Transcription
Hello and welcome to the channel. What makes Paris a difficult city to relocate for expats and immigrants? That's what we'll be talking about in today's video. I'm Robert. I'm a therapist who works with individuals and couples in Paris.
Before we get into the discussion of Paris, you'll probably notice I have some new hair. Or rather, I've lost some hair. Uh yesterday or the day before I'm recording this video, I got an absolutely catastrophic haircut and I decided to do what I've been thinking about for a while, which is uh shave it all off. Okay.
Is Paris a difficult city to live for expats? So, I'm looking at a report which I'm going to link in the description from Intonations. It's their expat city ranking from 2023 where they ranked 49 cities around the world in terms of their livability for expats. Paris was in the bottom 10, ranked 49th out of 49. I have a perspective on this that could be interesting because I lived for a long time in Singapore, which uh is still considered one of the most friendly destinations for expats in the world. And since 2021, I've been in Paris, which is apparently one of the worst. Let's break it down. I'll go through what this report says about Paris and why Paris is so difficult.
Cost of living in Paris. Uh Paris is one of the most expensive cities globally. 61% of the expats that they surveyed mentioned struggling with general living expenses compared to a 35% average uh across the other cities. Adding to this is the fact that salaries in Paris tend to be a bit lower than elsewhere. In fact, Paris was ranked 47th in this category with 29% of the experts surveyed feeling that they are not paid fairly compared to 19% globally. Related to all of this is housing which tends to be expensive in Paris and uh difficult to find. 60% of people reported difficulty in finding housing compared to a global average of 31% and 71% of the expats surveyed said they found housing unaffordable. Almost everyone who lives here has stories about struggling to find new places. If someone's planning to move, finding a new apartment can be a process of months of looking. You can get better value if you're looking for places outside of Paris in the surrounding suburbs which are all connected by the metro and pretty convenient, but cost is always a big factor. The other side of this coin is that once you are a tenant and have signed a lease in Paris, you are very well protected. That's part of the reason why it's so difficult to find a place because landlords are very choosy about who they take on board. Finding an apartment in Paris is a process of proving that you have continuing income and connections to Paris. It's not enough to just come here and have a lot of money in the bank. You need to be uh making money in a guaranteed position in Paris to be accepted by a landlord. If you can't do that, you're looking at renting Airbnbs or private rentals. You don't have the same protections if you're in a private rental agreement, but there is more availability.
Regarding cost of living in Paris, yes, it's definitely expensive. If you've been here as a tourist, you would have seen that looking at paying €7 for a coffee somewhere like Opera. The reality is though, once you're living here, it is possible to have a low cost of living lifestyle if you are creative. I do most of my grocery shopping at the farmers market nearby and I spend about $40 a week on produce. Extra groceries. I buy things like cheese from the supermarket, but I don't pay a lot for my food. Cost of services, like uh medicine, for instance, is cheap because it's subsidized by the French government. Public transport here is relatively affordable. You can get an unlimited transport card for €85 a month. And generally, if you're employed in Paris, half of that will be paid by your employer. Myself. I cycle everywhere, so I don't pay anything except for the cost of occasionally changing a tire on my bike. I go to the cinema a lot. I pay €20 a month for an unlimited cinema membership. Um, concerts are cheap here. My acting classes, which I do 3 hours per week, that costs me like €300 for a quarter of the year. Even though housing is expensive in Paris, it is possible to have a lowcost lifestyle, especially if you're living in East Paris like I do. At one stage, I did the calculations to model if I left Paris, what I'd be looking at. And even though I would be saving money on housing, my lifestyle costs would actually increase if I were to move to a smaller city or the countryside. But as a summary to this topic in general, yes, salaries are low in Paris and the lifestyle is a bit more expensive than other places. If you're an expat, this is a city that you move to not so much to make money, but because you enjoy the lifestyle in Paris. If you want to make money, you'd be better off living somewhere like Abu Dhabi or Dubai.
Another big factor in this expat city ranking that counted against Paris was the difficulty of the language. 66% of the expats surveyed said that they find Paris difficult to live without speaking French, compared to a global average of 32%. And 77% of the expats surveyed here have become proficient in French, the local language, compared to 55% globally. Yes, absolutely. The language is a factor of difficulty here. You definitely want to speak French if you live in Paris. As a tourist, you can get by with only English and uh bonjour or pare vang, but if you live here, everything changes. You will face situations every single day where if you don't speak French to a decent level, you will be at a significant disadvantage. French has a reputation for being a hard language to learn, but in my experience, it wasn't too bad. When I arrived here in 2021, I didn't speak any French. Um, what I said there was when I arrived here six months ago, didn't speak any French, but I hustled until I was able to manage most of my life in French. Having become pretty fluent in French, my level would be between C1 and C2. Now, I would say that the language itself isn't that complicated. It's pretty similar to English for the most part. Um, there's a big initial difficulty curve with all of the conjugations, the syntax, and adjusting to the sound of the language. Phonetically, it's very different to English, and you need to train both your ear and your mouth to get used to pronouncing French. But once you get past all of that, structurally, the language is actually quite similar to English. A lot of the expressions and the general sense do translate between the languages, especially compared to something like Chinese or Indonesian, the other languages that I speak.
But what is difficult about learning French is that many of the language courses here suck. Or let's say more politely that they aren't well adapted to the needs of most people. The language courses here tend to be rather old-fashioned in their style of teaching. They're very heavy on grammar. They're focused on mistakes in a way that feels punitive for students and there's not really much focus on real world usage of the language. I myself enrolled in a language course, two of them when I arrived. And in the first one, we spent a week studying the subjunctive tense, a fairly advanced grammar, which after a week of studying it, I understood the grammar very well, but I wasn't capable of ordering steak at a supermarket. A lot of people do language courses here, and after all of the classes that they've done, the main lesson that they take is that they're no good at French, and they're afraid to try speaking it to people. What I would recommend is if you need to study French in France that you choose very carefully the language course that you try. Um I have a school that I recommend in Paris which I'm going to link in the description called EFI. Um or you can do what I did which is you decide to learn French yourself, become your own French teacher. And I'll make another video all about that. How I learned French uh by myself in 6 months.
The second aspect of the difficulty in speaking French is that there's a cultural thing going on where French people aren't always very willing to entertain a basic French speaker. If you're not showing a pretty high general level of fluency in your French, they'll just speak to you in English. This is something that frustrates a lot of learners here and they find it rude. They consider that if they're trying to speak French to someone and they're getting English in response that it's a kind of insult, they're being told that their French is no good. Um, in my experience, it's never really felt malicious. It seems people just want to make the communication easier. They understand that uh you don't speak French that well. They'll speak English as a way of helping things along. This happened to me all the time that they would start speaking English to me. I would just speak French to them and we would have a parallel conversation in our second languages where they would have the chance to practice English, I would have the chance to practice French and it was good uh practice for the language switching part of my brain.
Related but separate to this issue of language is the administration in France. The bureaucracy here is famously difficult and everyone suffers no matter what their situation is. France or Paris was ranked 47th out of 49 cities in terms of administrative difficulty. 55% of the respondents reported difficulty in dealing with Parisian bureaucracy compared to 38% globally and 41% struggled to open a local bank compared to 22% globally. As I said, everyone goes through the ringer here with the French administration, including French people. The bureaucracy here is famously labyrinthine and Kafka-esque. I have so many stories from my own experience as does everyone who lives in France. Every single thing in France with regard to administration is difficult and complicated. So this is true for you when you're doing any sort of applications or dealing with the French government. There's a lot of paperwork or digital work. Now it's online. But even still, there's a real lack of clarity and an over complicatedness to everything. Uh they've been talking for decades in France about simplifying the bureaucracy. The opposite is happening where over time it gets increasingly complicated. Um it's difficult not just for you the individual doing your business but it's also difficult for the function the bureaucrats who have to deal with all the applications and paperwork. I really suffered in the administration when I first moved here because of particularities about my dossier, my circumstances. And what made the difference was when my French got to a point that I could make banter, basic communication, use a bit of humor where I could build rapport with the people that I was dealing with. What I do now whenever I have any sort of bureaucratic issue is I go to the office. I speak to someone in person. I explain the problem clearly in French and spend a little time building rapport with them. Um charming them a little. The way these interactions generally go is at the beginning I get a blank face, nothing is possible, but after we've broken the ice, there are ways that they can help me out. In these interactions, there's always a point where they'll look at me and they'll ask, "Are you English?" And I'll say, "No." And I might say, like, "Guess where I'm from." American, you're American. Say, "No, Australian. I'm Australian." And they smile. Ah, Australian. Um, so if you are Australian, that could be a advantage that you have like I do.
One of the other key difficulties that was mentioned by expats in this report was that um, a lot of them find it difficult to make local friends. 56% reported difficulty in finding friendships here compared to 36% globally average in other cities. 36% of expats described local Parisians as unfriendly compared to a global average of 16%. And as a result, Paris was ranked 40th out of 49 cities in terms of the ease of social interactions. This is a fairly complicated topic and what I'll say is that I understand why people say that. Um, but I don't necessarily agree or it hasn't been my experience. Making relationships with Parisians requires a few conditions to be present. The first condition is that you need to be able to manage the friendship in French if need be. Parisians were always friendly with me, even when my French was basic, but the possibility of being friends didn't start opening up until my language was at a level where we could interact completely in French. We didn't always have to with my friends here. We do speak English sometimes and I definitely reach points when we're together where I just think, okay, I'm going to speak in English here. They might switch to English or they might keep speaking French. But it's known between us that French is a safe language and the main language. You do meet Parisians who are open to having friendships in English. It does happen, but it's definitely not the majority of people here. Um you really need to be at a certain level with your French for local people to feel comfortable enough with you to accept you as a friend. And for me, it took about 6 months to get to that point. That's why I say it took me 6 months to become fluent in French because it was at that 6 month mark that people started opening up to me and accepting me in that way.
On this topic of friendship, French people have generally a deeper definition of friendship. If someone accepts you as a friend here, there's an a level of commitment that's understood between you. They're going to be there for you if you need them, and they're going to expect you to be there as well. Loyalty is a big deal, and friendships are relationships that require active effort. Um, Parisians don't tend to have many friends, but the ones that they do have, they hold very closely. You don't just become friends with a Parisian person because you spend one fun night together drinking. That might be the start of a process by which you build a connection, but might take several months before you really feel like you're accepted as their friend. One way to know that you've been accepted by a French person is you'll be invited into their home. Friendships here tend to be more of a long-term project that requires energy and time investment on your part, but the payoff is worth it. French friends are great. They'll hold you dear and they'll show you around very well. You'll be taken very well care of once a French person has taken you under their wing. In my experience, are Parisians unfriendly? Not in my experience, but there are cultural differences here that can make them seem that way. And I understand the reputation that Parisians have among English speakers. The main aspect here, I think, is that there isn't a culture of fake politeness in France. People don't pretend that they're happy to see you or that they think you're great unless they genuinely do think that. If we're talking about shopping, for instance, don't expect recognition and warmth from a shopkeeper just because you've been to their store a few times. In Paris, to get that kind of recognition and warmth that is an expected part of commercial interactions in Australia, you might need to actually have had an interaction with the storekeeper where, for example, you ask them for a recommendation. You show appreciation for what they do. You take interest in their craft. That can be a way to break the ice. So, in future when you visit them again, they'll smile. They'll greet you. They'll remember that. But it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes uh storekeepers just aren't that interested in you. I don't think it's rude. They're just being honest. They're still going to serve you in a professional way, but they'll keep the interaction transactional. Parisians often aren't particularly interested in spending much energy on a stranger unless you give them a reason to do so. Um, dressing appropriately and showing that you speak French competently is usually the bare minimum, but it doesn't mean that everyone's going to go out of their way to accommodate you just because you do those things. They'll still serve you professionally. They'll be polite with you in a minimal sort of a way, but um they're not going to pretend that they like you just to be polite as they do in a country like Australia.
I'd been living in Paris for six months when I went back to Australia for a visit. And after being here, as I had been interacting with Parisian people and getting on a Quantis plane and being greeted by Australian uh cabin attendants, it was a surreal moment. The way that they smile, the intensity of their, "Hi, it's wonderful to see you. Have a great flight." No one in France treats you like that unless they're completely in love with you or maybe they're on drugs. This element of not pretending in relationships um extends to all other relationships as well. So for instance, I know pretty much all my neighbors in this building and many of them I consider to be friends. We hang out together. We drink. We go to each other's places. We watch movies together. And we keep each other posted on the local gossip. Naturally, because we live in the same building, we see each other in the hallways. We see each other on the street. We cross paths with each other all the time. And when we do, there's a 50/50 chance that we'll stop, speak to each other, catch up, small talk, sometimes even kick on, go to uh one of our places for a drink. Or we might just cross each other, nod, say bonjour. We give each other a minimum level of acknowledgement that in other cultures would be intolerably rude for people who have shared the kind of friendliness that we do otherwise. But here in Paris, we're all busy. We understand that and we give each other permission to do the chitchat when uh the time suits us. A Japanese person I know once said to me something interesting. He said, "Europeans, they're cold on the outside, but they're warm on the inside. Americans, they're warm on the outside, but they're cold on the inside." And without sounding too judgmental about Americans, I think it's true of Europeans that they might seem serious and stern on the outside, but the friendship that they do offer when they offer it is genuine.
Well, there we are. That's been a few of my experiences with settling into Paris, life as an expat or an immigrant here. What have your experiences been like? Let me know in the comments. If you're enjoying the content, feel free to like and subscribe. Hope to see you for the next video. Have a nice day. Take care of yourselves. Bye.