‘Doesn’t feel fair’: young Britons struggle with losing right to work in EU since Brexit
Growing up near the Peak District in Glossop, Derbyshire, gave 18-year-old Seb Kinsey a passion for geography, geology and the outdoors. After finishing his A-levels this summer, and before heading to university, Kinsey sought to take a gap year working in the French Alps.
“I’m fortunate enough to have been skiing before, and that was my dream – to go into the mountains, and spend five or six months working with other young people, meeting new people from other places, spending lots of time in the outdoors,” he said.
Kinsey said he applied for more than 15 jobs, but was rejected from all of them.
Since the UK left the EU, people with only a British passport typically need a work permit to work in the rest of Europe, making hiring them more difficult for an EU employer. “That was my plan, and now it’s been significantly scuppered,” Kinsey said
He added that friends with EU passports – particularly those with good language skills – could find seasonal work, while those without were locked out. “Sadly that’s been taken away from young people by the generally older Brexit-voting demographics, leaving us without those incredible opportunities,” Kinsey said, referring to the loss of the right to freedom of movement.
The 18-year-old has abandoned his plans to work in the Alps over winter and is thinking of new ways to spend his gap year. “In short, it doesn’t feel fair,” he said.
Working in the rest of Europe was seen by some as a rite of passage, but has become so much harder for people like Kinsey. Some young people do still make it work, though.
A few weeks ago, near the Greek city of Palairos, Louis was driving with four of his colleagues back from a restaurant. The sun had just slipped below the horizon, the Mediterranean Sea was lapping at the coast, and, as the 20-year-old noticed all his friends had fallen asleep in the car, he recalled feeling happy and at peace.
Louis, from Brighton, worked three months over summer in Greece, taking photos for a resort company. He worked as a freelancer without a work permit for a company during the 90-day stay limit for non-EU tourists.
He said he came back a different person. “That was the first time I’d lived away from home,” Louis said. “People who knew me, family members mostly, were like, ‘You’ve become more confident.’”
For many young Britons, seasonal work in the rest of Europe used to be a core milestone on the road to adulthood.
In 2011, almost 400,000 British citizens aged 15-49 were living in the Europe’s Schengen area for 12 months or longer, according to the Office for National Statistics. Since 2021, staying has been limited to 90 days in any 180-day period for non-EU citizens.
Getting a work permit can be expensive and time-consuming, making a coming-of-age period of seasonal work hard for Britons to access.
“It’s sad,” Louis said. “It’s just the reality of being British now.”
When Lia Middleton, 19, was growing up, she spent time with her parents in France – attending an international school near Paris. That gave her a European as well as British identity, she said.
But when planning a gap year in Paris, she felt the new rules for working in the EU were complex and restrictive. “Practically, I just felt really trapped,” she said, adding that she fell into a “Brexit depression” of “self-pity and anger”.
Middleton managed to arrange volunteering at her old school in France over summer. She loved meeting the children, directed the Robin Hood summer play, and the children bought her flowers afterwards. But volunteering meant having no income – which she knew wouldn’t be an option for many young people.
“There was this sense of disillusionment, that I’d grown up feeling very European,” she said, “but we’d had these rights taken away before a lot of my generation could even understand politics.”
Kevin Carreira grew up in London but has a French passport. He has been working ski seasons in the French Alps since winter 2018-19 and has noticed there are fewer British people working there as companies often recruit Irish or Swedish workers (with good English skills) instead. “Some people have given up,” he said of those without an EU passport.
The difference between the struggle Britons face trying to secure seasonal work in the EU compared with other English-speakers, such as people from Ireland, is stark.
Mícheál de Faoite, a 22-year-old from Dublin, travelled to Athens in summer 2022, to visit his then-girlfriend. “I didn’t really go over with a job guaranteed, I just flew over,” he said, and he was hired by a bar soon after. “Once you have an Irish passport, they don’t even ask you any questions.” It was the first time he had moved out of home, and he said the experience taught him to be responsible and independent.
Likewise, the experience of working in Berlin in 2019, for then 19-year-old Lauren Conway, also from Dublin, was life-changing. As a visual artist, she was drawn to the German capital’s art scene, and spent her time off from working in a cafe going to museums and exhibitions.
Exploring a new place through seasonal work was like “experiencing life in HD”, she said. “It really cemented the idea that the best way to learn about things is just to dive straight in and get as much information as possible, particularly at that age.”
“Moving abroad is one of the best ways to fast-track a sense of independence, confidence or self-reliance,” Conway added.
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