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.

I also find it difficult to believe that you didn’t meet British people working abroad when you worked in Singapore. There are tonnes of us. Unless you didn’t get out much and had an insular job.

There's a lot of work here (which there's isn't in Spain no matter how wealthy you are)

And a flexible career structure (which is what attracts French people)

And English people aren't great linguists (and schools getting worse and worse about this)

Plus a cultural habit of getting on the housing ladder young (or trying to) ties people down

Saying all this quite a lot of English people do end up around the English Speaking world in particular

English people are generally terrible moaners about the UK, so I'm not sure about that!

Is there a lot of work here?

Just because in the groups that i go to here, the recent graduates are all telling me that it is very difficult for them to find any work.

Graduates in what though?
There's a generation that's been going to university because they felt they "had" too and did a degree with no specific job goal.
They finish university, graduate and....then what?
Graduate jobs might be low - but there's plenty of jobs that don't need a university degree for.

The statistics disprove your opinion.

And this goady “look at how global and open minded I am, compared to the English” is making you look uninformed and bigoted.

I do agree that proportionally, fewer English people may choose to live abroad - for many of the reasons listed here such as language, culture etc.

But I think your view is a little skewed by personal experience and it's not quite what you think. For a start, I think that England has a disporportionately high number of people who want to come here from other countries, for a short or longer time. Call it branding perhaps - of th elanguage, the culture, the work (particularly in London)? I think English is the most common second language in the world, for example (America, obviously, playing part of the role in that but colonialism etc is hugely important).

And similarly, it's often easier and perceived to be better for English people to stay living here where they believe they can enjoy a better quality of life (that might wel be changing frankly), they don't have the language barriers etc.

One thing I've learned as a non English person living in the UK is that while I have many English friends, the ones I am closest to almost always are ones that have either travelled extensively/lived abroad or who are not entirely English - which I assume is a like attracting like mindset (and yes, I have other friends who are not English who I have met here, for similar reasons). So my experience would say that lots of English people are actually quite well travelled etc, but that's probably not really accurate either.

Family
Friends
Owning own property, making a profit and moving on
Good schools
NHS
Like the different climates (would hate to live somewhere with extreme weather conditions)

Yes but everyone has family and friends in the country they were born in, and yet many people still move

I live in Sydney and can tell you there are many, many English here. I’ve also lived in Singapore and they are also prevalent there! In Europe, Brexit or not, I think language would have always been a factor.

Yeah there is in London and the South East

Graduates are finding it hard to find work globally, because of recession and a change in working patterns, so UK graduates are certainly finding it tough at the moment, but it's nothing like the brain drain Ireland (for example) is experiencing.

London is a massive global city and finance centre so (despite said recession and the appalling fallout from brexit) it pulls people from across the world and across the country, so there's just less motivation to tool off than elsewhere. This is not to say it wouldn't be a good idea.

I know a few English people who have lived abroad. I suppose if you went into an office in Spain a lot of the Spanish people would have always lived in Spain and the foreign workers have obviously lived in other countries.

I disagree that it's bigoted. It is just observing different experiences and cultures.

I personally find it quite difficult to get along with an English person who has never left their home city.

As their viewpoint is extremely narrow. We just don't have much in common

They also I'm sure, would prefer to be friends with people who are more similiar to themselves, than with me. That's okay.

I tend to hang out with international people in the UK.

They're all in West Cork. But then who isn't ? Not me , I'm in boring non trendy Cork!

I have a very close relationship with my family and wouldn’t want to leave them. My children are very close to grandparents. But I did list other reasons why I like living here.

Op, have you got children?

I’m one of four siblings and three of us left the UK for other countries.

DH is one of five, and two of them left the UK.

I live in a small US town and have tons of friends from the UK here.

The company I work for has 420 employees of whom three are from the UK and none from Ireland, Australia, Italy, Spain or Lithuania.

This is all just personal experience and doesn’t really prove anything.

Similarly your personal experience doesn’t really prove anything either OP.

I have a LOT of cousins in Ireland only one of them has ever lived or worked abroad (mostly London) but he went back 20+ years ago.
Just as anecdotal as anyone else.

It’s not bigoted at all, but as you can see some people who can’t see beyond their own doorstep feel threatened by attitudes like yours.

Personally I’ve never worked or lived abroad but I really want to, and plans are now in place to do so within the next couple of years. My reasons for not doing so: I grew up poor and working class and moving abroad just wasn’t in my frame of reference. We never went on holidays abroad as a kid, let alone considered moving. My parents answer when I questioned why we didn’t visit other countries was that we couldn’t afford it, so I’m sure if I’d have expressed a desire to study abroad, they’d had said the same. And it wasn’t an excuse, they couldn’t afford to financially support me. Also in the UK state school system language tuition is piss poor, doesn’t start til age 11/12 and is never really presented as a useful skill or explained what doors it can open.

As an adult I moved to a couple of smaller UK cities then London, and met a lot more people from other countries and started questioning the ingrained narrative that moving abroad just “wasn’t for me”. I’d always just subconsciously assumed that I couldn’t afford it, wasn’t clever or qualified enough, didn’t know anything about the systems that made it possible. I’ve done a lot of research since then and realised it is possible. I also love travel and spend extended periods of months travelling all over the world whenever I can (I’m freelance which makes this possible). I also struggle to get on with or relate to people who’ve never left their town, they do have narrow worldviews. Not bad or lesser necessarily but yes, narrow and limited.

Also I don’t think this “but I’m close to my family and would never leave them!” excuse people spout is valid really. I’m sure the Spanish, Japanese, Australian, Swiss etc etc etc people are also close to their families but that doesn’t have to come at the expense of life experience or seeing different places.

I think the numbers of people that actually move to work abroad permanently are relatively small
in 2022 there were approx 147K UK people living in france and approx 160K french people living in the UK this is fractions of 1%
some countries like Eastern Europe have more people working away from home others have relatively few
but I would agree if you work in an international business in a large city there will be a lot more peple from overseas or who have worked overseas than in a small local business in a small town

I'm surprised you say that. The only people I can think of who rarely work abroad are Americans. But that's because the US is so huge it's like a world of its own. I can think of loads of English people who've lived or worked abroad.

Ireland has a longer tradition of actual emigration, of course, which is why most Brits have Irish ancestors.

I’ve lived in Ireland and didn’t find that many of the locals had lived abroad, if anything they were very attached to home and their families, and it was a big deal to them to even go and work in a different city let alone abroad. Maybe it’s just your circle?
But anyway, as an immigrant to the Uk here are my thoughts:

-the Uk is an island, and even though you can take a plane or ferry to another country there’s still more of a psychological barrier compared to if you could, for example, take the bus or train over to the border to the next country and spend the summer working at a seaside resort, as many young people from my country do.

-languages are just not taught to a high level here or emphasised as important. Most kids do a language to GCSE level, which is very rudimentary, and that’s it. This makes it difficult to move abroad as an adult, unless it’s to an English speaking country. In my country kids start learning a foreign language from nursery and by late primary the level taught is similar to GCSE level here. In addition many kids have private tutoring. Some of the most desirable state high schools teach almost entirely in a foreign language. It’s also seen as prestigious to do your degree abroad. This all makes it easy to move around, though it’s a double edged sword as we now have a brain drain and an ageing population.

-there just isn’t the same imperative here in the UK to move abroad. My impression is that if you’re born here you can sort of coast through life and get a good enough job fairly easily even if you don’t have amazing grades, and earn enough to have a relatively comfortable life. (I know COL is now changing that, but still).
In my country and other continental European ones I’ve lived in, to have any hope of a good job the bar is a lot higher - you need to know at least 2 foreign languages and have a good degree (which usually means you’ve been to a good selective school, and to get into one your parents need to have paid for a lot of private tutoring), or you need to have connections, especially for public sector jobs.
And even after all that, your salary is lower than for a similar job in the UK, and your working hours longer (8-5 is the standard in my country, compared to 9-5 in the UK).

So yeah, life is cushy in the UK basically, even if it’s all gone a bit downhill recently.

They do, but they are currently out there living abroad and not in England. I’m a dual national, so I’ve lived in the UK and in my other nationality’s country. I’ve lived in South Africa. I’ve lived in India. I’ve travelled loads more than that, but those are the 4 countries where I’ve actually lived and worked. I met lots of British people living in those places, including Dh, who is British and was living abroad when we met.

But you’re in England with the people who’ve stayed!! Of course that demographic is going to be weighted towards those who haven’t lived abroad.

I live in Northern Ireland, and there is a massive chunk of people here who have never lived anywhere else. I could easily accuse the Northern Irish of being unlikely to move on this basis, although I know that many do move as I’ve met them in England and Scotland and other places I’ve been.

If you don’t like English people who have chosen to stay living in England then maybe this just isn’t the place for you.

This is hilarious.

I stated that I’d abroad for a number of years but you say that I feel threatened by the OPs “internationalism” and I can’t see beyond my own doorstep. Then you go on to say that you’ve never lived abroad yourself. The cognitive dissonance in this post is unbelievable.

English exceptionalism. I was brought up (wrongly!) to understand that we civilised the world. A lot of people feel superior to those from other countries and have very little idea what goes on in them or how technologically advanced they might be.

Plus we’ve not got the hand of making language teaching enjoyable or a source of pride or even interest.