there’s this kind of stigma around young people

I’ve never seen so many people give someone the dirties. Like you literally…you walk down the street, you come anywhere near another person, they look like you’re about to kill them! They look at you like you’ve just killed their mother. Everyone is just petrified of going near each other, it’s horrendous, but then again when you try to go to the supermarket they’re still packed, there’s no police at all. It’s just chaos, honestly. I think a lot of people have just given up at this point. Yeah, a lot of people are just going in doing their shopping, they wear their masks but they don’t maintain social distancing, they’ve just kind of given up.

I think as a young person, I feel like we’re less connected now, ‘cos we’ve been getting the brunt of the blame. ‘Cos they’ve been saying ‘oh, young people, students coming to Uni, that’s what’s causing it to spread’, and so there’s this kind of stigma around young people in the area and then obviously if you see young people mixing you will…you do get a dirty look. There’s some of the older people who’re just like ‘oh, it’s their fault, it’s their fault!’. So yeah, it’s not as nice a community as it used to be in my opinion.

Abdul is a 20-year-old British Pakistani man living in a city situated in the East Midlands. He was unable to vote but supported remaining in the EU. Interview December 2020.