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Mélanie Vogel, representative for the French living abroad, quoting from the results of a global study among French non-residents, December 2024: The attachment to French citizenship is particularly strong […]: 82,6 % […] consider their nationality important. […] the basic foundations of [French] identity are French culture (86,5 %) and language (74 %). But […] only 30,3 % have a positive opinion on France as it is today.
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Visiting another country, you are a curiosity. Living in another country, you are an oddity. And the first question is always “Where are you from?“. It is just polite interest. Sometimes even genuine. To be able to pin you in some personal catalogue of stereotypes. There will be a second layer of amateur ethnographic research: if you answer Japanese or Chinese, are you hardworking? American or Dutch, brash. British, funny. Answer French, no further question. As if everyone knew. Often, the engaging smile would just freeze over.
The best you can expect after settling in that new community is that “you are not so French after all”. We French people have that in common with the Germans.
If you live abroad for a long time, either Africa, Singapore, England, or India, you are reminded daily about that. I mean, I even got cultural trainings to check if I could adapt – such is our reputation as cultural barnacles. It is not even that the stereotype is always negative. People proposed me 3 hours lunch breaks and always ask me to test the wine. Wrong. Both times.
Truth is, Frenchness – to both the French and non-French – is a performance. Say something clever, unnecessarily cryptic, get in a parable involving boats and seagulls, round this up shrugging your shoulders. Standing ovation. But it is not only positive stereotypes, far from that. Need a bit of familiar foreignness to spice up those Covid curfews? Stick Emily in a red bérêt, send her to Paris, and watch her getting confused by the natives. So delusional, so cute, so entertaining. Centuries old canned versions of French. As accurate as Gai Paris was already back then.
Being French abroad often feels like being stuck between a stereotype and a caricature.
True, sticking to the stereotypes can be an exhilarating defiance, whether in Lan Kwai Fong or Gurgaon. Look at me eating frog legs. But you do it mainly for the shtick. After all, some foreigners crave it. Why would they retire in France, if not to meet our Friendly Cast Members: the Baker, the men in Képis, Marcel smoking his drooping fag-end, complaining, and of course, René in his Café.
But how do the French define themselves? Truth be told, that is a confusing question. If you can get some self-styled true French person to argue themselves into an agreement, you will come across variations of “being French is being universal”. A lifestyle, joie de vivre and bon-vivant, values, ideas and literature. Right. Something that supposedly exists in rarefied dinner parties you will never be invited to as a foreigner, so don’t bother. Mostly a mythical, or at least aspirational France then.
Because, as French people, as much as foreigners, we all share the same basic thought: “France? Great country! Shame about the French though”Image may be NSFW.
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Simply put, to my grandmother, to my parents, to me, France is a flag, a national anthem and De Gaulle. That is the foundation of everything else. Because France is the glue holding together irreconcilable opposites always threatening to tear apart. France is always in danger of becoming too French: messy, loud, argumentative, pedantic, … My grandmother’s France was frozen at Joffre, Poincaré and Clémenceau, in 1919 – France as a mystique. But how French were we? We never truly came or even travelled back to a regional sausage, wine and accompanying cheese – the true French ID card. No Pays de Loire, Brittany or Picardie for us. Belgian Congo, French Cameroon, Italian Savoy Dijon and Western Paris. Savora as much as Maille mustard, gouda and gruyère, speculoos and galettes Saint-Michel.
France was an immanent reality. Being French more of a personal reconstruction.
And still, that would always be the first question we would be confronted with, in France or abroad. From the notes, that is why my grandparents sent back their daughters to France in 1955. For education, as much as for identity. Because for them, as much as for my entire family, like it or not, we were French. Undeniably. Irrevocably. Not out of some generational experience, birthplace, or inherited lands and names. But by choice.
Do I qualify?
Maybe I could just make a quip? Or write a 10 pages essay no-one would read? Just shrug and finish my coffee? That would be all very French, … but no.
So, give me a moment …
TO BE CONTINUED
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