences. We experienced a whole lot of friendliness and this will always be our memory of life in Britain.