Britain’s Youth Versus ‘Brexit’

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/world/europe/brexit-vote-youth.html

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BRISTOL, England — Living in Germany, I am used to hearing of Europe as an automatically positive concept. Particularly in Berlin government circles, “Europe” is constantly invoked as a force for good (it has indeed been good to Germany), an idea that has brought peace and prosperity to a continent once ravaged by war.

So I thought it might be jarring to visit Bristol, my college town in my home country, which is contemplating leaving Europe in a June 23 vote that may turn on migration and other issues, but also on whether continental unity is a good idea.

At least, I thought, I might get answers to a current favorite question in Berlin: Will the Brits really leave the European Union, a possibility often referred to as Brexit?

Surprises lay in store in Bristol, an ancient port that was England’s second-largest city from the 13th to the 19th centuries, played a big part in the slave trade and, according to the lively city history presented in a former cargo warehouse now known as the M Shed museum, has traded with Europe since at least 1180.

Pundits say the youth vote will be crucial in determining British membership; if the 18-to-30 crowd actually votes, the theory goes, the campaign to “Remain” in Europe will win. “Leave” supporters tend to be older and more fixed in their ways and are thought to be more likely to actually cast a ballot.

Based on an unscientific range of conversations over four days, young Britons seem to favor staying in the bloc. After all, they have never known a divided Europe, one without visa-free travel, cheap flights or jobs and the ability to study almost anywhere.

“I think we’ll stay,” said David Knapp, 25, who works offering advice and support to Bristol students. “Stick with what you know.”

Chester Hawkins, 18, a trainee carpenter, had never heard of Brexit. But his instinctive response was to stay. “Strength in numbers,” he said with very British common sense, so different from German idealism.

Nicholas Monk, a 26-year-old software engineer, was recently in Copenhagen and liked it so much that he was contemplating a job there. “I like being part of something bigger” than just Britain, he said.

But he and another engineer, Anthony Kennedy, 29, echoed all others — including three female managers in their 40s who chorused that “we’re better off as an island” — in saying they did not feel well enough informed to make a considered choice.

In fact, no campaign posters adorn Bristol streets — yet. The Remain camp called our daughter, Lucy, 23, to ask if she would be interested in canvassing as the vote nears.

But for now Bristol is more focused on its new mayor. While everyone was gazing at London and its first Muslim mayor, this cultural mishmash of a city elected as its mayor Marvin Rees, a 43-year-old native of Bristol, son of a Jamaican father and a white mother.

Like London’s new Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, Mr. Rees is working class, and rose through the Labour Party. Once elected, he swiftly appeared in an interview with the BBC political journalist Andrew Neil. Exuding charm, Mr. Rees emphasized that he is one of the “new people from a wider range of backgrounds taking up positions of influence.”

Simon Woolley, writing in The Guardian, noted “the symbolism and enormous significance” of Mr. Rees, “the first directly elected city mayor in Europe of African or Caribbean heritage.”

Whatever the future holds, the rise of Mr. Rees and Mr. Khan represents the diversity that Britain can bring to Europe, where antimigrant sentiment is rising in many countries.

That sentiment can be found in Britain, too, where the Leave campaign has sought to exploit the view held in some quarters that foreigners are living off the welfare system. (“The only people I know doing that are English,” said Mr. Knapp.)

But more than one million Europeans, many of them young, depend on Britain (and, to a great extent, Britain depends on them). Manuela Davanzo, 29, found no work in her native Brindisi, in southern Italy. Now, together with five other Italians, two Romanians and a woman each from Spain, England and Australia, she runs a gelato shop across from Mr. Rees’s City Hall.

Life here, she said, “is like our business — going up day by day.”