“What is interesting is how my family and friends back home perceive my accent now: They find I have an accent and make fun of the way I speak English but sometimes I speak it if I were speaking French, non? 🙂 “
My name is Bobbi Maulet, I am from Colorado, USA. I have been living in France since April 2001, and to be honest, I do not know why I came to this meeting because I am not really an economic migrant. I moved here to be with my husband, and clearly not for economic reasons. I did not in this sense choose to live in France, it was circumstancial. I came to live with my husband in France, he happens to be French and he chose to come back to France after finishing his internship in America so I didn’t have much choice, I had to build a life abroad. And it was everything but easy, moving away from my family was particularly hard. Which I did. I wouldn’t for instance go back now, economically it would not even make sense. I may go back if my family needs me there to care for someone, or if my husband passes away at some point or if my children move there.
Even though I have been living in France for fifteen years, I try to go to the US every year for about a month but even with time passing by I still consider myself an American. My home is the US (even though I do like to live in France.) That is not to say that I haven’t changed at all, I did so much, my way of looking at things is not are at all the typical way in which an American (or in my case a Coloradoan) would!
But it is weird to be an American in France. The French think we are fat, we only eat McDonald’s, we are always trying to control the world. But that refers more to the general idea of Americans because personally I am fairly well treated here. (I do speak French, maybe that helps). When people hear my American accent, they generally react in a positive manner, either finding my accent charming or they simply start asking me questions about where I am from, why I am here, etc. Overall, very friendly. What is interesting is how my family and friends back home perceive my accent now: They find I have an accent and make fun of the way I speak English but sometimes I speak it if I were speaking French, non? 🙂
And they don’t know much about the French. They think they are rude (which honestly was also the only stereotype I had that I by now do not find completely false). As anywhere it takes time to get to know people but generally the French are not as open and easy going as Americans tend to be (see, another stereotype here).
One of the things that I like most about France is, without a doubt, the health care system! What a difference, I would almost suggest people to come just how another health care system is possible!
I do enjoy the food here too, the more socialist aspect of life here in France and in Europe as a whole. There are some things though that I think they could learn from the Americans. So many things are easier and more convenient in the US. I find that the teaching in schools here, it just goes so fast and the amount of homework for the kids is overwhelming, all activities are also outside of school. Honestly, I also think it is hard to make connections with the French. Something else I miss a lot about the US (and agreed, I think in the US we are almost too much!) is living in a country that is service-oriented. Oh and since we are on the topic: How much I miss grocery shopping back home, I can’t help but thinking there is no better way to organize stores than setting up clean, organized stored where people actually help you with your groceries. (There are certain similarities, as far as I know: I am not completely knowledgeable on that subject but I think it is a lot like in France and Europe in general that people are tired of government funds going to immigrants when there are so many citizens that have problems as well.)
We have two children by now. Our household is fully binational, it would look like one of these cult movies to an outsider: My husband speaks French to me and I speak English to him. Our kids speak mostly French but they speak English too. I tend to speak both English and French to the kids where my husband only speaks in French unless we are with other English speaking people.
But that does not happen often, I do not feel that we are integrated into the English community here in town (I feel more isolated from them than from the French).
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“I choose to come to France because it was the middle country for me. Mexico is too conservative and traditional. The USA is liberal and lacks traditions. France to me is liberal and has traditions which is the perfect mix for the type of life I want to live.“
I can’t even tell you in a short sentence where I am from because it’s so complicated. I was born in USA but grew up in Mexico. And I guess you are supposed to feel at home in the place you grow up, right? (Am I even allowed to say for instance that I feel more at home here in France than in Mexico?) In my case, the situation is also much different than your average story because I was not considered a “real” Mexican until I got my Mexican citizenship at 21 even though I had lived in Mexico until I was 18. I always had a US passport but I never felt “American” either even though I speak and write better English than Spanish (my actual mother tongue). I guess for short, you could say that I am a Westerner?
I have been in France since 2013 and like she said, I too do not feel like an economic migrant. I came to France because I wanted to live here, not because I could not find a job back in the USA.I think you tend to like the country if you have done your research before and know exactly what you want to get out of this experience. I do not feel discriminated or socially excluded here but I guess I could say that I do feel isolated. Being already binational means that it is not easy to fit in with any crowd. I don’t fit in well with the Latino community nor with the all American groups. Most of my friends are French but at the end of the day I am not French and our pasts are very different. I do feel privileged that I am not from a country that France likes to discriminate against such as certain Arab or African countries. I feel privileged that I do not need a visa to travel and that my skin color is not an issue in France although it has been before in the US.
The quality of life in France is better than in the USA but that is also just my personal opinion. I guess I do miss the ability to buy whatever food product I want in the US. I actually do try to go back every 2 years, and I might one day go back to work for max. 2 years and see my family more often but quite honestly I would definitely do not want to stay long term. Life in France is almost too perfect, (it would be even better with a job here!) I feel safe here. I never felt safe in the US as a woman. As a woman I feel as an equal compared to men in France which was also not the case in Mexico.
Here in France, nobody cares who you are, where you come from, what you did. They care more about the present and sometimes ask annoying questions about your future. I choose to come to France because it was the middle country for me. Mexico is too conservative and traditional. The USA is liberal and lacks traditions. France to me is liberal and has traditions which is the perfect mix for the type of life I want to live.
I guess the bad side of it is that they do not like change and they are afraid they will lose something if they change their ways. Whether at work or personal routines or even in politics: French people prefer to stay with the same old even if its not working anymore. (Aside from the visas and paperwork to come live here, that was terrible.)
On Americans living in France: People think they are very loud and expect everything to be as it is back in their hometown. They also have this sense that money can buy everything, specially services (referring to tipping). Even my French husband has a very negative view of US Americans and always passes bad judgement on them. I think he feels he can say such things to me because he doesn’t consider me a “real” US American. We do get into a lot of discussions over this because I think he should not judge unless he has been a resident, working and as a student in the US.
From my accent you can’t tell that I am coming from the US. With my husband I speak speak 85% french, 14% English, 1% Spanish. I guess I have a Spanish accent but so many people know that I sound US American as well as Mexican. French people always ask me where does my little accent come from. I never get bombarded with political questions or am expected to represent the whole US and the government’s decisions, however, I do get bombarded with immigration issues between Mexico and the USA. (But I do not even have enough of an opinion since I haven’t read what the current immigration reform is)
Of course I miss family but I feel that, unlike others, we have been able to keep close to onea nother, nothing has really changed, we simply talk less due to time zones and we are not able to go out as much as before. They have some wrong ideas about the French still: that they are very classy, mean or arrogant.
Photo credit: postprandial by Jenny Downing, Flickr CC 2.0
Economic Migrants 