The words ‘immigrants’ and ‘immigration’ conjure up in the mind specific phenomena and specific types of people. In most parts of Belgium, for instance, it suggests people whose family and cultural roots lie in either North Africa or Turkey. In Britain, it used to mean black or brown people, but these days the people who are most readily called to mind are from eastern Europe. The one common feature among these different groups is relative poverty. Indeed, we tend to assume that immigration necessarily involves finding yourself at the bottom of the economic pecking order.
But of course it isn’t always like that. There have always been people who set up home in a new country for reasons other than pressing material need. As if to keep such people separate in their minds from ‘immigrants’, the British use different words for such people. They are either ‘expatriates’ or ‘émigrés’ and they are assumed to be different from immigrants because (1) they have not so much responded to economic imperative as made a voluntary choice and (2) this was an individual choice, with the result that there are not many of them gathered in the same place.
British people who live in France would consider themselves to be expatriates rather than immigrants. After all, the latter have low status connotations with which they would not wish to identify. But let me tell you about them.
In tens of villages in the Loire Valley and in Périgord, the British now make up more than a quarter of the population; one part of the Dordogne is now known as ‘Dordogneshire’; Saint-Nom-La-Bretêche in the Ile de France is widely known as ‘Saint-Nom-Les-British’. The latest estimate is that half a million Britons live in France. That’s a lot, by any standard of measurement.
Why have all these Brits gone to live across the channel? Well, many reasons are cited, but there is no doubt that a major reason – possibly the major reason – is an economic one. Property prices are so much cheaper in France than they are in Britain, so they can afford a better standard living.
You see where I’m going. You have the mass movement, and its attendant gathering together in enclaves, and you have the economic incentive for it. Perhaps the Brits in France are not so different from other ‘immigrants’. Of course, one cannot press the economic case too far, because most of them begin their new lives fairly well placed in the French economic order. But yet another similarity has recently emerged – the indigenous backlash: widespread outrage at the news of Britons fraudulently claiming unemployment benefit; “English go home” placards; the editor of a newspaper for the British community receiving hate mail. All of these have occurred in the last year. And, in recognition of the impact of this British migration; a book called Au secours, les Anglais nous envahissent! is about to be published.
At the same time, and just as with ‘real’ immigrant communities, you also have inspiring stories of integration and cultural exchange, of Brits who have become expert pétanque players or champion camembert eaters and, conversely, of them introducing conkers to the natives of a Périgord village (who, apparently, are naturally gifted at it).
In nearly all respects then, the British in France are ‘immigrants’ just like any other group we choose to call by that name.
to assume: aannemen, veronderstellen.
conkers: kinderspel met kastanjes aan touwtjes.
indigenous: autochtoon, inlands.
latter: de/het laatstgenoemde (meestal van twee).
native: oorspronkelijke inwoner.
