On the UK Citizenship application
Because the word limit in the actual form is not nearly generous enough
Question 1c: What was your name at birth?
I remember when I thought being a citizen of a country was all in the name. One day at primary school back in Germany we were taught about neo-Nazis. Lying awake at night haunted by what I’d learned, I came up with an ingenious plan. If ever questioned by a neo-Nazi about my Teutonic credentials, I would simply give my mother’s maiden name and Germanise my Italian first name. Surely that would trick any flag-waving dipshit into ignoring my moustache and 'character-building' eyebrows that usually made me feel other among my fair-haired peers. Result!
Question 4: Do you currently hold, or have you ever held, any other nationality or citizenship?
On the Italian side, being a citizen is all about the ‘iure sanguinis’. Despite visiting Italy only rarely and barely speaking a word of Italian, I am a citizen of Italy by the mere fact that my father’s blood runs through my veins. I couldn’t stop being Italian even if I tried! A child born in Italy to foreign parents, however, can spend their entire life living in Italy and still has to apply for the passport.
Question 4c: Add another nationality
When it comes to German citizenship, whether you can hold it depends on the numbers (Classic!) or at least until an update to arcane legislation comes into effect at the end of this month. Until then, any application for non-EU citizenship automatically cancels out your German passport – one set of privileges in exchange for another. It’s mainly still in place so that big immigrant communities don’t get to vote twice - in their countries of origin and in Germany - ‘importing anti-democratic sentiments into our home’. I have to believe that the update to the legislation comes from realizing how nonsensical a statement this is out of the mouth of a German politician, so that I don’t go ahead and press send on my UK application before the laws change.
Question 8: Have you ever engaged in any activities which might indicate that you may not be considered to be a person of good character?
Thanks to Goethe, Italy is a country that’s always held a special place in the German imaginary. A place of longing and lasagna. So when that part of my heritage is revealed, the verdict is almost always that it is a ‘good mix’. Balancing Italian emotion with German efficiency.
If anything, it’s the German side that has brought on more difficult reactions from an international type that I call the ‘questionable history buff’. They come in two extremes. On one end, there are those that are so shy when asking me anything related to the Holocaust, that the implied shame I must feel for the crimes my ancestors might have committed three generations back pile up so high between us that we can no longer see eye to eye. On the other, there are those who present me with some fun fact about the Third Reich. Whether you are German or not, if anyone starts a sentence with the words ‘The other day I saw this amazing documentary about Hitler...’, RUN!
Question 13: Have you had any trips outside of the UK?
Now I am embarking upon the journey of obtaining a citizenship that I haven’t had from birth. In the official UK Citizenship booklet it states right at the beginning ‘Applying for UK citizenship is a difficult, time-intensive and costly undertaking’. I would say that’s a fair warning. Having coughed up the fee and memorised the ‘official’ version of the Falklands War for the citizenship test, it turns out my UK citizenship application hinges on whether I have been in the country for enough time. It feels counter-intuitive but in this seafaring nation, the number of days I have travelled outside the UK over the past five years is what may ultimately threaten my claim to Britishness.
Question 11: Do you have a degree that was taught in English?
So, while I’m awaiting the verdict by the Home Office, I keep calm and carry on like I always have, plunging myself into the Great Britain as captured in the English literary canon. From the Yorkshire Moors in Wuthering Heights and the Sussex Estates in Emma to the Cornish seaside in To the Lighthouse. In the book Imagined Communities Benjamin Anderson describes how the emergence of print media helped people conceive of themselves as part of a nation. Exposed to the same images, ideologies and language, they developed a collective psyche. I like the idea that among all the anti-immigration screeching in the press these days, reading offers one way of communion with my chosen home that no one can take from me - except Haringey libraries.
And who knows, perhaps the next time I am questioned at the border, waving a book collection of great British female authors in the guards faces will stun them for long enough so that I can slip past, no matter the passport I hold. Among the general sense of arbitrariness I’ve observed in the three countries I am close to when it comes to deciding who’s in and who’s out, it seems just as well.