Tanja Bueltmann

@tanjabueltmann.net

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Professor @ University of Strathclyde | migration and diaspora history | citizens' rights | commentator | immigrant | trans inclusive feminist | she•they | my views | https://tanjabueltmann.net

Map of the UK that shows how Manchester wouldn’t even be the middle.
Screenshot of the gif as above, revealing the default AI generated ALT. It says “WALL-E Puts On Glasses”. …
A field of (probably) wheat. There are trees and hills in the distance, the sky is a hazy blue, but yellow is the dominant colour because of the field. One can just about make out two heads from deer sticking out of the field of wheat, with really only their noses, eyes and ears visible. They are looking straight at me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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’
Photo of Chris and me sat at a table in a restaurant in Brussels.
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.
Photograph of a European robin in a tree. The robin is sitting on a small branch and looks quite “puffy” and round. There are some green and yellow-ish leaves on the branches around the bird.