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European Societies
ISSN: 1461-6696 (Print) 1469-8307 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reus20
THE CONTEXT AND TRAJECTORY OF LIFESTYLE MIGRATION
The case of the British residents of Southwest France Michaela Caroline Benson
To cite this article: Michaela Caroline Benson (2010) THE CONTEXT AND TRAJECTORY OF LIFESTYLE MIGRATION, European Societies, 12:1, 45-64, DOI: 10.1080/14616690802592605 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616690802592605
Published online: 20 Oct 2009.
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THE CONTEXT AND TRAJECTORY OF LIFESTYLE MIGRATION
The case of the British residents of Southwest France
Michaela Caroline Benson
The Sociological Review Fellow, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK
ABSTRACT:This article focuses on British migration to the Lot, a rural, inland department in the southwest of France. It first emphasizes the diversity among these lifestyle migrants by proposing a typology based on the position migrants occupy in the life course at the time of migration, identifying three different types of Britons living permanently in rural France: the family migrants, retirement migrants, and mid-life migrants. Each group of migrants hold in common their reasons for leaving Britain, the circumstances of their migration, and their position in the life course. The article then examines how the context of their lives before migration influences life in the Lot. In particular, it analyses the role of practical considerations in residential choice and degrees to which the migrants integrate into the local French population. By understanding the context of the migrants’ lives before migration, certain aspects of their lives in the Lot are illuminated, helping to fragment stereotypes of expatriate populations and challenge the dominance of retirement migration within related literature.
Key words:lifestyle migration; British migration; rural France; integration;
residential choice
1. Introduction
In the last twenty years, the Lot, a rural department in southwest France (see Figure 1), has become a popular destination, attracting an increasing number of British lifestyle migrants with its promise of a better way of life (cf. Buller and Hoggart 1994; Barou and Prado 1995;
–2010 Taylor & Francis ISSN 1461-6696 print 1469-8307 online
O’Reilly 2007b).1 As this article demonstrates, despite their shared desire for a better lifestyle than they had experienced in Britain, there are many subtle differences in the reasons that Britons living in the Lot give for migrating. These differences influence certain aspects of their lives following migration, such as their choices about where and how to live, and their efforts to become socially integrated into the local population. Although previous studies of the British living in rural France draw attention to diversity of this population (Buller and Hoggart 1994; Barou and Prado 1995), there has been no systematic investigation of how the migrants’ lives before migration impact on decisions that they make about their lives once living in rural France.
[C1]
The Lot borders the Dordogne, a department popular with British migrants and second-home owners (Buller and Hoggart 1994a; Barou and
Figure 1. Location of the Lot and Dordogne departments.
1. This does not mean that there were no British migrants in the Lot prior to twenty years ago; while there were other Britons who had arrived fifty to thirty years ago, their numbers were, in my opinion, too few to be considered as a group.
Prado 1995; Gervais-Aguer 2004, 2006). This has led some scholars to suggest that the Lot is an overflow region, providing cheaper houses and cost of living than the Dordogne, while offering similar landscapes and way of life (Buller and Hoggart 1994a). Thus far, the scale of British migration to the Lot has, if popular discourses are anything to go by, not reached that of the Dordogne. And it remains difficult to achieve an accurate estimate of the numbers of these migrants (cf. King and Patterson 1998; Casado-Dı´azet al.2004). They are a statistically invisible population as they no longer need to register their residence in France and the census data has been criticised as inaccurate, particularly when it comes to the estimations of the numbers of migrants living in France (Pan Ke´ Shon 2007).2The only comparative data that I can provide on the Lot and the Dordogne is that according to the 1999 census, 75.4% (4112) of the foreigners living in the Lot were from other European Union countries, while in the Dordogne 69.7% (8698) were intra-European migrants (INSEE n.d.). From my own experiences of living in the Lot, I would say that many of these European incomers are of British or Dutch origin, and that their numbers have most probably increased since the time that the census was carried out. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to provide a useful and accurate estimation of the number of Britons living in the Lot on a permanent basis.
The research on which this article is based was ethnographic and participant led; an examination into the daily lives of the British living in the Lot. It included the collection of 75 unstructured interviews, 47 life histories, participant observation of Britons of all ages living in the Lot, and long-term fieldwork carried out over 12 months in 2004/5.3Through this in depth examination, a nuanced picture of the various associations the migrants make between their lives before and after migration can emerge (cf. O’Reilly 2000; Oliver 2007). In this respect, the particular case study presented here contributes to the wider literature on lifestyle migration, intra-European migration, elite mobility, and more specifically to the growing body of literature on British migrants living in France.
Many scholars recognize the diverse motivations influencing the migration of many Britons to rural France (see, for example, Buller and Hoggart 1994a; Barou and Prado 1995; Gervais-Aguer 2004, 2006;
Depierre and Guitard 2006). Developing this point, I describe British lifestyle migrants living in the Lot in terms of three broad categories:
2. The traditional census was replaced with a rolling annual census in 2004, but the data produced by this is not yet available.
3. The British of the Lot were highly dispersed (cf. King and Patterson 1998). For this reason, I have chosen to withhold information about their exact locations since this would compromise their anonymity.
family migrants, retirement migrants, and mid-life migrants, arguing that the different reasons behind migration relate in particular to the migrants’
position in the lifecourse at the point of migration. Migrants in each group held similar stories about what life had been like in Britain stressing the impact of wider social, economic, and political contexts on their lives.
However, I argue that their position in the lifecourse at the time of migration also impacted on their lives following migration, influencing residential choice, but also the degree to which they had socially integrated into the local population. This article explores differences in residential choice to demonstrate that there are both practical and financial considerations behind property purchase. It also examines the migrants’
successes (or lack thereof) at social integration into the host community, to show that this is the result of a complex intersection of different factors, which include, but are not limited to, the desire and motivation of the migrants; opportunities to interact with the local community; acceptance by the local population; and finding common ground.
The categories presented here serve as a conceptual tool, identifying the similarities and differences in the migrants’ experiences of life before and after migration. The classifications outlined below are not intended as a judgement on the value of one position over and above the other. Instead, this article highlights that the lives led in Britain and the events that influenced migration, continue to impact on the migrants’ lives once living in the Lot.
2. ‘We wanted our children to have better lives’
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of the Britons migrating to the Lot came as families, with middle-aged parents and children of school age.4As they explained, the benefits they derived from migration included healthier and safer lives for their children, a better education, and ‘quality time’ to spend together as a family.
Back in Britain, the adults had often worked as teachers, civil servants, or had been self-employed, largely working in the business sector. In many cases, migration had coincided with redundancy as Britain entered the economic recession of the 1990s. Rather than move to an area where they would be able to find work, these migrants chose to favour ‘quality of life’, reflecting a more general preference for this aspect of life within migration (Findlay and Rogerson 1993). As they explained, selling their properties
4. This is not to say that there were no families migrating to the Lot after the 1990s. It is just that most of the family migrants interviewed had arrived in the late 1980s and 1990s.
back in Britain, cashing in savings, and with their redundancy packages, they were able to accumulate enough economic capital to become cash buyers on property in rural France. Due to the extensive rural depopulation of the Lot, with relatively little money, these migrants had been able to buy old houses with a large amount of land. These provided them both with a place to live, but also with the possibility of earning a small income through renting out a section of the house as a gıˆte (holiday home).5
These family migrants invariably explained that they had never visited this particular area of France prior to migration. They had visited and viewed houses in other parts of rural France, but had settled on a particular house in the Lot because it was affordable, had enough space for them to run a gıˆte or bed and breakfast, but also because it had good transportation links to the closest town, allowing their children to easily travel to school and to visit their friends.
One of the reasons we bought this house was that the village here had such good links to the town. We thought it would give the boys the freedom to go out and visit their friends at the weekends, as well as being able to travel to school everyday. (Connie, 58)6
Discussing the decision to migrate, parents explained that they had been dissatisfied with what life in Britain, even in the countryside where many of them had lived, offered their children. As Sian (45) told me, ‘we thought we’d come and find somewhere less polluted’, while others shared her further concern about allowing their children to play outside back in Britain. In contrast, in the Lot, family migrants allowed their children a greater degree of freedom than they had previously known, ‘the kids that they could go and do what they liked during the day as long as they’d done the house painting’ (Justine, 58). This idea that life in the countryside will be better for children has been noted in much of the literature on migration to rural areas (see, for example, Halfacree 1994; Mu¨ller 2002;
Schmied 2005). These family migrants also held the belief that life in the Lot would allow them to spend a greater amount of time together as a family now that the parents no longer worked full-time.
Over the course of the research, it became clear that the focus on the benefits of migration for their children concealed much of the migrants’
5. While tourism undoubtedly plays a role, both in informing migration to rural France (cf. Williams and Hall 2002; Kinget al. 2000) and providing an income for migrants, a discussion of the relationship between lifestyle migration and tourism is beyond the scope of this paper.
6. All names that appear in the text are pseudonyms.
greater discontent with life in Britain. In particular, they discussed the social and economic transformations brought about by the Conservative government in the 1980s and 1990s who had been in power when many of them left Britain. They drew particular attention to the changes in the working environment. As Harold (57), who had worked in the civil service, explained, he had just wanted to take home enough money to pay the bills, but with the transformations in the system, he was forced to work towards promotion, which upset his work-life balance. When the opportunity for redundancy came, he took it wholeheartedly. Those who worked as teachers similarly complained of the changes; it seemed that so much of their time was taken up working on administration, and not on teaching the children. Redundancy became one way to escape the grip of these unsatisfactory transformations. As their narratives emphasized, by taking control of their lives at this difficult time / where they would otherwise have faced unemployment and financial uncertainty / these migrants actively transformed their lives (Benson 2007; cf. Oliver 2007).
3. ‘There reaches a time when old horses should be put out to graze’
A large proportion of the British living in the Lot chose to migrate upon retirement.7This reflects a more general trend in International Retirement Migration (IRM) from Britain to southern European countries (see for example Kinget al.2000; Oliver 2007). Many of the retirees had visited the Lot previously on their holidays, and it was very much the case that their prior experiences had influenced their migration (cf. O’Reilly 2000; Warnes et al.2000; Casado-Dı´azet al.2004; Hall and Mu¨ller 2004; Oliver 2007). The majority of the retirees interviewed had arrived in the Lot between 1995 and the time of the research.
Back in Britain, many of the retirees had lived and worked in towns and cities, often running successful businesses, which they had sold to help fund their retirement lifestyles. Combined with the profits from the sale of their homes back in Britain, they purchased properties in the Lot and were left with enough money to live comfortably. In most cases, they had private pensions and investments in addition to state pensions. The loosening of financial constraints, particularly now that they were no longer fully reliant on an income from working, undoubtedly facilitates retirement migration to the Lot (cf. Warneset al.1998; Kinget al.2000; Oliver 2007).
Discussing the decision to migrate, retirees often explained that they associated the hustle and bustle of the city with work, and now that they had reached the end of their working lives, they had to step aside to make
7. This includes those who took early retirement.
room for a new generation. As Susan (70) explained, ‘There reaches a time when old horses should be put out to graze’. However, there were many other factors influencing their decision to migrate; particularly prominent in their narratives was the discussion of the lack of respect for the elderly in Britain. In contrast, their previous experiences, holidaying in rural France, led them to the somewhat romanticized belief that this was a society that had greater respect and value for their elderly (cf. O’Reilly 2000; Oliver 2007). Their sightings of elderly French people walking around the streets of their villages and the local town also gave them the impression that people in the Lot lived longer. Once again, this image caught their imaginations in contrast to the seeming invisibility of the elderly back in Britain.
It’s true. There’s more respect for the elderly built into the children’s culture and it’s not just because it’s a rural society; children are more respectful, and possibly because of the environment, the elderly are more active. . .in Britain the elderly are trapped in their homes, despite the amenities which might be just outside their front doors. (Alannah, 60)
As Oliver (2007) argues in the case of Northern European retirement migration to Spain, the lives retirement migrants choose to lead following migration are emblematic of their search for positive ageing, which is often characterized by the rejection of stereotypes associated with old age.
Retirees thus continue to contrast their lives in the Lot with their imaginings of life had they stayed in Britain. Their accounts of life following migration stressed the quality of the food, the wine, the relaxed pace of life, and the warm weather, a stark contrast to how they described Britain, as busy and overcrowded, with no space for relaxation.
For the retirees, leisure and positive ageing characterize their lives following migration. In this respect, the lives of these retirement migrants are qualitatively different to those led by other groups of British migrants living in the Lot who have to both live and work in the Lot in order to sustain their lives following migration.
4. ‘We wanted to escape the rat race’
In recent years, there have been increasing numbers of young, childless migrants actively taking the decision to leave their well-paid jobs in Britain, encouraged by the idea that there is more to life than sitting in an office all day long. As those interviewed explained, with their savings, and the profits from their homes back in Britain, they could afford not only to move to the Lot, but also to set up a business and become self-employed.
Mirroring the accounts of both family and retired migrants, these mid-life migrants listed the decline of British society and the detrimental impacts of stress and pollution on their health as reasons for leaving Britain in search of a better, more relaxed, and healthier lifestyle. However, there was a further aspect of their decision to migrate, distinct from that of other migrants: their desire to be their own boss. Jon and Kim (both 40), for example, explained that they would not have been able to afford to run their own business back in Britain because of the high cost of overheads. In the Lot, however, because they had been able to buy their house outright, they needed relatively little to live on from day to day, meaning that they could invest much more money and time into the development of their business. This resonates with Drake and Collard’s (2008) findings concerning a group of Britons who moved to Normandy between 1989 and 1991. As they argue, ‘low property and land prices made it possible to envisage setting up the sort of enterprise that was prohibitively expensive in Britain’ (Drake and Collard 2008: 218).
The enterprises that these mid-life migrants developed were consider- ably more diverse than those of the family migrants, and saw them moving away from the standard holiday home market, which, as many of them explained to me, was over-saturated and therefore unsustainable. One couple ran a vineyard, another couple ran a greetings card company, several migrants had internet businesses and some offered computer support. In all cases, these enterprises were open to British and French clients (cf. Drake and Collard 2008) and in all cases, they were above board; the migrants took pride in explaining they were registered with French social security and the tax offices.
Although they worked hard, these migrants often described their lives in the Lot as preferable to life in Britain. As Martin (44), who ran a chambre d’hoˆte(bed and breakfast) explained, ‘People often tell us that they don’t envy the early mornings and late nights we have to work; but we enjoy it, and it is nothing like the hours we were working back in London!’
While they had anticipated that they would have more time on their hands following migration, they found that they remained incredibly busy. As Jon (40) explained, ‘ . . . that was part of the reason for coming here, to have more free time. . .but we’ve found that it is not as important as it was in England, where it was de-stressing’. This quotation aptly summarized what many mid-life migrants explained; although they worked hard, they did not feel the stress and the need for release as much as they had when they had worked back in Britain.
Describing their lives before migration, these mid-life migrants stressed how much work had eaten into their lives, and how they had grown tired of this. Searching for a way of gaining more control over the work/life balance, they decided to take matters into their own hands, and move to a
part of the world where the way of life was more relaxed and where they could have greater control over their working lives.
5. Residential choice: practical and financial constraints
The residential choice of the British living in rural France needs to be understood within the context of what was happening to the French housing market at the time of their migration. Other considerations, such as the availability of low-cost travel, may also have had an influence on their migration, but as these flights only became available during my fieldwork, it is unlikely that they were a factor within the initial decision to migrate of my respondents. In the late 1980s and 1990s, old houses in the Lot in need of serious renovation and modernization were in abundance, a reminder of the impact of rural depopulation (Ardagh 2000). Estate agents selling these properties, as in many other parts of rural France, specifically targeted the prospective British population, learning how to market the properties to attract British purchasers (cf. Buller and Hoggart 1992, 1993, 1994a,b; Hoggart and Buller 1994; Barou and Prado 1995). By the late 1990s, there were fewer of these old properties available, and many migrants moving in the early 2000s had little choice when it came to old French houses. Although the younger migrants continued to seek old ruins in need of extensive renovation, many of the retirees chose instead to buy new properties in the area. And given the rising cost of property, migrants arriving from the mid-1990s onwards needed to be in a stronger financial position than earlier migrants.
For both family migrants and retirees, residential choice was in part influenced by concerns about proximity to particular amenities (cf. Buller and Hoggart 1994b). The family migrants chose properties which were close to good public transport routes, while the retirees often chose to live near well-serviced small towns and villages, explaining that this meant they would not have to travel far in order to get their shopping, visit the dentist and doctor, and even have some entertainment. The retirees explained their decision to live in new houses in terms of their position in the life course. These were mostly bungalows, and being on one level meant that they were easier to move around, a concern of many of these ageing migrants. There was a further bonus to having a new house as these came with a guarantee for five years, and the retirees therefore did not have to worry about any hefty maintenance work as the contractors had a responsibility to carry this out. In contrast, several of the mid-life migrants had often chosen to live more remotely, often in small hamlets with no local amenities. And it was common for them to have to travel some distance to even stock up their cupboards. They explained that they
had chosen these properties because of the space available to them. As Jon and Kay (both 40) explained, they had chosen their house because, ‘it seemed to have much more space and buildings to do things with than many properties that we’d looked around’.
For many of the migrants, particularly those with young families, the need to generate income also influenced residential choice. Therefore, they had often purchased properties that were big enough to operate aschambre d’hoˆteor could be partitioned into a main house and a gıˆte, which allowed them to be self-employed. Many of the migrants, however, stressed that it was increasingly difficult to fill their gıˆte, and some had to look for casual labour, such as gardening or teaching English, in order to supplement their income.
Financial constraints not only dictated the need to generate income once living in the Lot, they also influenced how much renovation work migrants would (financially) be able to carry out, and how much of this they would try to do themselves. Apart from a few of the younger migrants who had arrived in the last few years who had worked within the building industry back in Britain, and one retired architect, most of the respondents had little or no prior experience of house renovation, working as they had in the public and professional sectors. With this in mind, it was surprising how prepared people were to take on extensive and arduous building projects requiring skills that they did not possess, with their families as the primary labour force. As they explained, this was to save on the cost of renovation. For example, one family had to replace a lintel in the ceiling of their sitting room, while others constructed partition walls, and carried out electrical and plumbing work. Retirees most frequently employed external labour for the building work and maintenance of their properties, while the mid-life migrants would carry out the work on their houses that they knew they were capable of, employing professionals for more skilled jobs.
The rate of renovation was heavily dependent on financial constraints in terms of income and outgoings. While they still had children to support, for example, the family migrants struggled to achieve all their plans for the renovation of their homes. When it came to the renovation of their rental properties, however, most migrants kept to a strict time limit, knowing that, as their primary source of income, these businesses would need to be completed quickly. For example, Martin (44) and Sarah (42), who ran a chambre d’hoˆte, explained that they had budgeted carefully to allow themselves eighteen months to convert their old French farmhouse/which needed extensive excavation work as well as the replacement of all the beams in the ceiling/to a state where they could receive their first guests.
The migrants’ residential choices demonstrate that they had put thought and consideration into their decision about where they want to
live and what type of property they wanted to buy, a stark contrast to the stereotypes which suggest that lifestyle migration is an ill-considered and often irrational action. This is influenced by income/both their financial position at the point of migration and their financial requirements following migration / but also, in some cases, their concerns about their position in the life course.
6. Social networks and integration
Despite freedom of movement within Europe, we should remain concerned with how intra-European migrants adapt to their lives in other European countries. Favell (2008) argues that intra-European migrants present a challenge to discourses surrounding integration, with the decision to remain aloof from the receiving society an active choice reflecting migrants’ desires for a particular lifestyle, and the temporary nature of residence. Intra-European migration should therefore be understood as part of a trajectory, rather than a uni-directional or permanent move (Eades et al. 2006; O’Reilly 2007a; Favell 2008).
Certainly, the idea of migration as a trajectory has some resonance with the case presented here, with migration as one act through which the migrants transform their lifestyles. As the examples below demonstrate, this may include some efforts towards integration, at least linguistically and socially.8
Broadly speaking, the different categories of migrants previously outlined in this article may be further mapped in terms of the social networks they are part of and the degree to which they are integrated into the local population. Integration here refers to the degree of interaction between the local French and the incoming British population, with a particular focus on their acceptance of one another. In this rendering, the mid-life migrants were the most integrated, socializing frequently with their French neighbours, while the retirees complained that they were not integrated despite their efforts in this direction. As I discuss below, the narratives of the family migrants demonstrated a shift over time in their relationships to the local population.
Smallwood (2007) has produced a similar typology of Britons living in the Aquitaine region of France, highlighting three categories on the grounds of their integration with the local population but also their inclination towards integration. These are ‘well-integrated subjects. . . who regularly interact professionally and socially with French natives. . .
8. There are, of course, other measures of integration, such as the degree to which the migrants use French social services, that I consider elsewhere (Benson 2007).
non-integrated subjects who do not seek integration . . .non-integrated subjects who are seeking integration’ (2007: 119). This is a useful study contradicting the general stereotypes of the British living in France as not speaking French or trying to socially integrate. It also stresses that there is a relationship between how much individuals want to integrate, their language abilities, how ‘welcoming’ the local community is, and their success at integration (cf. O’Reilly 2000; Drake and Collard 2008).
Nevertheless, the study is broad, covering lifestyle migrants alongside those who live and work in urban centres such as Bordeaux, and whose livelihood is contingent on their linguistic abilities.
In the case of the British living in the Lot, the question of integration is similarly complex. Language ability alone is not enough to guarantee integration. For example, Hannah (78), who spoke fluent French, had, after 12 years, given up trying to integrate into village life; her neighbours, as she explained, did not seem interested beyond exchanging niceties in the local shop. Alannah (60), who spoke reasonably good French, explained, ‘I have this real regret that I haven’t got French friends out here’. Both of these women explained that they had initially imagined having many French friends. It seems that the integration of the British living in the Lot relies on the conjunction of several factors: the degree to which people want to integrate; acceptance by the local population; scope for interaction; linguistic ability; and shared interests.
Close examinations reveals that those who were most successful integrated had found a common interest with members of the local population. Many of the mid-life migrants, for example, had distanced themselves from members of the ‘English circle’ and had made a concerted effort to get involved in some way, joining local sports clubs, art classes, and local community associations. Their accounts of life in the Lot therefore included descriptions of their activities with their French friends and their practical and valued involvement with the local community. While they often explained that they had experienced initial local resistance to their involvement on the grounds that people believed that they would ‘anglicize’ these, with time, their French acquaintances came to trust and accept them, telling them, as Keith and Sarah (both 42) recalled, ‘you are not like the other English people we know. Are you sure you’re not French?’ In this way, the local French demonstrated their appreciation of the efforts that certain Britons made to be a part of the local community. Once again, the accounts of the mid-life migrants mirrored those of Drake and Collard’s respondents in Normandy, who were, ‘determined to integrate socially, and adopted different strategies to this end’ (2008: 222).
In some cases, people were even able to overcome the language barrier if they were enthusiastic enough about their pastime. For example, Brian and
Sally Waites (both 68), a retired couple, were motor sports enthusiasts and had joined the local classic car club. Neither of them spoke much French, although they were taking lessons. Within a couple of years of living in France, they stressed that they had a wide circle of mostly French friends who they had met through the club and who they saw on a regular basis.
Their story was unusual among the retirees, whose French acquaintances were most often outnumbered by their British friends living in the area.
However, what it does show is that language does not have to be a barrier to integration. The migrants who were most successfully integrated did not always speak fluent French, but their interaction with members of the local community gave them motivation to continue learning and gave them opportunities to practice. Although many of the mid-life migrants, who were the most socially integrated, now spoke a good level of French, this had developed since migration through their perseverance. I argue that this is what accounts for their greater acceptance into the local community: they were prepared to try and they made efforts to become involved with the local population regardless of their lack of abilities.
Although it is clear that in some cases language does not have to operate as a barrier to integration, many of the retirees explained that they could not communicate with the local population because of the language (cf.
Kinget al. 1998; O’Reilly 2000). Most of the retirees had tried to learn French, but had underestimated how difficult this would be (cf. Huber and O’Reilly 2004). Observation revealed that they did not join local clubs and associations as the younger migrants had done. It could therefore be argued that, while they stressed that they would have liked to have a greater number of French friends, they were not as motivated as some of the other migrants.
The retirees’ encounters with the local population were further limited because they no longer worked (cf. Buller and Hoggart 1994; Huber and O’Reilly 2004; Oliver 2007). Furthermore, many of them lived in areas with a high density of other Britons, making it easier for them to meet their compatriots. This was also made possible by their membership of particular clubs, such as theAssociation France Grande-Bretagne(AFGB), or their participation in French language classes, which were almost exclusively attended by British migrants to the area.9 The retirement migrants thus regularly socialized with other Britons, visiting one another’s houses for dinner parties or coffee, or eating out in restaurants together. They explained that the comfort and familiarity of meeting with their compatriots was a stark contrast to the difficulty of trying to interact with the local French. This mirrors Scott’s argument in the case of the
9. The AFGB was a bi-lingual cultural exchange association, which nevertheless had 75% British membership.
British living in Paris, ‘British sociability was appealing. . .a form of comfort and identity resonance that the Francophile equivalents simply could not provide’ (2004: 403).
Many of the family migrants were also increasingly socializing with their compatriots. Although they often had a good level of conversational French, they made it clear that the effort involved in speaking French for any length of time was exhausting. While they had hoped that, over time, they would become increasing competent, many of them were disap- pointed in their lack of progress. As Robert (62) explained, ‘I haven’t made as much progress as I expected in fifteen years’. While their children had been at local schools, these adults had some contact with the local French, but these acquaintances rarely seemed to develop into sustainable friendships. Once their children left home (as many of them had by the time of the research), the adults explained that they had lost contact with many of the French people that they had known. This demonstrates that integration may change over time / it is not always the case that people become more integrated /and in response to particular situations.
As with the retirement migrants, family migrants rarely participated in local community events and organizations. In some cases, they had tried to get involved, but this had not been as successful as it was for other migrants. As Harry (69) explained, he and his wife had joined the local rambling club; on the one and only walk they had attended, the four or five people there had just shared village gossip, and this was not what he wanted. On the one hand, it could be argued that a lack of inclination on the part of the migrants hampers their interaction with the local population. On the other hand, however, it must also be taken into account that the villages in the Lot do not offer equal support to their residents in the way of clubs and associations; there has to be an overall inclination of certain residents for these organizations to take off and be successful meeting grounds for local residents, British or French.
In terms of their interaction with other Britons, the family migrants often explained that in the last few years they had had more opportunities to meet their compatriots. Since they first migrated to the Lot, there had been increased opportunities to meet their compatriots as the British population. With many of the family migrants now approaching retire- ment age, their lives increasingly resembled those of the British retirees living in the area.
As the discussion in this section shows, there are evident differences in the degrees to which Britons living in the Lot integrate. Scott, in an insightful article about skilled British migrants living in Paris, argues,
. . .as time away from the UK grew, so behaviour and identity seemed to
evolve. Migrants became more integrated, some within their homeland
community and others within the social networks of their host country. (2004:
399)
To a certain degree, this statement could be applied to the case of the British living in the Lot; as they increasingly associated with the local population, they distance themselves from their compatriots who do not.
While Scott’s (2004) focus was on the idea of becoming French, what the examples presented in this article demonstrate is that the migrants who want to integrate are more concerned with becoming an intrinsic part of the local community, of finding some common ground with their neighbours. As Barry (48) explained, ‘we are not migrants, we’re not British, we’re Sauliac¸oise’, the final identifier referring to his position as a resident of a particular village.
Language, in the cases cited of successful integration, is not the primary factor in gaining acceptance by the local population; it relies more on inclination and effort. Interaction in turn provides opportunities for the migrants to improve their French. However, the migrants who explained that they were not well integrated with the local population emphasized that this was because they could not speak French well enough. While they take the blame, it must be added that their lack of effort with the language is symbolic of their lack of effort more generally. Unlike some of their compatriots, these migrants do not go out of their way to find common ground with members of their host community; as Julian (64) explained,
‘We’re the new people, they should be helping us to join the community’.
7. Conclusion
In this article, I have described the Britons living permanently in the Lot in terms of their position in the life course and their family circumstances at the time of migration. Such an approach gives us some insight into the diverse motivations and the search for meaning behind the pursuit of a different and better way of life, building on the findings of previous research which state that lifestyle migration is often the search for a different way of life (Buller and Hoggart 1994; Barou and Prado 1995;
O’Reilly 2007b). More specifically, for those moving to the Lot with their young families, the decision to migrate and choice of location was influenced by their desire for a better, healthier life where their children could have more freedom. Their need to generate some income following migration also dictated the size and type of house that they chose. The retirement migrants similarly had concerns linked to their position in the life course. In particular, their accounts of the decision to migrate drew attention to the favourable treatment given to the elderly French
population in comparison to their perceptions of how elderly people were treated back in Britain. When it came to their choice of where to live, they demonstrated foresight, anticipating a future where they may not be as mobile as they were in the present. The final group of migrants presented here are the mid-life migrants, young, childless, ex-professionals who chose to leave their jobs in Britain to move to France where they had set up their own businesses. Their residential choice was therefore heavily influenced by their occupational ambitions. It is evident therefore that, despite suggestions that British people living in France move on a whim and with little consideration, when it comes to their choice of property, they take into account some very real practical and financial considera- tions. Why some migrants then choose to emphasize the spontaneity of this action, thus deserves further examination.
The article also builds on the previous literature about the integration of Britons living in France (Buller and Hoggart 1994; Barou and Prado 1995; Scott 2004; Smallwood 2007; Drake and Collard 2008). To a certain extent, the degree to which the migrants integrate into the local community is linked to their position in the life course and family circumstances at the time of migration. The mid-life migrants were generally on their way to being well integrated, frequently interacting with the local French socially and helping in the community. Retirement migrants were often not so successful, easily dissuaded by their inability to communicate in French. The family migrants, whose children had attended French schools, had had more opportunities to meet members of the local community than their retired compatriots. Nevertheless, it seemed that any acquaintances that they had made in the early days had been lost once their children had left home. Despite these attempts to link levels of integration with position in the life course, this pattern was by no means fixed. The examples presented in this article demonstrate that linguistic ability, while often a feature, was not as central to achieving some level of integration as might be imagined. As other studies have revealed, integration of the British population in France relies on a number of different factors (Scott 2004; Smallwood 2007; Drake and Collard 2008).
In the case of those living in the Lot, successful integration seemed more to do with the motivation of the migrants, acceptance by the local community, and the active pursuit of shared interests. This calls for a new way of conceptualizing integration, particularly as it relates to British lifestyle migrants, to take account of this symbiotic relationship between the host community and individual migrants.
In conclusion, this article has shown that the migrants’ prior expectations of life in France and the contexts of their lives back in Britain play an important role in the trajectories of their lives following migration. The migrants’ explanations of the decision to migrate reveal
that a ‘different way of life’ comprises different things depending on the migrants’ position in the life course, their family situation, and the events leading to their migration. Residential choice may be similarly influenced.
Successful integration into the local population, however, is more difficult to explain, relying in part on factors beyond the migrants’ control; while learning French and taking part in local activities help, there has to be willingness on the part of the local community to accept these incomers.
While some of the migrants easily fulfil their dreams of a different and better way of life, others, because of their high expectations for their lives following migration, have to expend considerably more time and effort if they are to achieve their goals. The search for a different way of life can therefore persist until long after migration, becoming a feature of their daily lives.
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Michaela Caroline Bensonis the current Sociological Review Fellow and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Sociology, University of Bristol. She is preparing a monograph based on her research among the British of the Lot, alongside several journal articles. In addition, she is co-editing an edited collection on Lifestyle Migration.
Address for correspondence: Michaela Caroline Benson, The Sociological Review, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK.
E-mail: M.Benson@bristol.ac.uk
