Self-Sufficiency in Style

Self-Sufficiency in Style

a second wave

When you move to a new area or country, it is reassuring to look for an area with an existing expatriate community.

That may well be a serious mistake.

In the hundreds of television and newspaper articles about moving away, now becoming fashionable, a hitherto hidden problem has emerged.

Pioneers' Problems.

Lecturing Newcomers.

It seems to apply specifically to France and, at first, was only mentioned in relation to the Dordogne.

The existing sizeable British communities are not making their newer compatriots very welcome.

Far from being helped, aside from the British-French estate agent that sold them the house, business or farm, they are shunned or, worse, talked down to.

They are told how they should behave and lectured on how they should conduct their relations with the local French natives.

In reality, this is a problem nor specific to the Dordogne, France, Britons settling abroad or even this century.

The writer has experienced it in the UK and others have long commented on similar phenomena elsewhere.

Frustrated settlers.

The first arrivals of a settling group into an alien environment make a great effort to integrate their activities into the local community. Indeed they have little option if they want to talk to anyone.

They will have moved, usually into a cheaper area, because of financial pressure in their home region or country.

Their efforts will include tackling a new language, alien religion and strange ways. They may never integrate or really adopt anything, but they will reach an accommodation and spirit of tolerance with their new neighbours.

The small numbers may well cluster together at a church or golf club, but they will generally do so discretely. Their relative greater prosperity often provides business opportunities to the local population that encourage tolerance in the other direction.

Later generations may slowly assimilate completely. This may take many generations. The process can be called, without offence, "as going native."

The British, and before them the English, were long taxed by the propensity of their most loyal and trusted servants to "go native."

It happened in India, especially in the early days, in the Arab world - look at Welshman, Lawrence of Arabia as merely one high profile example.

The English, later British, Crown were long driven crazy by constantly settling Ireland with English, Welsh and Scots, only to discover that within a generation, the settlers were speaking the local language and of very doubtful loyalty, if not actually in full rebellion.

Going Native.

The early generations of Jewish settlers in England made efforts to assimilate, to the extent that a gentile country actually had a Jewish Prime Minister more than a century ago.

These sophisticated Anglo-Jews must have winced when they saw the east end of London swamped by the arrival of peasants chased out by East European pogroms.

One can imagine them helping, whilst lecturing the unfortunate refugees on the necessity of sharpening their table manners.

Indeed, the original bi-lingual kibbutz smallholders in Palestine were quick to adopt the term "Sabra" to differentiate themselves from later arrivals following the Holocaust.

We can be sure that they were concerned that their expertise in dealing with their Arab neighbours should be passed on.

So a sophisticated expatriate elite are hardly likely to welcome with open arms the average smallholder - someone who is likely to regard the cherished golf course as wasted sheep grazing.

Their little world of bridge parties, gin and tonic, mixed marriages, cultural exchange and general civic worthiness is not exactly tuned to the man with a phrase book in one hand trying to recover an escaped cow.

For them there is no going back, the newcomer is a big threat, and they will show it.

Keeping their cards close to their chest.

Grass culture - golf courses, lawns or grazing.

Sir John Betjeman, the English poet laureate, understood the process perfectly.

A man, who at one stage, was so sympathetic to Ireland's culture and aspirations, that he adopted an Irish version of his name.

He was later to write this perceptive poem about the English expatriate in Spain. Just one verse from "The Costa Blanca" tells a story well.

Mind if I see your Mail ? We used to share
Our Telegraph with people who've returned-
The lucky sods ! I'll tell you what I've learned:
If you come out here put aside the fare
To England. I'd run like a bloody hare
If I'd a chance, and how we both have yearned
To see our Esher lawn. I think we've earned
A bit of what we had once over there.

So, you may well move into an area with a nervous expatriate culture, even an elite of poverty-stricken professionals, unhappily bridging two worlds. Their anxiety to really fit in may be more of a problem than your own.

These groupings exist in Welsh Wales, in parts of Scotland, Ireland, France and Spain. We often associate them with expatriate English, but all nations, given the same emigration patterns, produce the same results. Even within a single nation, regional tensions can and do arise.

The same things happen whenever two cultures become entwined.

The new settler is a threat, so the writer's advice is, that if you go, be the first into that area. Set the tone and the pace with the locals that will give the newcomer, the second wave that follows you, space and freedom too.

You won't need teaching anything by your compatriots. You have just demonstrated your good opinion of the host community by seeking to live amongst them.

You can return to Locality or meander on to Moving Away to select a specific location.

Cultural assimilation can bring tensions for the second wave.

"avoid your countryman"

advice from

the cynically named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.

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