Go West, suite

Je reviens sur un excellent dossier sur le sujet de l’Exode Français, les 200000 expatriés volontaires qui quittent la France chaque année, que Time Europe avait publié il y a deux mois. La moitié des émigrants ont moins de 35 ans, 93% d’entre eux sont ravis de leur nouvelle vie ailleurs et seuls 45% envisagent, peut-être, de revenir une fois l’heure de la retraite venue.

Quelles sont les raisons de cette fuite massive, la plus importante depuis la Révolution, plus massive encore que la fuite à l’étranger lors de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale ?

“France is like a restaurant where the food is fantastic, the best of everything, but the comfort and the service are zero, zero, zero — and the bill is exorbitant,” says Deguest, 37. “I love France, but in small doses.”

Pourquié left France out of frustration with the rigid state-funded scientific establishment — and because the American lab where he now works, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, offered him a package of pay and perks that was four times what he was receiving back home.

“France is frightened of this monster called liberalism, but in Ireland you can’t be fired overnight, and if you lose your job you find another one,” [Girard-Claudon] says. “here young people are accepted and welcomed,” he says. Even though he was just 23 and lacked experience when he started the company, “I wasn’t laughed at, either by the bank or by the authorities,” Girard-Claudon says. Ask him if he would have been able to set up his firm in France rather than Ireland and his answer is categorical: “In France I would have been too young.”

“people in France are terrified of making mistakes. But in Ireland, people who don’t work out go on to other things.”

“A lot of young people have dreams,” [Lavaud] says, “but in France we’ve lost the energy to turn them into reality.”

“I had to get out because I felt claustrophobic. I had so many friends in the same situation: qualified but unemployed,” [Zemoura] says. One experience in particular stands out for him: the day he went to see about a job at McDonald’s in London and was told by the recruiting manager: “If you don’t understand everything, don’t worry. I’ll repeat it.” That tolerance and willingness to give tongue-tied outsiders a chance “is unimaginable in France,” he says.

En réalité, cette France en Exil pourrait bien devenir une nouvelle nation à part, un peu à la façon des Juifs. Ceux qui sont partis partagent certaines valeurs, poursuivent un idéal qu’ils ne reconnaissent plus dans leur pays. Ils sont aussi tous porteurs d’une même énergie, la volonté de se prendre en main.

Troublant parallèle entre cet exode, et celui d’il y a 67 ans: aujourd’hui, nous assistons bien à une fuite lente face à une occupation qui ne dit pas son nom.