{"id":144404,"date":"2018-06-21T13:59:13","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T13:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/brexit-youth-i-am-angry-and-the-future-scares-me\/"},"modified":"2018-06-21T13:59:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T13:59:13","slug":"brexit-youth-i-am-angry-and-the-future-scares-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/brexit-youth-i-am-angry-and-the-future-scares-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit youth: ‘I am angry and the future scares me’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Morgan\" <\/figure>\n

Not many students at Coventry City College voted for Brexit - the vast majority weren't old enough.<\/p>\n

But two years on, the views of 18- and 19-year-olds in this strongly pro-Leave area are pretty striking. <\/p>\n

When asked how they feel about the vote to leave the EU, there's one overriding emotion: anger - at the fact nobody asked them what they thought.<\/p>\n

It's not that they have not been heard, says Jeevan, 18, it's that they have not been allowed to speak.<\/p>\n

"It's annoying," says 19-year-old catering student Morgan, "that the people who voted for this aren't going to be dealing with the fallout for as long as us."<\/p>\n

'Decided for us' <\/h2>\n

Gemma, also 19 and studying catering, says: "I feel annoyed because it's about the jobs really.<\/p>\n

"And it's going to be harder because of everything that's happening."<\/p>\n

Her friend Zoe, who wants to open a bakery, thinks her dream will be harder to realise as a result of Brexit.<\/p>\n

Johnny, who travelled to Europe for two weeks as part of his course, says: "I feel anger that other people aren't going to get the opportunity that we have had."<\/p>\n

Daniel, 17, says he originally supported Leave but now he's not so sure.<\/p>\n

Of the adults who backed Brexit, he says: "If they want their children to lose out like that then that's on them."<\/p>\n

Johnny says: "We don't really have a say in anything right now - will we have a say in the future?<\/p>\n

"Our future was decided for us basically." <\/p>\n

There is also a sense among these particular students that opportunities will be more limited than they have been.<\/p>\n

Coventry already has the highest proportion of learners in further education that are from the most deprived background.<\/p>\n

Everyday racism<\/h2>\n

Ayanda, 18, who is studying health and social care, wanted to travel the world working as a midwife and gaining experience along the way.<\/p>\n

She says: "I wanted to start out in Australia - that's OK. But then I wanted to go to countries in the EU but I think Brexit means it will be more difficult to go and get a job there."<\/p>\n

She then planned to come back to England to work, but says she would start a family somewhere else.<\/p>\n

She agrees with the others that immigration was a big driver of the vote.<\/p>\n

"I felt like the 50% that voted for Brexit didn't want immigrants here. Most of it is to do with racism," she says.<\/p>\n

"I experience racism on a daily basis - it's less than it was but it's still there.<\/p>\n

"This is my country but I feel like the people who voted for Brexit wanted to get the migrants out of Britain."<\/p>\n

And later she admits to being very scared about the future.<\/p>\n

'Taking our jobs'<\/h2>\n

Jo Gaffney, a youth worker at the college, says she has seen racism raise its ugly head since the vote.<\/p>\n

"In Coventry there's a lot of young people joining far-right groups," she says. "We do a lot of work around that.<\/p>\n

"What we saw was at the time of the vote was that some of these views were legitimised.<\/p>\n

"A lot of people could suddenly say things that they had kept to themselves for ages.<\/p>\n

"Now people think it's OK to hate migrants.<\/p>\n

"You could hear it from the way young people were talking." <\/p>\n

She adds: "I hear things now that I haven't heard since the 1980s."<\/p>\n

Johnny, who came from Latvia with his parents when he was aged 11, says: "When people say all that about, 'They're coming here and taking our jobs,' the thing is that these jobs were there beforehand anyway - people just hadn't applied for them. <\/p>\n

"The jobs were there to be taken."<\/p>\n

Jake, 17, who is the one person in the group who has a more positive attitude towards Brexit, says: "I've grown up in Coventry, which is a multicultural city. <\/p>\n

"We are the ['UK] City of Culture 2021 - we wouldn't have been given it without immigration.<\/p>\n

"I have gone to multicultural schools all my life. My best friends are from different ethnicities.<\/p>\n

"I am not scared because I've been in a multicultural city my whole life."<\/p>\n

Future fear<\/h2>\n

But he can understand why someone living in a different area might be frightened if they suddenly had a lot of new people moving in.<\/p>\n

Morgan says that he would have voted Leave in the referendum, because of "the propaganda out there" - but he has changed his mind. <\/p>\n

"I really, really wish people would have voted Remain," he says.<\/p>\n

"The future scares me.<\/p>\n

"Nobody has told me how it's going to affect me. <\/p>\n

"No-one has told me how it's going to affect my college life, my career later on in life. <\/p>\n

"It's my future that's going to be affected."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not many students at Coventry City College voted for Brexit - the vast majority weren't old enough. But two years on, the views of 18- and 19-year-olds in this strongly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}