Returning Home: A Slovak Woman Reflects on Identity After Six Years in Britain

After six years living and studying in the United Kingdom, a young Slovak woman has returned to Slovakia and is grappling with a sense of cultural displacement — feeling neither fully at home abroad nor entirely at ease back in her own country. Writing in Denník N, a leading Slovak independent daily, she describes the disorienting experience of reintegrating into Slovak society after years away. In Britain, she identified herself as Slovak, though many British people had little familiarity with Slovakia and often labeled her simply as 'Eastern European.' Now back home, she finds herself caught between two identities and two languages, uncertain which she belongs to more fully. Her account reflects a broader experience shared by many young Slovaks who have studied or worked abroad under EU freedom of movement rules, only to find that returning home can be as challenging as leaving it.