Tanja Bueltmann

@tanjabueltmann

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Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· 28d

I must always have had some habits of the historian: I can know confirm that a cinema ticket in 1996 was £3 and that I paid a total of £1.97 for a Kinder Egg and a sandwich at Tesco in Poole. I apparently also hired a beach chair for 60p. I told you my commitment to the UK runs deep ;)

Image of a Bournemouth deck chair receipt. This is from 1996.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· 28d

And I mean look at this: a bunch of young Germans enjoying a ride through Bournemouth / Pool (not 100% sure where these was, but it was on a trip to Bournemouth). We just came. Learnt English. Had a host family. Made connections. Now that’s so much harder because of Brexit.

Open top bus with a few heads visible. Some people have their arms in the air in a joyful move. Typical Bournemouth seaside homes are visible on the left and a coastline is visible in the distance.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· 28d

Ok, this is turning into a journey of my journey to the UK. That other photo of the White Cliffs of Dover I took and wrote about here brexit.migravox.org/first-person... at the 10-year Brexit anniversary is now no longer in my parents’ basement (this was 1993).

Image of the White Cliffs of Dover taken on a ferry by me. Water visible in the front, the cliffs in the back. Stereotypical perfection too as the sky is court and grey.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· 28d

Thanks to the parents of a German friend of mine, all my personal possessions are now in the UK. Not entirely sure what that means from a migration perspective, belonging and home, but pleased to report my reunion with this gem of a “selfie” from my Kindergarten days 40+ years ago.

Image I drew of myself in Kindergarten. It’s relatively rudimentary and schematic still, but not the earliest stage: hair, mouth, eyes and nose are there and it’s not just a stick figure entirely: has a belly and clothing.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Jun 11

By way of an update: this is how this should be described. I am glad this is clear to some, and it’s esp good to see in policing context. But unfortunately those ‘some’ do not currently include most of our media. Many continue to go with the immensely dangerous ‘legitimate concerns’ protest line.

Screenshot from the Belfast Telegraph. It says: Police Federation for Northern Ireland condemns 'violent fascist law-breakers'
The Police Federation for Northern Ireland says twelve officers injured during disturbances last night is down to ‘violent fascist law-breakers’ who want to wreck Northern Ireland.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· May 16

How else could we accept the Home Secretary casually telling a member of the public who challenged her in a perfectly normal way to ‘f*ck off’? This should have meant the end of her tenure. As an aside: I pitched a piece about this at the time but without success, so might as well add it here.

Ten years of ‘fuck off’: Mahmood’s outburst is not where this ends—and that is what should terrify us all
In the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum result in 2016, I was walking down the street speaking German on the phone to my mother when a stranger told me to ‘fuck off back to where I come from’. It was a visceral reminder that the referendum had not just been a vote, it had been a signal. A permission structure. Ten years on, it is the Home Secretary employing the same register, from a stage and into a microphone. Shabana Mahmood told a critic of her migration policies to ‘fuck right off’, dismissing those who question her approach as ‘white liberals’ trying to delegitimise what politicians have come to refer to as ‘legitimate concerns’.
This is being treated as a minor controversy. In fact: it has already disappeared out of the news. But it is not minor in any way. It is a marker on a trajectory—and what makes it so alarming is that there is no endpoint in sight.
I am a migration historian and a German migrant to the UK. I fit squarely into Mahmood’s ‘white liberal’ caricature, and I have spent nearly a decade since the referendum campaigning for migrant rights, watching this escalation at close quarters. What I have seen is a consistent pattern: each cycle of extreme positions normalises the next. The Overton window does not just shift, it gets dismantled, piece by piece.

Consider the language now routinely used about people seeking sanctuary. Mahmood has spoken of refugees receiving a ‘golden ticket’ as though the context were Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory rather than countries torn apart by war and famine. She has described the UK’s asylum system ‘out of control’ and dividing the country—a framing that is both factually wrong and deliberately dehumanising. There are 42.5 million refugees globally. The UK hosts 548,000 of them. That is 0.78% of the population. The idea that this constitutes an existential crisis is not a policy position. It is a political choice to stoke fear.
And it is a choice with consequences, not just for refugees and migrants most immediately impacted, but for all of us.
Politicians justify this approach by pointing to polls showing voter concern about immigration. I am not suggesting those concerns mean nothing. But polling on immigration is almost always reductive. Ask people whether they want fewer immigrants and many will say yes. Ask them whether they want fewer care workers, fewer NHS staff, fewer people paying the taxes that fund their communities, and the answer likely looks rather different. It is the job of politicians to make the case for the latter—real improvements in our communities. Most choose not to, because it is harder. So instead we get an endless cycle: problems in communities, blame immigrants, more restrictive policies, fewer doctors and care workers, more problems in communities, blame immigrants etc. The actual issues never get addressed because immigration is not their root cause but it has become the only answer anyone in Westminster seems willing to offer.

This is not just ineffective. It is actively dangerous. Because mainstreaming extremist positions on immigration does not neutralise the far right. It legitimises them. Every step Labour takes towards Reform’s territory gives Reform more power. Every time a cabinet minister reaches for the language of the street xenophobe, the threshold for what is considered acceptable moves a little further. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has spoken jubilantly of the Overton window having been obliterated. He is not wrong.
What comes next is the question nobody in government seems willing to ask. I first made these arguments about the UK’s general trajectory, and how it would be enabled by anti-immigration extremism, over a decade ago. I have watched them unfold with a mixture of fury and despair. We have the knowledge. The historical record is clear: when extremist policies are mainstreamed, they do not stop where you set them. The reach expands. The targets multiply. And once you accept that rights can be qualified for one group, you have built a tool that can be used against anyone.
That is why Mahmood’s ‘fuck off’ matters beyond the headlines it generated. It is not an aberration. It is the logical expression of a decade in which anti-migrant rhetoric has been allowed to escalate unchecked, in which speaking German on a British street made me a target, in which refugees are cast as chancers gaming a system, in which a Home Secretary can dismiss her critics with an expletive and expect applause rather than censure.

I am a dual national now. British, as well as German. This is my country too, even if, for many, I will never be quite the right kind of British, even as a white person. That stranger in 2016 told me to go back to where I came from. I didn’t. I stayed, became a citizen, and keep arguing for a different kind of Britain: one that understands what migrants contribute, what the historical record shows, and what is at stake when hatred is normalised from the top down.
So I say: the real ‘fuck off’ belongs elsewhere. To bigoted policies that cause harm; to approaches that pit us against each other while doing absolutely nothing for our communities. It belongs to another decade of escalation, if we allow it.
Better choices are possible; there are politicians and policies that prove it. But more of us need to make those choices and say so, loudly and without apology. I sure will keep fighting for those better choices in my country. Which is also, now, this one.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· May 12

My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration

Slightly amended so I can fit this here:

I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame!

I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one.

I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country.

This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong.

Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues.

I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean?

Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.

This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way.

You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position.

Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces.

What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly.

The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy.

Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed.

Tanja Bueltmann

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Feb 23

Finally a lesson for Labour: recognise that cosplaying AfD didn’t help the CDU. Merz set out to halve AfD support. Instead, he helped further normalise AfD and they landed on over 20% … gaining nearly 1 million votes *from* CDU. Voters pick the original, not the copycat. Don’t cosplay Reform!

Screenshot of a graph showing voter movements to the AfD. It gained most from those who didn’t previously vote — 1.8 million voters as previously noted, but then also 910k from the CDU.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Feb 23

I’ll leave you with these maps, missing constituencies won’t change the overall pattern much. Light blue = AfD Last map = AfD % for second vote (party vote). If you really think that these maps show the far right has been defeated, then I honestly don’t know what else to say.

Map of Germany showing first vote result >> vote for a specific candidate, basically like first past the post (black = CDU; dark blue = CSU; red = SPD; green = Green; dark pink = Die Linke; grey areas shown = no result yet).

Map of Germany showing second vote result >> vote for a party (black = CDU; dark blue = CSU; red = SPD; green = Green; dark pink = Die Linke; grey areas shown = no result yet).

Map of Germany showing second vote breakdown for the AfD; while the % highest in the East, this shows significant % across most of Germany (grey areas shown = no result yet).

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Nov 24

Twitter being even less of the force it once was is one way in which to lessen that influence. But until then, this here is just one example of it: he is being taken seriously and staying on X tacitly helps with that as it suggests it’s still a usable platform that plays an important role.

And people take him seriously. Last week the Telegraph splashed on a single tweet from Musk criticising Rachel Reeves’s proposed changes to inheritance tax on some farmland, even though Musk’s real understanding of almost anything about British life or politics could barely stretch to 280 characters.

More worrying is his tendency to act as a freelance operator in international politics, blurring all lines between national security, faux-diplomacy and personal gain.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Dec 4

The Conservatives — limiting your future further every single day.

Screenshot of a news headline about the new immigration rules. It says: ‘Most UK nationals unable to bring home a foreign spouse under new migration rules’

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Nov 1

Aw thank you Chris! I am currently spending evenings sorting through photos and this happened to be one that popped up only yesterday and I did then think that I’d have to check if you’re here. Lovely memory.

Photo of Chris and me sat at a table in a restaurant in Brussels.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Nov 1

This morning I wrote to UKRI to inform them of my resignation from the UKRI Talent PRC with immediate effect. My decision to resign is a direct result of the letter from the UKRI CEO published here www.ukri.org/news/respons... yesterday. I attach my resignation letter for information.

Full text of my letter unfortunately too long to fully copy for all images, so here is a summary that captures the essence; I am having to spread this across the images as not enough space here:

I argue that I expected UKRI to express concern in terms of wellbeing and safety issues that the public singling out of two academics might cause, and to confirm EDI as a core mission of UKRI.

I then say that the UKRI CEO's response is anything but, setting a chilling precent that precedent that documents that UKRI is prepared not only to bow to government pressure, but to identify EDI as immediately dispensable in the process.

I then continue to explain why I think this is so concerning. I note that such developments are not happening in isolation given the recent pledge at the Conservative Party conference to to ‘kick woke ideology out of science’, and examples from elsewhere that document that the government is moniroting those critical of government policy.

I end by asking about where this will end and saying that I cannot serve in an org that makes such choices.

Tanja Bueltmann@tanjabueltmann· Oct 23

Still ‘living’ in the alternate universe that is book writing, so not much from me here yet. But this wee robin (no hidden nod to birdsite!) I managed to capture is too lovely not to share. Birds are of course also a great symbol of migration, so very fitting. Anyway: hello folks …more coming soon!