Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘France’ Category

This is one of the most complex areas of our guide as there are so many factors involved including your nationality, marital status, employment status for you, your spouse and your children.

If the simple case described in this section doesn’t cover you, it’s best to start looking into the matter as soon as you can as it can take ages to resolve immigration issues. Broadly speaking there are two basic types of immigration to France: where you are a European and where you aren’t. There’s a third variant where you are a European and your spouse isn’t which we’ll cover separately. Some defniitions are useful at this point:

A “visa” is a permit to enter a country and is usually obtained from the French embassy in your country of residence. There aren’t any French embassies in France itself of course and in some circumstances you may need to point this out to various people in the course of applying for your residence permit. A European Family Permit is a special type of visa issued to spouses and family members of European citizens who are not themselves Europeans.

France is in what’s called the “Schengen Area” which is a group of countries which grant a single visa to enter all of them. So, if you have a Shengen Visa for, say, Belgium then you don’t need an additional visa to enter France because both France and Belgium are in the Schengen Area.

A “residence permit” (“Carte de Séjour) is a document permitting you to live in a country. In some cases this permit may also give you permission to work in that country but you may need a “work permit” to do that.

A “work permit” gives you permission to work in a country. It may be incorporated into your “residence permit”.

Europe has two basic classes of countries: those which are established and those which are subject to transitional arrangements. Established countries are, generally, those which have been in the European Union for four years or more. Newer countries are subject to transitional arrangements in some circumstances, notably in terms of requirements regarding residence permits.

Anyway, next week we’ll be covering the case where you and your family are Europeans.

It’s still hard for me to believe but somehow or other I find myself on the final course of the Open University Spanish course and even harder to believe that one course after that should give me a BA (Hons) Modern Language degree.

My original plan was that I’d do enough French to be able to live here but once we’d reached that point I figured that I might as well carry on and pick up the diploma so two years ago I added Dip French after my name. With that completed and us receiving growing numbers of Spanish guests, the logical step was to do the first of the Spanish courses but once you start these things it seems hard to stop so here I am doing the final year.

Coming here just after the final year of the French segment started worked out very well. It wasn’t easy as we were very busy that year but the daily practice in spoken and written French helped the final mark no end I’m sure. With the Spanish it’s a completely different story. The two languages are similar enough that in the past I always had to “forget” my French when learning Spanish but, of course, that isn’t really an option this time around which makes it quite an uphill struggle at times. Still, the next coiurse should be easy as it’s in English, shouldn’t it? Unfortunately, it turns out that the last course I need to do to get that modern languages degree is supposedly the hardest one in the university so I’m half-thinking of doing a humanities course prior to it to get into the subject a little better.

Everyone in the world seems to have the impression that French food is the best in the world. But is it? Down in the south of France, the answer is very definitely “no”.The menu that just about all of the local restaurants offer is determined by whatever pre-prepared food they can buy in the local cash & carry. The net effect of this is that there is next to no variation between one restaurant and another as each one serves the same bland diet. In fact the only variation that you’ll find is in the typeface and layout of the menu itself because the cash & carry don’t preprint those.

This is a question that many would like to ask but few are brave enough to actually ask it. The answer is different depending on where in France you choose to live.

If you are aiming for a brit-enclave such as Brittany or the Dordogne, the answer is probably “no” as in those areas it’s quite possible to live within the English-speaking community and to rely on those that make their livelihood supporting it. The only potential difficulty is the mayor’s office (“mairie”) but in the majority of cases they will be able to deal with you in English too. There’s no problem with the likes of tax, electricity and the phone company as all three plus similar outfits have at least one office set up to deal with English speakers (and if there is only one office, that office can deal with you where-ever you are).

Outside the brit-enclaves, it’s a different story and, for the most part, you will need to speak French quite well although it is still possible to deal with tax, electricity, etc. via their English speaking branches. Where you will encounter difficulties is in dealing with the plumber, electrician, school and mayor’s office. Even though we speak degree level French we have found that, for example, some electricians refuse to understand us because they simply don’t want to be bothered working for non-French.

If you aren’t English, then you’ll also find that the French are a good deal more willing to speak English to you. One of the shop local assistants claimed not to speak English for almost three years until they found out that we were from Northern Ireland and Australia when they suddenly became quite fluent English speakers.

So, yes, you could move to France and live here without speaking any French. However, in most cases, you’ll find live that little bit easier as your level of French improves.

The last of the vines are prunned in December and by mid-January the white vans start to appear throughout the vineyards in the south of France.