On Good Conversation, Diaspora, and Jobs
In this morning’s NY Times there is a cute little article entitled “Talking the Yanks Under the Table” which is about how much cleverer the British are perceived to be than we Americans when it comes to conversation. At least, that’s how us Americans tend to see it.
I for one, dutifully admit that conversation over dinner with a bunch of Brits or French is usually more fun than with Americans (happily, there are notable exceptions) because the conversation will almost certainly be more daring, the range of admissible ideas much broader, and hey, the food will be better than meat loaf or pizza with ‘everything on it’. The French have the art de vivre down pat while the Brits I know living in the south of France are usually foodies, so sitting down à table will usually be a treat.
But back to the NYT article. One American living in London who was interviewed says
People are more relaxed here and they’re not thinking, ‘I’ve got to get home because I’ve got to get up to work.’ It’s looser here; there isn’t that grind.
This quote was fascinating to me in light of an article I came across just yesterday on the BBC website that analyzes the current state of the British diaspora. (For conversationally-challenged Americans, a diaspora is the migratory spread of a people out from their homeland into what we Americans affectionately call the Rest of World). It is always astonishing to discover how many Brits feel that Life is probably better on the other end of an Easyjet flight.
Many British expats are interviewed by the BBC, and when asked why they left Britain, the responses are breathtaking:
I don’t miss the rushed pace of life and I definitely don’t miss the British government.
or
I lived in London for 12 years and spoke to my neighbours three times. Fed up with the stress of my job, long days and expensive cost of living, I left the UK to see the world.
A first conclusion is that dumbed-down Americans can reasonably look to Great Britain’s dinner parties for the intellectual stimulation that is missing from American life. And that alienated Brits can reasonably look to anywhere to the south to flee alienation, dysfunctional healthcare, and long periods of bad weather.
II.
In the BBC article, we learn that 2 million Brits are living permanently in Australia, 700,000 live in Spain, but only 200,000 have settled down in France.
(This last factoid is surprising. Here in southern France, it often seems that every third person is British. What can it be like in Spain? Is every third person Spanish?)
Just after reading the BBC article, I happened to speak with a knowledgeable English friend living down here and learned yet another astonishing fact: apparently, there are more Frenchpersonnes living in Britain than there are Brits in France!
However, it is a sad reality that explains this fact. The French who go to England do so because they can’t find work in France. They are generally young, dynamic, and definitely not part of the 75% of French youth recently polled by Le Monde whose priority is finding a job for life in the civil service with a solid pension at 60. The French in Britain are generally involved in the finance and IT sectors, parts of the modern economy that are not joyously recognized in France. They are part of what is called the fuite de cerveaux (’Brain Drain’) that is a common subject of conversation at french dinner parties.
The Brits in France on the other hand, are generally pensioners, coming down here to live the good Life. Few attempt to become part of French economic activity, because the difficulties of doing so are starting to be well-known. I suppose that those wanting to continue working account for the larger expat populations of Spain or Australia, places where work is not frowned upon..
