‘Global Britain’ is slamming the door on scholarly ‘citizens of nowhere’

What does “Global Britain” actually mean? Is it merely a spasm of nostalgia for the days when splotches of British red adorned the globe? Is it a signal that, despite Brexit, we really quite like foreigners? Or does it betoken a strategic masterplan for pivoting the UK away from tired old Europe towards vibrant regions beyond?

The government wants us to buy the masterplan thesis, and I, for one, am eager to oblige. As a British academic working in Japan, I was heartened that the first post-Brexit trade deal was with my adopted home. This deal is envisaged as a stepping stone to membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a loose bloc of Pacific economies. I’m not an economist or geographer, but I am keen to endorse this rediscovery of the UK’s Pacific destiny.

I also stand ready to help. In order to make the best of whatever opportunities the fabled Orient can offer Global Britain, the UK has to understand Asian societies, and British expatriates based in the region are an important resource. As an academic with almost three decades’ experience of living and working in Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan and Japan, I flatter myself that I have something to offer.

Gratifyingly, some in the UK seem to agree. The UCL Institute of Education has invited me to spend my sabbatical there as a visiting professor from September.

There is just one snag. Like many expatriates, I have a non-British spouse. In order to accompany me and our two sons throughout our nine-month UK sojourn, my Japanese wife needs a visa.

Many readers will recently have heard negative reports about the UK immigration service, but let’s give credit where credit is due. They seem to understand that academic exchange is the lifeblood of any healthy higher education system. This, in any case, is the conclusion my wife and I drew on discovering a specific category of UK visa for “academic visitors”. This allows for a “dependent spouse” to accompany the visiting academic. Reassured, we set about preparing her visa application. 

Our mood began to darken as we navigated the online application process, however. We were diverted to the website of a private contractor that handles UK visa applications in Japan. This stipulated a hefty additional fee for attendance at a compulsory appointment to show documents and provide biometric data. In other words, a further hidden fee on top of the advertised one. It’s a common dodge of shady insurance salesmen, but not quite what one expects from Her Majesty’s Government. 

Attending this appointment entailed travelling halfway across Japan in the middle of a pandemic. Still, upper lips resolutely stiffened, we undertook this perilous mission and awaited the return of the passport with visa attached.

When the response arrived, our British stoicism evaporated. “Since your spouse is a British citizen and not an academic visitor,” the assessor informed my wife, “I am not satisfied that you are a genuine visitor who will leave the UK at the end of your visit.” Visas for accompanying spouses, the letter explained, were restricted to spouses of applicants for the academic visitor visa.

As an education professor, I take some interest in matters of literacy and analytical skills, qualities that, on this evidence, UK visa assessors appear to lack. Documents we submitted from UCL and Kyushu University clearly confirmed my visiting academic status and the date of our planned return to Japan next March. 

Most perplexing was the implication that had I been a foreigner needing a visa for my “academic visit”, our case would have been viewed as “genuine”. As a British citizen, I am automatically suspected of plotting to reside permanently in the fairy-tale wonderland of post-Brexit Britain, and of smuggling my wife in to join me. My permanent post in Japan and visiting status at UCL are dismissed as an unconvincing cover story.

Since the Home Office has abolished any appeals process for visa applications, people in our position are left with limited options. Judicial review is theoretically a possibility, but prohibitively expensive for most. An appeal to one MP (a Tory) elicited a response informing us that my wife had applied for the “wrong category” of visa. However, like the immigration authorities in their refusal notice, the MP did not reveal the correct category, insisting that it was “not an MP’s role to provide immigration advice”. We were instead directed to seek “professional advice”, involving payment of yet more fees.

However, it does not take an expensive immigration adviser to explain the official reluctance to spell out the nature of our “mistake”. Apart from the standard visitor visa (academic visitor) route (fee: £190), the only other type of visa that might permit spouses of expatriate British academics to stay more than six months is a full spousal visa (fee: £1,523). Moreover, since a condition of that visa is that the British spouse can demonstrate an above-average UK income, it is doubtful whether spouses of academics employed overseas would be deemed eligible. Either way, outrageous discrimination against expatriate British academics and their families is embedded in the current visa regime.

Just in the past couple of days, a short email arrived from the UK Visa Office asking my wife to resubmit her passport for a “visa correction”. This followed an appeal on our behalf to the immigration minister by Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesperson (and a former student of mine). Following a chance encounter last weekend, Laura Farris (Conservative MP for Newbury) also indicated that she would appeal to the minister.

For those lucky enough to have helpful parliamentary contacts, it may thus be possible to resolve this sort of regulatory absurdity. But what of those lacking such contacts? Lawyers consulted by UCL, Moran and Farris were clear that the problem here involves a regulatory loophole, not an isolated clerical error, and yet the system offered us no recourse. The government has yet to acknowledge the existence of this loophole, let alone address the broader issues of a visa application system that is chronically dysfunctional, extortionate and unaccountable.

The phrase “Global Britain” was first deployed in 2017 by then prime minister Theresa May. But the message to many of the most internationally experienced British researchers is more in keeping with her earlier declaration that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”. Faced with such discrimination at the hands of their own government many expatriate British academics will think twice before offering their invaluable expertise to “Global Britain”.

Edward Vickers holds the UNESCO chair on education for peace, social justice and global citizenship at Kyushu University, Japan.