ExPat Integration

In South West France

One of the first things that Expats moving to Aquitaine in the south west of France
need to understand is the local culture. There are two (at least); the original local
French/Occitan culture and the transplanted and locally propagating Expat culture.
Personally I would suggest that they did not join either, but the PC1 word is
integration. However 95% of transferees will not be moving into anything like a
French culture, they will be joining an English Expat (sometimes referred to as an
ExPatdom) society, sad though that might be.

Integration
We are currently awash with ‘Place in the Sun’ and House Hunters (USA) like TV
programmes proclaiming that SW France is the place to be; at least this week.
The amount of illumination that you get from those proceedings wouldn’t keep a
glow worm going for ten minutes. The house prices that they present are about
two orders of magnitude below reality or several years out of date. The idyllic and
close co-existence of the new transferees and the locals is extolled as an enduring
social delight. It’s all done to jazz up the French Expat lifestyle, not that the life is
bad, but it is not as good as those glossy programmes would suggest. Usually they
wheel in a couple of French locals dying for their 15 minutes of fame and willing
to say that they love their new English neighbours; whom they briefly met
yesterday at the request of the presenter!
However one pearl of wisdom that all these broadcasters universally commend for
a happy re-settlement is the ‘need to integrate’.
This is usually pushed by a well endowed nubile female presenter who has
probably never resided in one place for more than three weeks in the whole of her
adult life. Evidenced by the fact that next weeks ‘Place in the Sun’ is in the
Cayman Islands followed by New Zealand.
Integrate! How? What has the average Expat got in common with the local
Aquitaine sons of the soil? Even if either of us could speak the others language
with consummate fluency, once you have exhausted the subject of CAP2 grants or
the efficacy of Bordeaux Blue3 on vine pests, the range of mutually interesting
communication subjects tends to peter out. Given the reality that neither
nationality normally has much fluency in the other’s language, the main cross

1
Politically Correct
2
European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy
3
A relatively organic pesticide used on vines.
 cultural communications descend to monosyllabalic comments on the weather.
Even that is not without its hazards when ‘beau temps’ is rendered in the local
patois as ‘Bowtton’ and you wonder whether your flies are undone.
The reality is that what is needed for the two diverse cultures to live harmoniously
side by side is civility, respect, for the Brits to continue paying lots of French taxes
and absolutely to never never mention the EU/UK 4 rebate. This of course, does
not preclude you from going to the local ‘Salle de Fete’ promotions, to cheer when
‘your’ town wins the ‘Ville Fleurie’ or being nice to your French neighbour.
Despite this some expats do fully integrate into local society; well I have heard
that there was one once. No, just kidding!, there may have been two. My
classification of the invading Brits (and other nations) is as follws. There are four
types

The four types

The four types of Expats are divided into two super classes called Integrators
and Floaters.
Integrators have a semi messianic view that they should be as close to the
local population as possible, for either moral or self preservation motivations.
They work assiduously to emulate the local populace, however bizarre that may
seem. Trying to understand the rules of boules is one thing, attempting a
tolerant appreciation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its local
manifestation is just bizarre.
Floaters just want an easy time in pleasant surroundings and they undertake
the minimum integration necessary to maintain such a life style. They are true
pragmatists; probably that is why they get on so well with the French. The
French invent rules so that they can ignore them.
A straw poll would suggest that the invading populace is divided in a ratio of
about 5% Integrators and 95% Floaters. This can be further subdivided into
approximately 1% (of the total) as Deep Integrators, 4% as Good Integrators,
85% Flamboyant Floaters and 10% Reclusive Floaters.
The vast majority therefore are Flamboyant Floaters, drifting like flotsam on
the pond of French rural society, serenely oblivious of the deep eddying
currents beneath the surface.

Deep Integrators
Deep integrators have absorbed the local customs and can usually move
equally well in both English and French cultures. It goes without saying
that they can speak both languages fluently. Most have reached this much

4
This is the recovery of ‘lost’ EU contribution monies organised by Maggie Thatcher.
Even with it the English pay two and a half times more into the EU than the French.
Any suggestion that we could phase it out in parallel with the gross EU CAP subsidies
paid to inefficient French farmers is a hanging offence in Aquitaine. Well guillotining
actually.
 prized nirvanic state by some act of god, family or commerce. They have
either married a native French speaker or business has pitched them into
the francophone milieu. Both are good ways to get immersed, the pillow
dictionary being particularly effective. It is usually much more
pleasurable than book learning, interspersed as it is with other mind
tingling experiences.
Few people become deep integrators without some such force majeure,
that’s why there are not many of them.

Good Integrators
These are a bit like missionaries gone native. They will enthusiastically
espouse all things Francophile, diving into the language and customs with
uncritical fervour. Not to mix too many metaphors they are a strange
amalgamation of a cultural sponge and a ‘Tabula Rosa’.
These are the guys who get to grade three in the local town’s language
class and take on extra private lessons, which they keep up for more than
the usual three month attention span of lesser mortals. They tend to have
French television and have torn down the illegal Sky antennae that they
inherited with the house, as it detracts from their immersion. They have
all the enthusiasm of the girls’ premier hockey team at Rodean.
The ‘Good Integrators’ spend much of their time publicly putting down
the ‘Flamboyant Floaters’ with exhibitions of their verbal fluency and
knowledge of local habits, both social and regulatory.

Flamboyant Floaters
The flamboyant floater (FF) lives in a ‘Little England’5 cocoon. This is
constructed from a synthetic material which is totally culturally
impervious. It is proof against all external influences no matter how
deeply the occupant is immersed in them. In many ways he is an
advanced pioneer of space station existence, able to survive in a
potentially hostile environment with sustenance either brought from his
home planet or converted from local materials to his very specific needs.
The FF single-mindedly selects his literary and social channels of
intercourse with the outside world. Socially he is involved in a never
ending, often wildly escalating, round of meals and visits with other
English speaking Expats. FF’s wife maintains a scoreboard of when and
where they have been invited out to a meal by other FF’s. This record is
maintained with all the accountancy fervour of a forensic auditor.
FF’s information comes from UK Sky TV, the day late British papers and
if he is really adventurous, the English language French News paper. He

5
Read The Little Englanders Handbook. A Xenophobic guide to Europe and Johnny
Foreigner. By Major Oswald Kitchener.
 may also occasionally sneak off to watch an American film with English
subtitles at the Castillones cinema or some similar venue.
The truth is that the poor flamboyant floater is a linguistic cripple; he has
a reasonable, if sometimes fading, grasp on his own language to which he
clings to like a life raft. His external ‘foreign’ communication forays
usually consist of speaking English words with an ‘Allo Allo’ French
accent, or thumbing through the ‘How to purchase a beer’ section of his
phrase book. Even then he manages to mangle the pronunciation, because
he has never grasped the phonetic symbols contained therein; not that
anyone else has either. The other pages of his phrase book are in pristine
condition; an awaiting commercial opportunity for the second hand
English booksellers6 found in many local markets.
In his favour, the old colonial idea of shouting at the ‘natives’ in English
if they do not seem to understand, is on the wane, although not entirely
absent. Generally today, if our Flamboyant Floater is shouting at the
populace in English he is probably deaf and can’t get a battery for his
English hearing aid. Alternatively he may possibly be a member of the
resident pseudo-country set, another of the transmogrifying effects of
crossing the English Channel, which the French still perversely call ‘La
Manche’. Mind you if you ‘faire la manche’, you pass the hat around for
donations, so perhaps it is appropriate given the current state of the
French Economy.
The locals are so used to the francophone constipation of their visitors
that that they often congratulate Expats on their fluent French when they
manage to inject their first verb into a sentence.
The linguistic capability in Expat FF couples is universally asymmetrical,
One spouse rises to the dizzy heights of being able to buy a stamp, whilst
the other languishes in the despond of not being able to pronounce his
own name in French letters (of the spelling variety).Oddly it is usually
the female of the species that reaches the highest communicative
elevations.
Culturally most FF’s know that English (? Normans) once owned much
of Aquitaine and cannot understand why things should have changed over
the last 600 years. In fact, as the second invasion is buying Eleanor’s7
legacy back piecemeal, perhaps it hasn’t. They are normally convinced
that the average Aquitainian still really understands English and is
perversely just pretending not to be able to speak that language. That is
despite the reality that most of the original Norman overlords had about
the same level of fluency in Saxon languages as the neo-Aquitainian has
with French.
6
I suppose that this really should be rendered as ‘English sellers of English Books’
n’est pas?
7
Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II about 1152 and thereby brought her French
lands under some degree of English hegemony.
Of course there are always exceptions that prove the rule. There are a few
FF’s, usually raving myopic extroverts, who manage to combine a
complete ignorance of the French language with close provincial paisan
camaraderie. In these rare circumstances communication between the
disparate groups is undertaken in a welter of wild gestures, mimes and a
generous supply of alcohol. Comprehension invariably being sacrificed
on the altar of bleary eyed sentiment. Inevitably such intercourse usually
takes place in the local bar during rugby finals. Strangely football seems
to invoke a different, much more combative interaction.
All FF’s are pathologically terrified of official missives. Mainly because
they do not have a clue as to what the communiqué is requesting, offering
or more importantly demanding? The first FF defence to such epistles is
to ignore them. This rarely works as the French bureaucrat, although
surprised at such an affront to his god given right to respect, authority and
dignity, has a range of invasive measures at his disposal to bring the
recalcitrant into line. Eventually the FF either throws himself upon the
mercy of a friendly English stuttering French functionnaire, a rare breed
because few are friendly and even fewer admit to speaking English. This
extreme measure is usually undertaken more in hope than expectation.
Alternatively he pawns his pride and grovels to enlist the aid of one of the
various grades of supercilious Expat Deep Integrators.

Reclusive Floaters
Reclusive Floaters are similar to Flamboyant floaters, except that they do
not go out of doors, other than to collect the essentials of life; even then
they undertake this foray infrequently. They construct a physical
barricade around the standard issue culturally impermeable FF
membrane. These two barriers are mutually re-enforcing to an extent that
the RF might as well be on a desert island, in fact most of them think that
they are.
Normally RFs can be found living in isolated partial renovations in the
middle of ancient farmland or a thick wood far away from the nearest
hamlet They have a wary relationship with their immediate French
neighbours, inevitably occurring when the local farmers, turned hunters
for the day, march purposefully through their back yard, shotgun at the
high port, as French hunters do. Chasseurs have an absolute right to roam
the countryside armed to the teeth looking like Che Guevara’s remnant
army, usually doing more damage to themselves than the hapless beasts
of the field.
The RF’s sole social contact is with their offspring in the UK, conducted
via one of the new cheap telephone companies, or increasingly via
emails. Skype has also been a great economic boon to those technical
enough to have found it and patient enough to wait for a response from
the help line.
 The main body of the Expat society, made up of FF’s, only know of the
RF’s existence by vague rumour and the jungle telephone. Occasionally
they come to light when an RF falls down the stairs and is forced out into
the limelight of the real world as the Sapeurs-Pompiers8 come to cart
them off to hospital. To be fair in such circumstances the Expat society
usually rallies around to help, impelled by a mixture of compassion and
prying curiosity in equal measure.
I was once struck by a depiction of the medieval society of Britain and
France after the Norman Conquest. The narrator said that the English
aristocracy at that time had more intercourse and common bonds with the
French Aristocracy over the other side of the channel than they had with
their own subjects who lived one hundred yards away.
Rien ne change jamais

(c) John Hulbert 2001

8
Local Firemen. They operate the ambulance service in remote rural areas.