Art

Privileged Enough to Enter, Not Quite Enough to Belong

BY Elena Demireva POSTED 08/06/2026 4:09 PM

It’s getting harder to be an immigrant, a woman, and a creative.

The very characteristics that determine my identity – being an immigrant, a woman, and a professional in the creative industry – are also the traits that make me most vulnerable in 2026 as I navigate life in London’s changing political landscape.

I moved from Bulgaria to England in 2016, two months after the historic referendum held on 23 June 2016 when 52% of British voters decided to leave the EU. The 2% difference (635,000 out of 33 million votes) overturned a future I had worked toward for the previous couple of years – preparing a portfolio, passing the Cambridge English exam, and spending countless hours researching and applying to universities. Nevertheless, armed with stubbornness and a desire to prove myself, I still enrolled to study Graphic and Digital Design at the University of Greenwich with a tuition fee loan and an EU-subsidised scholarship.

EU nationals must now pay international fees and no longer qualify for tuition fee loans. My degree cost me just under £30,000; now the same degree would’ve cost me around £54,000. The loan I will be repaying for most of my working life no longer exists.

Unsurprisingly, the number of EU students enrolling in British universities has declined by 57% between 2020/21 and 2023/24.1 The 2025 cohort fell further over the following two years to its lowest level since the higher education sector was reorganised in 1994, before I was even born.2

Eastern European countries have experienced the sharpest fall. New students from Romania and Poland fell by around 80%, as the increase in costs hit students from lower-income countries particularly hard.1 I certainly would never have been able to afford studying here post-Brexit. Even with a loan and scholarship, I still worked part-time and relied on my family’s support to get settled.

I wonder what the student body looks like now, ten years later. Do any European working-class students bear the burden of paying over £50,000 for an undergraduate degree in the arts without student finance? It does not seem plausible. And in all honesty, it is unlikely to pay off – unpaid internships, low starting salaries, limited opportunities outside major cities, and skyrocketing rents are some of the barriers to entering the creative industries.

If Brexit wasn’t enough to shake us, a year after my cohort graduated, a global pandemic began. Any international friends I had left in the city fled back home. Most never returned. The café where I worked as a barista furloughed everyone and never reopened. This would have been my fate too if, a mere two weeks prior, I hadn’t started my first full-time, contracted graphic design role. A little luck and good timing are the sole reasons why I’m still here.

Through sheer persistence over the next few years, I managed to progress and become comfortable in my design career. I’ve built a portfolio I’m proud of and worked with fantastic clients across a variety of exciting projects. But the more I progress, the more often I find myself in rooms that feel stifling. I hang up my immigrant identity like a coat before I enter the office. I have never felt poorer, more unequipped and more misunderstood than when I was doing “well” in my career. I’ve built a habit of over-explaining, defending, and justifying my choices and my very existence. I’ve had to pretend countless times that I was in on the joke – and sometimes the joke was on me.

With the rise in popularity of Reform, anti-immigration protests, and inflammatory content flooding social media, and with St George’s flags becoming a common sight, it can be hard to come to work as your authentic self. Yes, Eastern European immigrants are largely white Christians, and that does make a difference. We’re not so visibly different. But there is still an enormous cultural and economic divide between East and West.

As an Eastern European, I often feel behind other immigrants – those from western countries, English-speaking countries or former colonies, who understand British culture far better than I do, not to mention those who could afford to pay the £50,000 fees upfront. I am in a precarious position – privileged enough to have received an education, but not quite privileged enough to belong in the rooms its doors opened for me.

In my personal life, I have surrounded myself with a vibrant, thought-provoking, brilliant group of creative women who are also immigrants from all over the world. They hold me in this cold and grey city and make me feel part of something alive with energy, spirit, and kindness. I am thankful for the friendship we share and for being able to take the mask off at the end of the day.

But I often wonder: will we only see rich and privileged voices in the creative industry? Has Britain officially closed its doors to authentic voices from lower-income countries? And the ones who made it through by a thread – are we okay? Do we feel safe in our immigrant skin, or are we making our voices lower, more polite, more careful?

It’s getting harder to be an immigrant, a woman, and a creative, but we must show up as we are – unapologetic, loud, messy, and true to ourselves.

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