On being an invisible foreigner

VERSION FRANÇAISE DISPONIBLE EN CLIQUANT ICI

Migrant, immigrant, foreigner. I have been all of these things. I have also learnt that there is foreigner and foreigner.

As a pale-skinned European, I was an invisible migrant and immigrant on arrival in France in April 1981 where I have since settled permanently. Invisible as long as I didn’t speak that is, my French being pretty basic in the beginning. Two incidents come to mind as proof of this.

Here’s the first. It happened one day when I was standing in the queue at the police station for the periodic renewal of my residence permit with other immigrants who were mainly North African and all older than me, I was invited by an official to come to the front of the queue to renew mine. At the time, I was employed in the building trade, so my fellow queuers were people I felt comfortable with because they were just like the colleagues I saw every day. When I asked why I had the priviliege of jumping the queue, I was told the procedure for me for simpler. That may have been true, but I wasn’t fully convinced. On my way out, walking back past the silent watchfulness and shaking heads of all the people who I had jumped ahead of, I couldn’t help feeling that there was foreigner and foreigner. 

The second incident occurred several years later when I was handed a leaflet in the street by two smiling faces during a French election campaign. I didn’t like their party and I tried to hand back the leaflet saying I didn’t vote. They then told me everybody should vote. But I couldn’t vote, I insisted : I was an immigrant. Almost casually, before realising what she had said, one of the canvassers commented that I didn’t look like an immigrant. In the name of all the people who would never be able to answer back to such remarks, I asked them if they could perhaps tell me what an immigrant looked like. They garbled some sort of an apology. I handed back the leaflet. There were lots of immigrants who looked just like them and me, I said, and lots of others who didn’t look like us who weren’t immigrants. That was why, even if I could vote, I wouldn’t vote for their party! My indignation was French, but I have rarely felt prouder of being a foreigner.

Time to take a new look

There is foreigner and foreigner all over the world, of course. Many of us have stories to tell about how our nationality or appearance affected a passage going through a border control, or simply when walking down the street as tourists when travelling abroad.

In April 2025, I clock up 44 years of life in France. It can’t all be bad, can it ?¹ People generally notice I come from elsewhere from my French which, although it is now fully fluent, still has inflections which come from my English mother tongue. When I own up to my British beginnings, the response is never one of hostility but usually affectionate amusement at my even being there – with a touch of sympathy over Brexit, naturally. Migrant and immigrant are never part of the conversation.

However, in society as a whole, the frequency with which migrant and immigrant in particular have become increasingly associated with conflict, rejection and even death, incites me to reassess who I am and take a new look at my status as a foreigner in this chilling new world.

Foreign is a word which has been a constant companion by virtue of my profession as a teacher of English as a foreign language. It’s the place where the foreigner in me is the most visible, even though being a native English teacher in a foreign country is often seen as a quality that people respect before you even teach them anything.

In what I can foresee as being a series of posts, I would like to look at what foreign means to me through situations and experiences concerning language, learning and teaching.

Still want more?

Today’s tale of experience is my second piece on the theme of foreigner and foreigner. The first piece, a tale of innocence, is available here.

Now it’s time to put all this into French.