A week since my last post! Sorry, I’m getting lazy! I was meaning to respond to a couple of interesting comments on the last post about ‘England vs France for University‘, which raised interesting questions and merited discussion…but get bogged down with a problem with a deleted database. So I’ll do it now!
The main thought-provoking comment I’m thinking of was from Maggie C: If you live in France and your kids have been brought up as French kids … They feel French, they think French … I suppose we may be the exceptions though – we came to France not to mix with Brits but because we wanted to integrate!! (original comment abbreviated)
Two interesting points:
1) Do expat children ‘feel French’ after growing up in France?
2) The (not always successful) desire of expats to integrate with the French community
The first of these was discussed in a post a couple of months ago called ‘why do expat children want to go home.
The broad conclusion was that our own children, and most other expat children we know, quite simply don’t ‘feel French’ despite years of complete integration. Their friends (and boyfriends) are French, and they speak French as well as locals, but still they consider themselves to be at least as much English as French, and are often impartial as to whether they continue life in France or England…which I think is perhaps the ideal outcome. I wouldn’t place bets on which country either of our own daughters will end up in in a few years time.
The second comment, about integrating with the French community, is especially interesting. Our own goal was never to ‘become French’ or to encourage the children to ‘become French’. Rather, it was to help them (and us) experience a different (slower, better?, more traditional and perhaps more old-fashioned) way of life, open their eyes to different cultures, learn a second language etc. All of which of course involve some degree of integration!
For children at school this integration is pretty easy (at least, in schools that don’t have an excessive expat children population). But in reality expats, especially adults but also children, have a natural bond with other expats: a shared background, similar sense of humour, and facing the same challenges and difficulties, hence presumably the reason why expats tend to group together.
In my experience, for most expat adults the challenge is to strike a balance between integrating in the local community while also mixing with like-minded people (often other expats). Personally, if someone is interesting and easy to get along with I couldn’t care less if they are French, English, eskimo…
With ‘full integration’ of the children I would also be concerned that there is a risk of closing as many doors for them as have been opened. Part of the goal, after all, is to increase their choices and options.
I take my hat off (well, I would if I was wearing one) to those expats who arrive in France and completely integrate, mixing only with locals, because they will surely have a better understanding of French life and culture, but I think ‘full integration’ is pretty unusual, even rare. Or am I wrong? Perhaps we have moved somewhere with too many other expats! Next time we’ll try the mountains of the Auvergne perhaps…
Even a move within the UK results in an opportunity to make friends with new people. You have often the people that are work collegues, church, sport or parents from your children’s school. In other words people that have similar interests.
Transfer to a different country with a new language and this, to me, holds true. We have to have some shared interest to be connected to the locals, and break into their lives. If we have no children at school and live the life of being only ‘retired living abroard’ then it’s not suprising that it’s others that speak our language that are our ‘new’ friends.
I think the ‘misunderstanding’ comes about because of what might be called the Peter Mayle Syndrome – the commonly held idea that moving to France as an expat consists of living in a small country village and doing enormously entertaining things with elderly locals. The day-to-day reality for most of us is slightly different.
I am French and have just moved back from the UK (I’ve spent almost 5 years there). I was amazed about how easy it was to blend and mix with locals. I felt fully integrated.
Now back home, I do understand that integrating for expats can be difficult. Even for French people it is difficult. There are many French people who move to a different region (like the south of France) and do not integrate or can’t stand people’s attitude. Making friends can be hard too, even for French when landing in a new part of France.
Hi Stephanie, here in the south of France it is true that the local French sometimes speak very badly of Parisians and those in the north of the country, both because they believe everyone in the north does nothing but work rather than enjoying the more important things in life, and because they believe that ‘northerners’ think southern French are a bunch of ‘paysans’ who know nothing but farming…