I expect I will come under fire for making this observation, but, it does seem that there are suddenly many new posters who expect to move to France and continue doing all the same things they currently do at home, in the States or wherever.
I just do not feel this is realistic. As immigrants we do will not immediately have all the same rights and privileges that we have in our home countries.
There, I have said it.
Perhaps one way of seeing a different perspective would be to imagine you are an immigrant moving to your home country and consider how that would impact on your freedoms and options. From what little I know, immigrating to the US or the UK imposes no fewer constraints and probably more.
First time international movers are I think rather surprised and disappointed because it is all new to them and perhaps they imagine / imagined it would all be seamless. Every country I have moved to has its own bureaucratic hurdles and after a while we expect and are well prepared.
The same may be said about adapting to and accepting living in a new culture. Holiday visits have never fully prepared anyone for full on residency.
Initally elated/excited…
My heart sank to my boots, when I put the key into the front door of our new home, here in France…
What have we done?
How will we cope?
HELP!!!
The screaming inside my head gradually eased in volume, but never quite vanished completely… for some time.
I discovered that politeness, a sense of humour… and several dictionaries … helped to ease the transition from a Lifestyle which I knew… to a completely different, Alien Lifestyle…
Such a huge difference, which I had certainly never envisaged…
I think it is important that we raise these Lifestyle Differences with would be newcomers…
EDIT: years spent holidaying in France, only whetted the appetite to live here permanently… without actually preparing us for Fulltime… so glad we survived to tell the tale…
I was lucky that my first time living in France was as a stagiaire. I was young and dumb, but nobody expects a 21 year old to be any different so I got away with a lot of stuff. Plus I knew it was only a temporary thing as I had to go back to the UK to finish my studies.
The 2nd time, I was (slightly) older and (slightly) wiser so didn’t make as many mistakes or assumptions about things. Plus, by then, I was hitched to a French woman
Indeed, I think you have hit a nail on the head there.
I was lucky I guess because I was transferred by my company. They had experience of helping Brits and other nationalities settle into France and they told me the things I needed to know without me having to ask. I am sure that many of the things that were explained to me were things that it would never have occurred to me to even ask about. It is so easy to make assumptions without realizing it.
Both of us had lived elsewhere in the world - Africa him, Brazil me - in our 30s as expats - our paths smoothed by our big company HR departments. That experience helped because it taught both of us how different cultures can be. I spent the first 6 months sitting in Kafka-esque great gloomy hallways with hundreds of old wooden benches waiting to be seen by some official who spent their entire life scrawling a signature and stamping documents. And then there was the time I was sitting in a police waiting room, terrified, listening to some pretty ghastly noises waiting for the company “fixer” to come and get me out with the necessary bribe for the police chief. OH had similar experiences in Africa. France after that seemed quite “normal” and civilised in the early days. But then this was pre-Brexit and it was easy, once we got used to how long things took.
I wonder at the current bunch? And wonder why they are choosing France?
And, after 17 years I find it still is. And as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it is not in the French temperament to volunteer information unasked - we are expected to know.
I’ve collected OH from the airport this morning - returning from Gatwick - and he’s just so grateful to be home.
Unfortunately its pejorative sense is now well-established - “migrants” is another word that has become a synonym for “filthy foreigners coming here to sponge off our social care system and steal our jobs, cattle and moveable household possessions”…
Oh and “asylum seekers” likewise.
The word “expat” tends to be used a lot in the tabloid newspaper sense of “red-faced gin-swilling retired Brit who lives abroad, can’t speak a word of the language and who voted for Brexit”.
I keep hearing the word “illegals” used too. Whether it be “migrant”, “asylum seeker” or “illegals” - these are human beings, at the end of the day.
And despite what Kemi Badenough, Nigel Farrago and friends would have us believe, asylum seekers, especially in the UK, are by definition NOT illegal - they are people following an official process to settle legally.
But in the context of moving to France I would say an “immigrant” is someone who is settling permanently while an “expat” probably intends to go back whence they came one day.
@Sandcastle’s point about expectations is well made - the more realistic they are and the more research you have done, the better. But moving anywhere, even from English speaking country A to English speaking country B, there will be differences and adjustments to be made.
I agree with what has been said so far, with a slight variation - I didn’t expect it to be the same as the country I had moved from but on the other hand, I had no idea what those differences were going to be. I’m not sure anyone could have told me either, although some more information would have helped.
I think the key words for me are “unconscious assumptions”. We don’t necessarily expect anything particular but we all have assumptions based on our previous experiences and until we get things wrong in a new situation, we don’t know that we have them.
We were the same. On our first night we sat in our newly acquired farmhouse listening to the deafening silence outside. After a couple of hours, we heard a car go past on the road outside. “We are not alone” said my wife”
10 years later we moved to another rural location. I went to take the dog for his first evening walk but came rushing back to tell my wife, “Come and look – we have a street light”
Many things were quite different from what we expected but on the whole the positive discoveries far outweighed the negative.
When it comes to descriptions, I always refer to myself as an ex-pat, even though I have no inclination to return. I tend to take the Humpty Dumpty approach to word attribution.
Emigrating to the US almost 9 years ago now, my daughter and her husband had to have individual interviews with the Homeland Security people who sent for them when they applied for the green card residency which cost in total, thousands of dollars to obtain but the company paid for it all as it had to go through an attorney. To me that is more onerous than any application for a CDS here or I assume, anything to apply for in the UK. We, on the other hand bought our home, then a couple of years later rocked up with our goods and chatels and stayed although we had to get a CDS within a few months and change our driving licences within a year but it was pretty do-able.
This is exactly my understanding. I will always be an expat even if I stayed for several years, because I don’t plan to emigrate there permanently. And from what I’ve seen, a number of SFers have returned to the UK after living a long while in France.
It’s good not to be triggered by words that carry a specific meaning but aren’t used in exactly that way.
I know Brits who will never admit to being immigrants… daft lot in my view… but I let 'em get on with it… we all have our funny ways
OH and I are immigrants and, from the outset, made it plain to our neighbours that we had sold-up everything in UK and were making France our Home… come hell or highwater !
Years later, we were very touched when the Maire knocked on our door to check that we weren’t thinking of leaving France… (Brexit)
His obvious relief at our vehement NO earned him a huge hug and lots of kisses.
(expat, not immigrant)