After 35 years as an expat in Brussels, I’d like to think of myself as a local. But I’m not. I never will be. You get one chance to be a local. You stay in the place where you were born. You spend your life with the same people, share the same ideas, tell the same stories. I know people like that. But I left my home town in Scotland a long time ago. Even if I went back, I’d be someone who returned, not someone who belongs. Back in 2016, soon after the United Kingdom had voted to leave the EU, prime minister Theresa May spoke at the Conservative Party conference against a rootless “international elite” who were the opposite of “the people down the road”. She didn’t stop there. “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere — you don’t understand what citizenship means.” It was a tough message for expats (not my favourite word, but I don’t have an alternative). Since you’re not from here, you’re not from anywhere. It’s an insult that expats have to accept. A