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.

Yes because of the freedom of movement

The problem is that you aren’t comparing two comparable groups of people. You are comparing a sample of people working with you in their home country with another sample who are all living outside of their home country. If you were working in an English curriculum school in Dubai or Malaysia your British colleagues there would give very different answers. A higher proportion of British people live abroad than French, for example.

@Booneymil I also think it's cultural & easier logistically.

When you were working in those foreign countries how many of the natives you worked with had worked in another country? Probably about the same percentage of the people you work with now, probably most of them never worked abroad and had no urge to. Some people have a wanderlust and some move for economic or employment reasons, but most are happy in their own familiar surroundings and are satisfied with seeing other places in short holiday visits.

I've travelled abroad (all over the world) for work, staying days, weeks or months at a time in different countries, but felt no urge to move to any of those places, I suppose that makes me very boring.

I think a lot of young people move when there are not many varied job prospects where they grow up.
Living in London, it’s not such an issue.

Brexit has played a part too.

Its not as easy to move around these days.

Its just interesting to see

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

I can’t speak for Italy, but there is no shortage of English/British people living in Spain, Thailand and Singapore.

You must know that if you have worked there.

My experience is quite different. I worked for an large international organisation for over 20 years. I was based in the London HQ and in my previous jobs was unusual in that I had travelled to weird countries (at that time) and lived abroad until I was 18.
Not so in the international company. People I met working there there had commonly lived abroad in many countries for two to three years at a time, then immediately being sent off to a new country with just a short spell in London between the two.
They did have to have very good language skills, the requirement for English natives was a good knowledge of two additional languages, non-English native speakers had to have good English, their own language, plus a further language. Eg if you were French you had to have good English plus, eg, Italian.

My French is good so I fully expected to be sent there but no, it was South Africa.

There are a lot of older retired English people there.

It is harder for young English people to move to spain and italy, because they are having big problems getting work visas for there. A lot of them told me that when I was in Spain

Thanks for that! It sounds interesting

I’ve lived and worked abroad as have most of the people I know and work with but that’s the field I work in. And as @Branster has said we all came back 🙂

Well, I did. And now I speak 3 languages. I would love to again, once the DC are independent, but........Brexit 😪

If you don’t work for a big employer in a sizeable city, it’s very common to work with people who have never moved away from their small town or village!

I do think there is cultural influence from the UK government of "the UK is the best country in the world - you should not live anywhere else".

It was the same when i was talking to some people from the USA. One women from the USA told me that since she was a child, she was taught that the USA was the best country in the world , and that everywhere outside of the USA was a dump. She said that they were heavily indoctrinated with propganda from a young age.

She said that USA citizens were taught to be scared of the outside world and thats why a lot of them never leave The USA.

She said that it was only when she was much older, that she started to question the propoganda, and she moved to live in another country.

Not from the government I'd say, but definitely some sections of the media. It suits them to pander to an audience that still thinks it's 1945 🙄.

I do think there is cultural influence from the UK government of "the UK is the best country in the world - you should not live anywhere else".

I don’t know where you have picked that up from. Reading pre-war newspapers?

Bit of a generalisation. I’m English and live abroad and it’s my third country. Saying that, my family never have and have all stayed in the same 5 mile radius that they grew up in (which I find odd), but each to their own.

I've picked it up from talking to people in Engand.

It was our plan. Then BREXIT happened and unless you have lots of money to get a golden visa it’s virtually impossible. I don’t get irate or emotional about anything political but Brexit really makes me angry. It also makes me sad as it’s removed opportunities for my two DS also.

You are in the UK, so you're mixing with the Brits who've stayed there. I've lived in multiple places abroad (I now live in Europe) and believe me, there are LOADS of Brits who've done the same thing.

There's still loads of Brits in France, Spain, and increasingly working in Portugal. Plus those ones in your office are actually "abroad" 😆

What do you mean "those ones in your office are actually abroad"

My mistake! I thought that you were in Ireland still.

Anyway, be definition the Brits you meet in England aren't abroad. Plenty of us are.

https://www.iexpats.com/where-do-british-expats-live/

5.5 million British people live abroad. Maybe they are all Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish, not English?