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.

But you’re not comparing like with like: the people you met from other countries working in UK are a self selected group who’ve chosen to travel for work. The people in the UK from the UK are the ones who chose to stay. If you moved to Italy, it’s much more likely that most Italians you meet at work and in leisure groups like choir have only lived in Italy but the brits and other nationalities will be much more likely to have traveled to more than just Italy to work.

I disagree. I lived in Italy for a year. Everyone that i met and worked there had lived abroad.

My italian boss had lived in japan. My italisn colleagues - one had lived in ireland for a year. One had lived in germany for a while. One had lived in belgium

What sectors did you work in OP?

If they are English surely Scotland or Wales is the 'nearest country' to them, not one that is separated by an entire sea?

Actually, if they live in the south, France, Belgium or even the Netherlands are closer than Ireland.

Seems like you could do with chatting more and learning a bit from your English colleagues if your geography is so bad?

Everywhere I've worked abroad there have been plenty of English. It's normal that the majority of natives have never lived abroad

It is your geography that is bad.

The United Kingdom is a country.

If that's the case then why in every post have you specified ENGLISH people and ENGLAND? You can either talk about one or the other, not mix them interchangeably.

France is the closest country to England.

I find it hilarious that you are accusing English people of being insular and ignorant of other countries, while at the same time you're
a) Irish but only speak English!
b) Think it's fine to insult Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Irish people (many of whom, unlike you, can speak their own native language!) by saying that to you the terms 'uk' and 'english' are indistinguishable.

I’m sure OP will answer you herself but…

Firstly, I don’t think OP said the UK and England are interchangeable. As I mentioned upthread it would be very unusual for an Irish person to make that mistake. She said the UK was a country, which of course it is. As is England. Importantly, there is more than one definition of ‘country’.

Secondly, if OP went to school in Ireland then she probably learnt Irish. It’s a compulsory subject for the entire schooling period (unless a student has an exemption for dyslexia, or moved to Ireland over a certain age etc).
That doesn’t mean she speaks it well. Most Irish people don’t. It’s not nice to mock a people for (substantially) losing their native language because they were colonised. The loss was immense.

What are you even on about.

Of COURSE people can talk about the United Kingdom AND about England.

Posters come on here and talk about things that are specifically happening to them in SCOTLAND for example.

Also I don't only speak English.

When I wrote to a poster "I only speak English".

I meant that English is the only langauge that I speak FLUENTLY. I am quite good at some other languages, and I constantly learn and improve on my languages every year.

I learned the Irish language for 14 years at school.
I learned French for three years at school.
I Iearned German for six years at school and I sat a leaving certificate exam in German

I also taught myself a good bit of basic Spanish when I lived in Spain

Well, if you consider the nationalities of the people working where you work. Certainly until recently Eastern Europeans have moved to Western Europe in large numbers to earn more money and have a better lifestyle. I'm told that it's very difficult for young people in Italy to get jobs, so there's high emigration. I think there's a similar issue in Spain. Young people from Australia like to spend some time in Europe because they feel very cut off in Australia and want to see the world, so there's a tradition of doing that. They go to the UK because they speak the language. There's also a kind of reciprocal arrangement I think which enables them to get a work visa.
I don't think you'll have made your point until you can point to significant numbers of people from countries like Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. Why aren't they moving abroad to work? It's all about money and the availability of work.