Where are you from? Not “just” a conversation starter
What you mean and what your conversation partner feels are not always the same thing.
[Note: I was born and raised in the Netherlands, have lived in Belgium, the North of England, and Australia. Since 2014 I live in the London area. It is the place I call “home”. I identify more with the London area than with any other place I have lived in before. It is the place where I have retired.]
I’m privileged! I’m white. My light brown eyes and hair don’t make me stand out as visibly different. I can pass as a “local”. That is, until the locals see my last name (Harzing), which they usually assume is German. Or until I start speaking. Although I have worked in an Anglophone environment for nearly thirty years, I still have a non-native accent.
And that’s where the “fun” starts. The questioning, the attempts at classification... Where are you from? You speak with an accent (don’t we all?). The question will vary. It might sometimes be implied…
During the first two COVID vaccinations the main chit-chat by the British nurses and volunteers was about whether I was German or Austrian (after seeing my name). For the second jab I was asked about my nationality three times within the space of 5 minutes. I just smiled and complied, but what I wanted more than anything at that time was to connect with my local community. I was so proud of the way they handled vaccination and how well we were pulling together on this. Instead, I felt quite excluded at a time when I wanted to celebrate British pragmatism and its ability to improvise in the face of adversity, in many ways the exact opposite of the Germanic background attributed to me.
“You are not English”. The very first comment in my initial meeting with an English doctoral student. I was momentarily baffled. How did they know? I could well have had British citizenship. In fact, I would have had if the Netherlands had allowed this. I started to feel a bit insecure about my English-language skills and bumbled my response. What was meant as a meeting to connect on our common research interests ended up as something that left me feeling like an outsider. Again…
A lady with leaflets of a people’s vote march [shortly after the Brexit vote] that we met on leaving our local train station: “Please come, we want to keep you here” [after hearing us talk Dutch together]. How do they know we don’t have British nationality? Why is it them who have the agency to keep us? Why remind us yet again that we might be forced to leave the country that is our home? Why is about what they want? Yes, of course, I know she meant well, and she was trying to be kind to us. But why not say something like: “Please join the march, we are all in this together.”
Sure, this doesn’t happen every time I talk to someone, and it really isn't a big thing for me. But still… every time it does happen, I feel a little pang for not being accepted for who I think I am. Someone who has made the UK their home and has retired here. Someone who probably knows more about the UK’s social history than many of the locals. Someone who has likely explored more of the Greater London area than many of the locals; we have literally walked in all corners of it. Someone who feels connected with British culture so much more than with their birth culture; I am reminded of that every time I visit my birth country!
Your questions and assertions seem to negate all of that. You don’t mean it like that; I know. But what you mean and what I feel are not the same thing. Again…, I’m privileged. I am white. I was born in the Netherlands, a “neutral” country and one that locals do not typically see as threatening, criminal, or inferior. So, for me these questions are a minor annoyance. They might spoil part of my day, but they are usually quickly forgotten. For many others, however, they can be an almost daily reminder of being seen as an outsider in their own country.
For more reflections on why this is not just an innocent question and what you might want to ask instead, read the original white paper: Where are you from? Not "just" a conversation starter
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Copyright © 2025 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Fri 4 Apr 2025 16:59
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
