Hammersmith, London is a bustling neighbourhood where many Poles live and work.<br /><br /> Since Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the area has seen a rise in xenophobic attacks.<br /><br /> Shortly after the referendum, English extremists stormed a Polish deli on King Street, insulted its owners and told them to leave the country.<br /><br /> The British pound has also lost value, which means it is now more expensive for the shop to import gherkins and other delicacies from Poland.<br /><br /> But owner Izabela Pluszczok laments that what hurts her most is the atmosphere since the June 23 poll.<br /><br /> “At the moment it is not very pleasant to be here – we feel like the British do not want us,” she said.<br /><br /> “We had some customers, kind of posh, they said: ‘We want to leave the European Union because we do not want the migrants here’... But then, a few minutes later they say: ‘Yeah, I’ve got a Polish cleaner, someone Polish is looking after my kids… So (I say) if you do not want us here, who is going to do these things for you?”<br /><br /> Izabela says she will not apply for a British passport. If things get worse, maybe she will move elsewhere in the EU – or even return to Poland.<br /><br /> Becoming British, by the book<br /><br /> When Poland joined the EU in 2004, Britain did what most other member states would not do: it immediately opened its borders without restriction to these new migrant workers.<br /><br /> Since then, the number of Poles in the UK has risen eight-fold.<br /><br /> Monika Nawrot, a Polish office manager, came to the UK in 2005 and lives in Lewisham, a diverse neighbourhood in southeast London. She wants a British passport as soon as possible.<br /><br /> But how do you become British? Monika has studied the codes with an official textbook filled with questions about the nation’s history and culture.<br /><br /> “The Brexit situation makes me worry a little bit, because of the uncertainty,” she said. “Am I allowed to stay? I have a mortgage… what is going to happen to that? Will they force me to sell the flat and go back? I really don’t know.”<br /><br /> With migration as a central issue, the Brexit debate reinforced a climate of antagonism towards Poles lsebrexitvote https://t.co/hbPsIzaVx4— LSE Brexit blog (lsebrexitvote) September 29, 2016<br /><br /> Uncertainty – the driving force behind the rise in passport applications since the Brexit vote.<br /><br /> But to become British you need to dig deep into your archives.<br /><br /> Monika spends her weekends looking for the paperwork that can prove she has lived here without interruption for the past five years.<br /><br /> “I have to go through all of my trips taken over the last five years. So I have to write down all the dates exactly – when I went on holidays to Spain, Italy, whatever… so I need to have exact dates, not only months. I need to go through that, go back, find, remember those dates… Then obviously I have to find all my P60s (documents showing her annual income), payslips, whatever will be required, maybe confirmations of job contracts…”<br /><br /> To support foreigners anxious about the consequences of Brexit, Pawel Warg
