John, this is an excellent piece. I left the US in the early 1990s, which really was another era. The casual globetrotting that is now prevalent across many cultures and social classes was not a thing, then.
The history of Nice is a history of migrants and foreigners. The original port, around the Chateau hill, was Greek. Just inland at Cimiez is the old Roman ruins, where the annual jazz festival is now held. From 800AD to 1200AD the whole coastline was repeatedly attacked by Saracens, north African and Spanish pirates (Spain was then the Muslim Umayyad Kingdom for 300 years)that raided the coast, ransacking the towns and villages and taking slaves to sell in North Africa, to the point where many towns were abandoned, including Nice and nearby Villefranche, and only rebuilt in the 1200's. The name Villefranche means a tax-free port (franchise town) set up to encourage those that fled to come back and rebuild the abandoned town.
Nice and the other coastal towns to the east then were part of the Savoy (Italian) kingdom until Napoleon III bought the region and made it part of France in the Treaty of Turin in 1860, which is why the architecture is SO typically Italian. And this tied in with the discovery of the small, very poor French fishing town of Nice by English aristos in the 1800's, not least Queen Victoria from the 1890's that made the place popular as a winter resort.
If you visit Menton, the pretty French town on the Italian border, and walk to the top of the very beautiful old town, there is a graveyard with a number of English graves from the 1800's. This was when the French Riviera was recommended as a health cure to recuperate from Tuberculosis and escape the cold, damp and polluted English air in winters. It didn't always work!
Then the American wealthy discovered the area in the 1920's, along with dozens of artists from Paris, Russia and everywhere else too, and the Russians escaping the Revolution built the largest Russian cathedral outside of Russia in the late 1800's.
Then came the escapees and refugees in WW2 heading for north Africa, and of course the German occupation that doubtless left an indelible genetic mark on the local population, especially those 'French' now in their 80's, and their descendants. Then the Algerians from the ex-French colony in 1962.
Now of course, the immigration continues; Africans, Muslims, Ukrainians, Russians, British, Irish, Americans, Italians, and many, many more. Truly a cosmopolitan city for hundreds of years.
So whatever happens next in France, and whatever shift to the Right and hard Right occurs in European politics, I would expect the internationality of Nice to continue and so protect it's population from most fascist or racist policies. Certainly white immigrants will be way down the list of perceived problems.
Good observations. Menton is now the place where police boost the trains from Italy and drag off migrants from distressed parts of the world. The whites have the advantage of looking much like the longer term local folks.
John this is a great article. You have been through a lot as an immigrant to Ireland and now France, and you describe it with such equanimity. I remember 2009 and the following years of austerity in the Irish higher education system. I started my first tenured job in a different Irish uni in September 2009. Full of enthusiasm to manage a programme and lecture after the years of struggling as a PhD student. And then wham - the cutbacks and pressure to save money and do more with less. A baptism of fire 🔥
Thank you for another thoughtful and informative article on living as an American expat in Europe, John. Nothing is as easy as we might wish it to be, is it?
Thank goodness I worked in Vienna for five years because I now receive retirement benefits from Austria as well as from the States--in particular complete health insurance coverage that only costs about 40 euros a month.
I moved to Vienna in September 2014 and was therefore living there when the enormous surges of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere began to overwhelm Europe in 2015. It was not only frightening for the refugees themselves, but for European cultures as well.
I moved to Ireland in December 2019 and have therefore experienced the large influx of Ukrainian refugees that Ireland has welcomed. But the situation here is complex, too. The Irish have been very welcoming and generous in regard to Ukrainians, but the refugees have largely been housed in hotels across the country. Which means that the hotels no longer accept tourists. In small communities across the country, the result has been that many local businesses--restaurants, pubs, craftspeople--have gone out of because they have no customers.
This is just one reason why it is so important to remember (especially right now) that wars have huge consequences that extend far beyond the borders of the countries involved and why the world at large needs to do everything it can to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.
Yes, a very good point about the complex consequences of war ... sadly, the absence of any game plan to manage or responsibility for such issues is characteristic of the aggressors in these conflicts. In researching the figures for Ukrainians in Ireland I was also astonished to see that Ireland has welcomed more than France. The last census in Ireland was a few years ago, but annual immigration figures show that more and 100K immigrated in each of the past three years, apart from the Ukrainian refugees. Huge for a small country with a chronic housing shortage.
I'm also grateful to have Irish pensions as the dollar slides downward. Your healthcare benefit is excellent as well (and I've no complaints in France, though my coverage reflects Irish healthcare policy--so my entitlements in France reflect limitations in HSE coverage, such as absence of emergency medical expenses outside the EU.
Thanks so much for sharing your personal story of immigrating. I always think it’s incredibly important to hear what people went through in the choices that they made. It’s not an easy thing to move between countries. That adaptation is a lot harder than a lot of people seem to think starting out.
At the same time, your proposal has a natural demographic challenge happening as it’s population is aging out and the social programs that it was reliant upon or more and more difficult to support. I have to agree that tensions are going to continue to rise around all this. For my part, I think the best thing I can try and do is attempt to contribute to the society that I hope will adopt me.
Thanks Lucy, Interesting that you were starting work in an Irish HEI at about the same time as I. That crash has had lasting impact. While many would celebrate Ireland's recovery, as I would, the government's interest in higher ed seems now focused primarily on workforce development and technical tracks that support the foreign tech companies, not the universities in general--hence the promotion of status of the IoTs. It's also one of the few country's in the EU with no minister for research. (I've noted the recent restructuring of the IRC and SFI, and the leadership/management issues sound all too familiar.) The pandemic had its impact as well, but that's another story ... I'd be curious to hear more of your experiences and perspectives, I've been away for more than three years now.
John, this is an excellent piece. I left the US in the early 1990s, which really was another era. The casual globetrotting that is now prevalent across many cultures and social classes was not a thing, then.
Thanks Caroline.
The history of Nice is a history of migrants and foreigners. The original port, around the Chateau hill, was Greek. Just inland at Cimiez is the old Roman ruins, where the annual jazz festival is now held. From 800AD to 1200AD the whole coastline was repeatedly attacked by Saracens, north African and Spanish pirates (Spain was then the Muslim Umayyad Kingdom for 300 years)that raided the coast, ransacking the towns and villages and taking slaves to sell in North Africa, to the point where many towns were abandoned, including Nice and nearby Villefranche, and only rebuilt in the 1200's. The name Villefranche means a tax-free port (franchise town) set up to encourage those that fled to come back and rebuild the abandoned town.
Nice and the other coastal towns to the east then were part of the Savoy (Italian) kingdom until Napoleon III bought the region and made it part of France in the Treaty of Turin in 1860, which is why the architecture is SO typically Italian. And this tied in with the discovery of the small, very poor French fishing town of Nice by English aristos in the 1800's, not least Queen Victoria from the 1890's that made the place popular as a winter resort.
If you visit Menton, the pretty French town on the Italian border, and walk to the top of the very beautiful old town, there is a graveyard with a number of English graves from the 1800's. This was when the French Riviera was recommended as a health cure to recuperate from Tuberculosis and escape the cold, damp and polluted English air in winters. It didn't always work!
Then the American wealthy discovered the area in the 1920's, along with dozens of artists from Paris, Russia and everywhere else too, and the Russians escaping the Revolution built the largest Russian cathedral outside of Russia in the late 1800's.
Then came the escapees and refugees in WW2 heading for north Africa, and of course the German occupation that doubtless left an indelible genetic mark on the local population, especially those 'French' now in their 80's, and their descendants. Then the Algerians from the ex-French colony in 1962.
Now of course, the immigration continues; Africans, Muslims, Ukrainians, Russians, British, Irish, Americans, Italians, and many, many more. Truly a cosmopolitan city for hundreds of years.
So whatever happens next in France, and whatever shift to the Right and hard Right occurs in European politics, I would expect the internationality of Nice to continue and so protect it's population from most fascist or racist policies. Certainly white immigrants will be way down the list of perceived problems.
Good observations. Menton is now the place where police boost the trains from Italy and drag off migrants from distressed parts of the world. The whites have the advantage of looking much like the longer term local folks.
Do the French and Italians in the mountains above Menton still help the refugees cross the border? For a long while, it was a 'refugee railway'.
I haven’t heard about that, haven’t seen anything in the news about it.
https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/37046/tales-from-the-border-78-french-alps--helping-hands
Thanks !
And this from MSF;
https://www.msf.org/abandoned-italys-borders-stories-people-move
Lots more articles on the search.
This guy is famous;
https://www.trtworld.com/europe/a-french-farmer-was-convicted-for-helping-refugees-what-did-he-do-13087881
John this is a great article. You have been through a lot as an immigrant to Ireland and now France, and you describe it with such equanimity. I remember 2009 and the following years of austerity in the Irish higher education system. I started my first tenured job in a different Irish uni in September 2009. Full of enthusiasm to manage a programme and lecture after the years of struggling as a PhD student. And then wham - the cutbacks and pressure to save money and do more with less. A baptism of fire 🔥
Thank you for another thoughtful and informative article on living as an American expat in Europe, John. Nothing is as easy as we might wish it to be, is it?
Thank goodness I worked in Vienna for five years because I now receive retirement benefits from Austria as well as from the States--in particular complete health insurance coverage that only costs about 40 euros a month.
I moved to Vienna in September 2014 and was therefore living there when the enormous surges of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere began to overwhelm Europe in 2015. It was not only frightening for the refugees themselves, but for European cultures as well.
I moved to Ireland in December 2019 and have therefore experienced the large influx of Ukrainian refugees that Ireland has welcomed. But the situation here is complex, too. The Irish have been very welcoming and generous in regard to Ukrainians, but the refugees have largely been housed in hotels across the country. Which means that the hotels no longer accept tourists. In small communities across the country, the result has been that many local businesses--restaurants, pubs, craftspeople--have gone out of because they have no customers.
This is just one reason why it is so important to remember (especially right now) that wars have huge consequences that extend far beyond the borders of the countries involved and why the world at large needs to do everything it can to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.
Yes, a very good point about the complex consequences of war ... sadly, the absence of any game plan to manage or responsibility for such issues is characteristic of the aggressors in these conflicts. In researching the figures for Ukrainians in Ireland I was also astonished to see that Ireland has welcomed more than France. The last census in Ireland was a few years ago, but annual immigration figures show that more and 100K immigrated in each of the past three years, apart from the Ukrainian refugees. Huge for a small country with a chronic housing shortage.
I'm also grateful to have Irish pensions as the dollar slides downward. Your healthcare benefit is excellent as well (and I've no complaints in France, though my coverage reflects Irish healthcare policy--so my entitlements in France reflect limitations in HSE coverage, such as absence of emergency medical expenses outside the EU.
Thanks so much for sharing your personal story of immigrating. I always think it’s incredibly important to hear what people went through in the choices that they made. It’s not an easy thing to move between countries. That adaptation is a lot harder than a lot of people seem to think starting out.
At the same time, your proposal has a natural demographic challenge happening as it’s population is aging out and the social programs that it was reliant upon or more and more difficult to support. I have to agree that tensions are going to continue to rise around all this. For my part, I think the best thing I can try and do is attempt to contribute to the society that I hope will adopt me.
Thanks Lucy, Interesting that you were starting work in an Irish HEI at about the same time as I. That crash has had lasting impact. While many would celebrate Ireland's recovery, as I would, the government's interest in higher ed seems now focused primarily on workforce development and technical tracks that support the foreign tech companies, not the universities in general--hence the promotion of status of the IoTs. It's also one of the few country's in the EU with no minister for research. (I've noted the recent restructuring of the IRC and SFI, and the leadership/management issues sound all too familiar.) The pandemic had its impact as well, but that's another story ... I'd be curious to hear more of your experiences and perspectives, I've been away for more than three years now.
Bonjour John! I enjoyed your fascinating perspective on being an outsider in another country.
Bonjour Sacha, Thanks for your kind comment, much appreciated!