Why don't a lot of English people live abroad?

[Booneymil]

Hi! I was just thinking about something. I am Irish originally. I have lived and worked in around seven different countries at my age. I am 40. I love moving around and living in different places. I have been working in england now for two years.

At my large workplace, there are a lot of English people and a lot foreign people working there. So we have people from Spain, Poland, Italy, Australia, and Lithuania working there. Every one of the foreign people there have lived all over the world. I was chatting to the lithuanian woman, she has lived in Indonesia, in Sweden, Switzerland and in Italy.

I was chatting to the Spanish woman - she has lived in Italy, Spain, Germany and Norway. She told me she was from a wealthy family in spain so she had no need to move, she just had a desire to see the rest of the world. I was the same, I always wanted to see more of the world.

The English people in my workplace, there are about thirty of them.

Not one of them has ever lived abroad. A lot of them are old enough that they could have moved around the EU before Brexit happened. But they didnt.

I was thinking about it. Why? Why is it so different in England.

Because we love to moan about the weather while queuing and England is amazing

I think its mainly a language thing.

A lot of English people only speak English so would only get jobs where that was the main language.

That said my DH worked abroad and I do have many friends that have so its not that rare.

Plus I guess you arent seeing all the spansh, Polish, Italians etc who stayed home.

For me it's mostly that I'm not very confident with languages.

Language acquisition is a big barrier - other countries have far more exposure to English which makes learning it, plus other languages, easier. We don’t.

Well perhaps it is because all the English people who do live abroad are actually somewhere else (living and working abroad presumably), and not working with you.

I know English people who have worked in Norway, Germany, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Namibia, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Bermuda, France, Japan, Australia, Greece, and no doubt others I've forgotten. I was once offered the opportunity to work overseas, but I had several pets at the time which couldn't go with me, and I couldn't bear to rehome them.

I've never wanted to. I find the idea of moving to work in a different country odd really, but everyone's different. Mum moved first to south Africa then Canada when she was young and would have loved for me to want to go, but I see nothing wrong in just staying in this country.

Never had the qualifications or confidence to.

I only speak English and I have worked in Spain, Italy, Thailand and Singapore.

There are a lot of English speaking jobs out there.

Im not saying its wrong or right really. I just noticed that many people in England seem more scared to leave their country?

Well Brexit hasn't helped. The housing market doesn't either. My understanding is a lot of EU countries in particular work more around renting, whereas if you are in the UK then there is huge pressure to get on the housing ladder. It's hard to keep a house in the UK and rent abroad.

I work with a lot of international colleagues. About 2/40 of my department at work are UK. I'd say a key difference is attitudes around continuity for children. I am unwilling to take my DC out of school and move them even around the UK more than is necessary. Whereas my international colleagues think it's perfectly normal for DC to just roll with it OR they leave a spouse in the home country, spent 5 months here and return for a month. I couldn't leave my DC for 10 months of the year.

I don't think there is so much of a culture of moving abroad for work in England, plus the languaue issue may put some people off

Yes but its not just my workplace. I have attended a lot of groups in my city in England. Choirs, hiking groups, writing groups, badminton teams.

No on there has ever lived abroad either.

It's interesting!

I think it depends where you are. I've been in a company where a lot of people has lived abroad and a lot of others were from overseas. Then I went to a company where one woman hadn't travelled further than the soithcoast conurbation the office was in. Current role, a few have lived abroad, but not many. I think it depends on the field of work and type of company. But I also think some countries have more of a culture of people leaving for work.

Personally I couldn’t leave family and do love good old England and we have our dear NHS (just about)

Ok! So it's a cultural thing!

It is good in one way - in that people make deep lifelong bonds that way. If you stay in one country for lif3

It is bad in another way, in that they don't see a lot of the world

A lot of people come to the UK for work in order to have the opportunity to earn a higher salary. Although the COL has made less economically beneficial.

Anyway both DH and I have worked abroad, as have many of my close friends.

There are lots of english speaking jobs out there. But my experience is that english people are doing those jobs. My DH and friends for instance. There sre English ex pats everywhere.

I just dont see many english people learning another language and doing a more 'local' job whereas I agree I see people of other nationalities doing this type of work.

I'm British and have lived abroad in several countries. I agree with you. I think that British people are inward looking generally, think that Britain is the best place in the world etc. most CBA to learn different languages . Whereas many Europeans pick up languages more easily as there are so many similarities, Spanish, Italian etc

My salary is actually lower in the U.K. then it has been in other countries.

But I came because I wanted the experience of seeing a new country (for me) for a while

Can't speak for all of the English obviously but I want to live where my family is.
Which is England.
I have a cousin who emigrated to Australia. One of his parents is sick and if it all goes down hill quickly there's a likelihood that he won't get here in time and won't ever see that parent again.

I'd love to live abroad but..Brexit.

When I was younger it didn't cross my mind though. My ambitions were here, rooted in the UK. And then my job was here, although I travelled a lot for work. My friends were here, the things I enjoyed doing were here.

I'm old now and woukd love to move to Greece or France. I compromised and moved to Cornwall instead which might as well be abroad apart from the weather!

Language , NHS. Not perfect but we have a free health system here.

Where would most English people move to ? Excluding the EU, it’s not easy to movie to other English speaking countries, Australia or the USA.

This is not a fair “test” as the non-English group you have written about are a self-selecting group of people willing to live abroad, so it is unsurprising that they have done that in more than one country.

I’m plain vanilla English but have lived in two EU countries (pre-Brexit) and agreed to work secondments to the US and Singapore (those didn’t happen for reasons beyond my control). When I worked in law firms, overseas secondments were hotly fought over.

But I do think a lot of young people from non-anglophone countries are encouraged to study or work somewhere English speaking for a couple of years as having a good level of English will open up a lot of career opportunities. Young Brits don’t have that motivation.

I do think language is an issue and also not wanting to relocate with children when they are at a critical stage in their education. ds was born overseas and attended local school, but I probably wouldn’t have moved him at age 14 to a country where we did not speak the language.
We lived overseas for 25 years and speaking the language does make life considerably easier.

Okay so this is just one workplace in the UK, OP. I’m based in London and most of my British colleagues have spent periods of time abroad mainly in the US for work or parts of western Europe (I’ve lived in both) so in my experience British people DO spend time living abroad.

IMHO Brits who’ve lived anywhere else in the world whether for a year or a couple of decades make for more interesting work colleagues and friends. The minority who haven’t have a more parochial outlook despite working in an international environment in the City.

I agree OP. I have a lot of Irish relations and the vast majority have lived and worked abroad. My English cousins - not so much.