Still the Outsider, and Making Peace With It
Many others describe something different: a long life in a place that stays a little apart from them.
Picture a couple named Paul and Judith. They moved to a small town six years ago. They know the baker, the pharmacist and the man who mends shoes. Yet at the town festival, someone introduces them as "the Americans". Judith smiled. Paul went quiet on the drive home.
Many people expect to feel local after a while. Some do. Many others describe something different: a long life in a place that stays a little apart from them. I read their stories as a question about how much belonging a person needs.
What people describe
| Place | How being the outsider felt | Where they ended up |
|---|---|---|
| Portugal | Called by her nationality, with amusement | Amused |
| France | A year in, still "the American" | Resilient |
| Netherlands | Still "the American" after six years | Aware of the line |
| Germany | The new American in a small town, watched | Watchful |
| Italy | An outsider in a village of 5,000 | Restless |
| Monaco | Small size made it hard to belong | Isolated |
| Andorra | Feeling foreign, but not strange | Detached, at ease |
| Montenegro | Nine years in, taken as one of theirs, yet not Montenegrin | Belonging |
| Slovakia | Always a foreigner, and home all the same | Belonging |
| Bulgaria | Integrated and not integrated, both at once | Belonging |
| Ireland | Twenty-two years and still a "blow-in" | Outsider, by the local word |
Look at the last four rows. In Montenegro, Slovakia and Bulgaria, people said they were still foreigners and yet felt they belonged. In Ireland, someone twenty-two years in was still called a blow-in, which is the local word for a person who arrived from elsewhere. I do not think it was said to push them away. It reads to me as a plain label from a place where people have known each other a long time.
The Italian story is different. A person in a village of five thousand felt restless, and I respect that. Some people want to be absorbed, and when it does not happen the village feels closed. That is a real feeling, even if nobody means it.
The Monaco account shows that size matters. In a very small country a newcomer is easy to see and slow to be counted. Andorra gave the opposite: someone felt foreign without feeling strange. That one interests me most. It suggests that the outsider feeling and the lonely feeling are different, and that you can have one without the other.
At the kitchen table
"They called us the Americans again," Paul said.
"We are," Judith said.
"I thought six years would change it."
"Maybe it changes what the word means," she said. "They say it, and then they bring us soup."
What I take from it
I think there are two kinds of belonging. One is to be counted as local. The other is to be known and welcomed while staying who you are. The people who sounded most at peace had the second. They stopped waiting for the first.
If you need to be fully local, it could be wise to ask how long that takes in the place you are considering, and talk to someone twenty years in. If being known is enough, you may be content much sooner.
You could…
- Ask what the local word is for a newcomer, and how people use it.
- Talk to someone who has lived in the place for ten years or more.
- Decide in advance what counts as enough belonging for you.
- Look for a small place where you can be known by name.
How long did it take before a place felt like yours?
Tell us in the comments