EU Political Parties

Arun posted this a few days ago and I'm passing it along because I think it's of interest to non-EU Flophouse readers.

The political landscape in the EU is very different from that of North America.  Lots of different parties and a very wide spectrum of opinions and positions represented.  Like many things, direct translation is not easy and may not even be possible.

If you were a Democrat in the US, what party would you most likely want to belong to in France?  If you were PRI in Mexico, what party would interest you in Greece?  If you were NDP in Canada in which UK parties would you find the most common ground?

One way to try and figure it out would be to take each EU country and all the major political parties,  look at each party's positions carefully, and then try to map them to whatever political party you belong to in your home country.

Too much work?

I agree.

As Arun points out there is an easier way.  It's called the EU Profiler and here is how it works.  The wizard asks you a series of questions and, based on your responses, gives you the parties within each EU state and shows you which ones are closest to your opinions.  Pretty nifty.

To my astonishment I ended up in the center left.

Amazing.

Here is the direct link:  EU Profiler.

Amusez-vous bien....

Oh and if you have a moment, drop a comment with your results - home country party affiliation and what the EU profiler told you was a close match.

Reconstruction

Lot of questions vie email and Facebook about Saturday's post about my appointment with the plastic surgeon on Friday.  An 18 month wait seem to confirm some idées reçues about "socialized" medicine.

The thing to remember about the French healthcare system is that it's a mixture of public and private.  Most doctors do not work exclusively for the public system.  Some are completely independent and others have a mix of hours at public hospitals, private clinics, and their own practices.

There are two different payment systems here:  state insurance (Assurance maladie) and private insurance companies (mutuelles).  The latter are usually offered as part of a job package (not unlike in the US).  The way it works is that the private insurance is meant to pay for extras that the state insurance does not cover.  A good example would be hospitalization.  Basic state insurance will cover 100% a hospital bed in a room shared by one or two other patients.  If you have private insurance, however, the mutuelle will pay the difference and you can get a private room.

So everyone, regardless of income or status, gets the basic stuff covered by state insurance.  That means that breast cancer treatment is entirely covered - surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, tamoxifen, follow-up appointments, PET scans, MRI's, pain meds - and you never EVER see a bill or have to think for two seconds about how something will be paid for.  Just show your Carte Vitale (state insurance card) and everything is taken care of automatically.  It is incredibly efficient and I am in awe of their ability to provide this kind of cost-effective quality care with a minimum amount of bureaucracy.  Think of it as an "All care, no costly BS" system.

Extra stuff, however, will cost you or the mutuelle, extra.

So what happens with breast reconstruction?

First thing to get clear is that breast reconstruction after a mastectomy is covered by French state insurance.  It's not an extra - it's part of the basic state plan.  That said, the questions are:  how it will be done, when it will be done and where the surgery will occur.

The first question will be answered by me and my surgeon.  There are different options but what it looks like is that I will have to have implants.  I'm just too darn skinny and there isn't enough laine around my middle to use to make two breasts even though I'm not shooting for much here.  I have no desire to look like a Baywatch girl;  I'm thinking more along the lines of an 18th century coupe à champagne designed, they say, using the breast of the Marquise de Pompadour (or Marie Antoinette) as a model.






The when and where are equally complex.  Essentially, I have three options:

1.  The cancer clinic where I have been undergoing treatment now for nearly 2 years.  This was my first choice.  They know me and I know them.  I trust them.  My mastectomy went as well as could be given the circumstances and I still remember the kindness of the surgical team as I went under and the excellent aftercare given by the staff.  These people saved my life.

I can have the surgery done there but it will take 18 months at least before it can happen.  That's the news I got on Friday.  But that's not the last word.  There are other options.

2.  A private clinic that charges reasonable rates.  By "reasonable" I mean one where the bill will not go over what the French state insurances pays and what my private insurance (yes, we have one) will cover.  That's going to require some research and will take time.  There will be paperwork.

3.  A private clinic or plastic surgeon who has an excellent reputation but has fees that will far surpass my coverage.  This would also require research and a cold hard look at the state of our finances.  What is it worth to me and to my spouse to have this done?  5,000 Euros?  10,000 Euros?  20,000 Euros? Who knows.

Now that I am well-rested, well-fed and my head is in a better place, I can start thinking about what I want to do next.  Option 2 is the most realistic and I will start working on that this week.  I can ask both my GP and my gynecologist at the Franciscans here in Versailles for referrals.  If anyone reading this has a plastic surgeon they know and love here in France, please pass on the name.  I'd also really appreciate hearing from any Flophouse reader who has had breast reconstruction. How did it go?  Are you glad you did it?   I'm reading the material they gave me at the hospital and sounds like a lot can go wrong.  Scary, and all for something that is, strictly speaking, not necessary surgery.  Yvonne (Considering the Lilies) posted this photo.  This woman chose not to have reconstruction and instead used the space for a pretty incredible tattoo.  Something to think about...

A Day at the Cancer Clinic

Yesterday morning early early I set off in a cloud of serenity for my 6 month contrôle at the René Huguenin/Insitut Curie cancer center in St. Cloud.  These follow-up appointments are very important - there are tests to see if the cancer has returned but it is also a chance for me and my oncologist (a goddess among women) to touch base and see how things are going.

My serenity was tested almost immediately.  I usually take the train from the Gare de Montreuil here in Versailles to St. Cloud.  It's a good 15 minute walk to that train station and for reasons that I will go into later I used www.ratp.fr to find an alternate route that would allow me to leave from the Porchefontaine train station which is only 2 minutes away.  It was not to be.  I arrived at my train station only to discover that all the trains to Paris had been cancelled due to technical problems on the line.  So I turned around and walked up to the other station where the trains were running normally.

I arrived in St. Cloud right on time and went in to register with the front desk and get the show on the road.

Walking into the center is like coming home.  It is a surprisingly cheerful place.  The walls are painted a bright yellow and the floors shine.  It has a particular smell which is not unpleasantly antiseptic and the waiting rooms are warm.  In a few short minutes, the chill in my hands and feet went away and after getting my fiche de circulation at the front desk I walked up to the first floor to get my blood work done.

Coming back downstairs for the consultation, I noticed a large group of women in the main hall.  They were dressed in long black skirts and had small caps on the back of their heads.  It had the feel of a cultural compromise - though they were dressed much more modestly than Frenchwomen they had on sheer black tights and black heels under those skirts.  The age range was from young adult to quite elderly and they were speaking a language I didn't recognize.  Just outside the clinic was a group of men also dressed mostly in black who were smoking and talking.  It was blatant segregation by sex - the women were inside and the men were outside and they did not mix.  But it was clear that they were together even though they occupied different spaces.  I watched the body language and I didn't detect any angst or fear so much as a kind of solidarity and concern.  Something was going on but it didn't have the air of a catastrophic event.

My consultation went very well.  The test results were not ready but there was a very thorough exam.  My oncologist has the most wonderful gentle hands and when she runs them over my shoulders and chest, it never feels invasive or uncomfortable.  Sometimes she even closes her eyes and just feels and at those moments I feel such peace - like a person and not a patient.  She also listens very well.  I've been having a lot of joint pain in my hips which could have any number of causes including age. It's not that I am writhing in pain - it's more like something that slows me down.  An almost constant ache which makes it hard to walk sometimes and saps my energy to get out and do even small things.  We had talked about this at our last visit and she remembered.  This, she said, was worthy of further investigation and she put me down for an MRI.  Just to be sure.

We also talked about life.  How was I doing?  Not to miss a moment to evangelize, I told her about some of the activist work I'm doing and why I'm doing it.  She was very interested and gave me her email address so that I can send her the published articles Lynne Swanson and I wrote.

In spite of not having the test results, I left her office around noon feeling pretty good.  Since my next appointment was much later in the afternoon, I walked down to one of my favorite churches for the 12:05 mass.

The church is called St. Cloadald (St. Cloud).  Born in 522, he was the son of a king and renounced the throne in order to become a monk and later a priest.  There has been a church or a chapel on this site since 560, they say, but it wasn't until Queen Marie-Antoinette that it was decided to build a church (not a chapel) there.  The stones were laid, some of the walls raised and then came the Revolution.   Work stopped until Napoleon II restarted it and the present church was finished and consecrated in 1878.

I've visited many times but each walk through yields something new.  There is a fresco at the entrance which asks that we pray for Marie Antoinette.  At the back of the church is the chapel where the relics of St. Cloud were regathered after the revolution.  One side of the chapel is a fresco that tells the story of St. Cloud and the other side are a few words about a visit from the bishop of St. Cloud, Minnesota in  the US in 1922.  Going farther into the church, there is a statue of Jean d'Arc and there are always candles burning there.  At the very back, to the left of the altar is a chapel to Mary and almost always a few people praying regardless of the hour.

The Mass itself is always wonderful.  Go to Mass anywhere in the world and it's always the same ritual in the local language or Latin.  There are, however, small variations according to the inclinations of the local priest and parish.  The prelude to this Mass is a singing of the Psalms.  The Mass itself is a mix of French, Latin and Greek - mostly sung which is not always the case in all Catholic churches.  This linguistic mix is, from my experience, quite common in the French church.  For example, we almost always use the Greek for the Penitential Rite:

Κύριε ελέησον Kyrie eléison (Seigneur, prends pitié, Lord, have mercy)

Χριστε ελέησον Christe eléison (Christ, prends pitié, Christ, have mercy)

Κύριε ελέησον Kyrie eléison (Seigneur, prends pitié, Lord, have mercy)

And the Latin for the Gloria, the Sanctus and the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei):

Agnus Dei
qui tollis peccata mundi
miserere nobis...

The rest is in standard modern French which, honestly, I find less elegant than the English used in anglophone Masses.  "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...."

No Catholic parish anywhere in the world is required to use the Latin/Greek but I like the ones that do. If a community can be said to unite the living, the dead and the yet to be born then using the same words in the same language as the generations before is one way to make the past live in the present.

After Mass I picked up a sandwich at the local bakery and went back to the clinic to wait.  Two hours later I was ushered into yet another consultation room for a meeting with the plasticien (plastic surgeon).  This visit was not nearly as rewarding as the time I spent with my oncologist.  

What I retained from my chat with the surgeon was that, yes, I could have reconstruction but the only real option is implants - I simply don't have enough flesh on my tummy and my back to do otherwise. Concerning the implants, I must choose between silicon or another kind and the surgeon gave a brief overview of the pros and cons not one word of which penetrated my tired brain.

After that I was given the bad news which is that I am now on a waiting list and the earliest available appointment is one year from now with the surgery to be done 6-12 months after that.  That means an 18 month to 2 year wait.

I left her office with a pile of paper to read and a sense of discouragement. As I walked out of the clinic in a deep depression I discovered the reason for that large group of migrants I saw earlier.  A woman, about my age, with a walker and a bandage on her shoulder being helped out of the clinic and placed gently in the back seat of a waiting sedan.

At that moment I did not feel like a "fortunate" migrant.  I cursed my own culture which is not one that places a lot of value on solidarity at home or abroad.  One that is radically individualistic and places a premium on independence and not needing or asking for help from others. There were over 40 people at the clinic just sitting there and talking - all for one lone woman.   Not fair, I know, to make comparisons but in that moment I was painfully conscious that I was tired, hungry, bewildered, and alone.

When I finally made it home an hour later the first order of business was food and the second was rest.  That made things brighter.   And then my mother-in-law called from Amiens to make sure I was alright.  That made things even better.  By the time my husband arrived at about 9:00, the world was right once again.

It was quite the day.

A Culture of Migration

"Each act of migration itself creates the social structure needed to sustain it."

Every person who leaves his home country to cast himself on a distant shore has a mental model in his head of what that act means.  There is a context around it in the country of origin that he cannot ignore and this can inform his feelings about what he's doing and provide justifications and arguments for why.

An American who leaves for Paris, for example, probably knows that Americans have been going to Paris for hundreds of years.  In fact, anyone who knows anything about American history will have read that even one of the founding fathers of the nation, Benjamin Franklin, was a long-term resident of the Hexagon.  Those with a creative bent are surely aware that many great American writers and artists came to Paris at one time or another and stayed for a time or permanently.

Out of this migration, which goes back to the American revolution, a kind of archetype has arisen, the American in Paris, which conjures up visions of Ernest Hemingway, the American boy from Illinois who transformed himself into a hard-drinking, dashing novelist and war correspondent living in gay Paree.   There were many others:  Josephine Baker, Henry Miller, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Baldwin...

This is a migration path that was traced long ago and kept open by generations of Americans right up to the present day.  And given the popularity of books written by and about Americans who live here, it is still something that captures the imagination of people in the homeland.  All this is part of the context around which a decision to leave the US and come to France is made.  It's inescapable.

And yet, the US does not have a culture of outward migration (emigration).  It's a country people come to, not a place people leave (or so we tell ourselves).  In the American discourse around migration it's OK to talk about immigrants (in fact that is one of THE most important elements of the national narrative) but it's not OK to talk about emigrants.

I just finished a very good book by Caroline Brettell about another country that does have a strong culture around emigration.  The book is called Anthropology and Migration:  Essays on Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Identity and it talks about migration from an anthropological viewpoint using a population that the author has studied extensively:  the Portuguese.

Not a very well-known group in the US but one that is very visible in France.  If you live in an apartment building in a community around Paris that has a concierge (called a gardien today) chances are good that she is from Portugal.  When we needed work done on the chimney of our house, our Serbian contractor found us a Portuguese mason because, he said, they are the best.

How can the Portuguese be said to have a culture of migration?   Barttell traces the history of Portugal  and shows how powerful symbols and archetypes have created a positive context around Portuguese emigration.

When the Portuguese think about their emigrants their views are informed by allusions to the great Portuguese explorers and their contributions to the Age of Discovery.

"Portuguese emigrants are symbolic transformations of these navigators, for they have carried on the tradition of the Portuguese explorers - a tradition of reaching out beyond the shores of a small country situated at the margins of Europe."

Discovery led to colonization.  One of the infamous BRIC's is their child, Brazil - a very successful country with one of the world's largest and fastest growing economies.  Ties between Portugal and Brazil remained strong even after independence in 1822.  In the 19th century the Portuguese who left for Brazil were called brasileiros: "a term applied to a native-born Portuguese who emigrates to Brazil, makes it rich and then returns to Portugal to display his wealth."   This archetype had both positive and negative connotations but was widely spread via popular culture at the time.

In the 20th century Portuguese writers and poets took that archetype and a new one,  the franceses (the Portuguese in France), and portrayed them as heroes who suffered hardship for the sake of the homeland:  "Glorificam a Terra na amargura da distancia." (They glorify the homeland in the bitterness of distance.)

This does not mean, however that the government of Portugal always endorsed or approved of the emigrants.  Under Salazar emigration was controlled though not very effectively.  Many Portuguese slipped out of the country and made it to France where they were helped by the French authorities.  Here are the words of one migrant who left in 1965 for France:

"While we were waiting on the French side for trucks to take us to Paris, we were caught by the police. Ten of the men fled, among them the man who was to become my brother-in-law...The rest of us stayed and the police were very nice.  We showed our identity papers, and the police gave us temporary passes for France."

The Salazar regime is long gone and Portugal is now part of the European Union which means freedom of movement between European countries and no more problems with papers.

Today there are Portuguese communities all over the world but one of the largest is here in France. In the period between 1950 and 1969 France was the final destination for a whopping 43.5% of Portuguese migrants.  They came to work, brought their families, and settled in. The numbers of new migrants have risen and fallen over the years but in 1990 they were still one of largest immigrant populations in France:  650,000 strong.

They are both visible and accepted.  When the French talk about the immigrant "problem" they are generally not referring to the Portuguese who are both Christians (Catholics) and fellow Europeans.

And yet they do engage in patterns of behaviour that in other migrant groups would be controversial.  They do not, in general, become French citizens (though their children do).  Many attend Mass in Portuguese (not French) and send their offspring to Catechism in that language.  They often return to Portugal on vacation and send their children there for the summer.  Many retain very strong ties to their towns and villages back home and they send a steady stream of donations and remittances back to support local foundations, parishes and family members.  Some parishes back in Portugal even mail copies of the parish newsletter to former parishioners living in the Hexagon so they can be kept up to date as to what's happening at home.  The idea of return is strong in this community.  Few come to France with the idea of permanently settling here even if that is what actually happens over time.

Barttell paints a very interesting picture of this community.  Portugal is not a country people leave today because they are starving or are suffering oppression.  They are not the misère du monde. It's more a case of relative deprivation.  "Often it is neither the extremely poor (who have no money for the passage and no social networks abroad) nor the richest who pioneer a migration stream, but those with some but not great resources." The Portuguese see friends and family leave for France and then come home with enough money to buy things like houses or land or to acquire status through donations to the church and participation in community events.  Whatever work they do and what they earn and how they are viewed or treated in France, their frame of reference is Portugal.  Bartell sums it up this way:  "Portuguese are travailleur in France, to be petit bourgeois in Portugal."

The Portuguese government is involved in its diaspora and makes it clear that the Portuguese abroad are still part of the nation which is defined as something much broader than mere territory. It's an "imagined community" that knows no borders and the Portuguese are um povo peregrino (a wandering people).  "The emigrant is a pilgrim, a journeyer, and emigration is Portugal's national rite of passage" and "Wherever a Portuguese goes he carries the spirit of Camões and Vasco de Gama."  

One example of government influence is the Instituto Camões which is run by the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and exists to promote their language and culture all around the world.  Another example is the L’accord-cadre franco-portugais de coopération éducative et linguistique which was signed in 2006.  Among other things this agreement promotes French in Portuguese public schools and Portuguese in French public schools.  Demand for the latter is said to be increasing at a rate of about 5% per year.  When there are issues about Portuguese language education in France, the mail goes straight to the top - the Portuguese Ambassador to France and the French Prime Minister.

Does all this represent a country of emigration simply trying to make the best of a bad situation?

Depends on how you view emigration -  good, bad or neutral for a country.  In times past emigration was viewed as dangerous because population and a fixed national territory firmly under the control of a strong state meant power.  If these things continue to be the standard by which a state is judged (and judges itself) to be "successful" then any outbound flow of people, however small, will diminish the nation.

In a globalized world redefining the nation to include its emigrants and passing jus sanguinis citizenship laws are insurance against that.  It's not that people have left the nation, they have simply relocated their sovereign citizen selves, and by extension a part of the nation itself, somewhere else.  They and their children are still Americans, Germans, Chinese, French, British, all contributing to the rayonnement of the homeland abroad.

Personally, I think this is a very smart strategy for nations in a globalized world.  Using symbols and national history to tie the global migrant to a nation is, I think, a very worthwhile enterprise.  The Portuguese are very fortunate in that their history lends itself to a positive narrative about migration.  Other diasporas don't have that history and some even have governments that don't seem to care that they are losing influence and people.  Their view of the nation is too tightly bound with territory - something that makes less and less sense as we march into the 21st century.

These governments could do worse than to look to Portugal for how it might be done differently:

"If the emigrant is a vehicle through which the Portuguese can think about their attachment to their homeland,  if the emigrant is a vehicle though which the Portuguese can find their roots in their past, if the emigrant is a vehicle through which the Portuguese can represent their ecumenical and tolerant spirit, then the emigrant is also a vehicle for the expression of greatness - for the extension of thought beyond the boundaries of a small country wedged between Spain and the Atlantic Ocean at the very edge of Europe.  The emigrant unbinds the Portuguese nation and Portuguese culture."

Transplanted Women and the Transmission of Culture

Arun Kapil very kindly passed along an article I'd been looking for by Gabrielle Varro about Franco-American couples in France that was published in the July 1993 edition of Hommes et Migrations.

Gabrielle Varro is a CNRS researcher in anthropology and sociology who has studied bi-lingualism, immigration and the sociology of mixed-marriages.  In 1972 she worked with an organization here in France called the Association of American Wives of Europeans (AAWE) on a study that became a book called The Transplanted Woman:  a Study of French-American Marriages in France.  I read that book years ago and am still trying to get a copy of it at a reasonable price. 

What is so interesting about French-American marriages and families?  Certainly if you are in one, it is of personal interest to you (and to me).  But why would someone want to make that a subject of serious research?

Because we can learn a lot about bi-national, bi-lingual and bi-cultural families by looking at this particular mix.  Consider the following:

1.  No developed/developing country dynamic.  Both France and the US are developed countries with high standards of living.  A woman or man who moves in either direction to join a spouse is probably not going to see a huge rise (or fall) in his or her standard of living.

2.  A different category of migrant:  Because the standards of living are so close, it's very unlikely that a French spouse in the US or an American spouse in France will ever be accused of marrying a national just to get a Green Card or a Carte de Resident.  When asked "Why are you here?" the answer, "Because I married a Frenchman or woman" is considered more than satisfactory by the natives.  (Though as an answer to a home country national's question, "Why did you leave?" it can provoke interesting and sometimes hostile reactions.)     

3.  Powerful cultures:  Both countries have a certain cultural "rayonnement."  French culture is widely admired the world over.  American culture is perhaps less attractive but certainly prevalent all over the world.  So there is some equality on the culture and the language front.

By excluding those things as factors, other things come to light.  Perhaps the most important of these is the relative power of each person in that marriage.  Is there inequality in spite of the relatively equal status of their appartenances étatiques?  And how could the power dynamics of such a relationship be measured and studied?

Varro decided to look at both the couples and the children of such marriages.  These are households with at least two cultural and linguistic possibilities.  The choice of language, the number of visits allowed to the other country, certain cultural values, and even religion show the rivalry that occurs in the molding of the identity of a bi-national couple's offspring.  Varro chose to focus on two variables:  language and religion.

Let's think about that for a moment and consider some concrete examples.  What happens to a Franco-American couple where the American woman is a Protestant Christian and her French husband is Catholic?  Perhaps the two can agree to disagree at the time of the marriage but when the children are born the questions begin:  In which church will the child be baptized?  Where will they send the child for religious education?  In the case where they cannot agree and decide to do nothing, who can be said to have "won" here?  It's not obvious and it's not a decision that can be made unilaterally.  The American woman may be deeply unhappy about the final decision but gives in for diverse reasons.  One of the reasons I have seen is that it is very difficult for an American migrant woman here to face down not only her French husband but his entire family who may not be particularly croyant but do expect a baptism at the local church, to be tapped as godparents, and to have a big party complete with the distribution of dragées.  For someone raised as a church-going Southern Baptist, that is not a small concession.

On the language front is a very similar battle.  It is very rare for a French spouse in France or an American spouse in the US to refuse outright to have the children learn the language of the other spouse.  However, that does not mean that they want the same weight given to the two languages.  By word and by deed there can be a subtle undermining of the non-native spouse's efforts. It can be something as simple as a withdrawal - not hindering but not helping either - a refusal to make it a common project.  This sends a message to the children that learning the other language is "nice to have" but Papa (or Maman) doesn't think it's very important.  And, alas, Papa or Maman ( Mom or Dad) are backed up by an entire nation of people who think the same way and see no good reason why a child raised in France or in the United States should be learning another language at the same time and at the same level as the official one.

In 1991 Varro followed up her original research and sent out a questionnaire to 89 Franco-American couples living in France and their parents. She also sent it  to 171 of their children aged 18 or older and  their spouses and 60 of their children.   Four generations.   The results were published in the 1993 article Couples Franco-Américains en France:  Genèse et devenir d'une mixité.

About that second generation -  the children of the original Franco-American couples living in France -    Varro makes this observation about them and their American mothers:

"Le bilinguisme des enfants représente pour les mères américaines le seul compromis acceptable dans une situation qui, sans lui, risquait de voir disparaitre leur langue d'origine" 

(The bilingualism of the children represents for American mothers, the only acceptable compromise in a situation where, without them, their language of origin would disappear.)

That's a very true statement but the question is why is it so important?  Of all the things that an American mother could pass on to her children while living abroad why does English matter so much?  Does it really make a difference if an 8-year old French/American child can read, write and speak English fluently?   The French public school could care less and may even be hostile to the idea (especially with very young children).  It is perfectly possible that the English can wait until the children are older and I know Franco-American families who did this with perfectly good results.  

I'm going to speak from my own experience here and say that it mattered very much to me.  In retrospect, it was a reaction to many things and had as much to do with me as a woman migrant as it did with my children.  

Guilt:  a certain residual guilt reinforced by my compatriots back in the homeland that I was something less of an American because I married a Frenchman and lived in his country.  So some of it was a signal that I was not less, and to prove it and my loyalty to the homeland I went to extraordinary efforts to pass on this one thing - pure, unaccented, standard American English.  

Pressure:  That came from family and friends back in the US.  The grandparents wanted to be able to speak to their grandchildren.  All very normal.  But there was stress associated with that expectation.  When I sent the Frenchlings home I always braced myself for comments about their English.  Would they pass?  It was definitely wrapped up with the sense that I was being judged as both a mother and an American.

Identity:  There were times over the last 20 years when the pendulum swung too far for my own comfort in the direction of assimilation.  I didn't feel like "me" anymore and it was frightening.  To be able to speak English in my own home made me feel better.  A place to retreat and regroup when things weren't going so well.  

Something extra:  English, like French, is a high-status language.  Like all parents I wanted to give my Frenchlings something extra - a language that is spoken all over the world - with nearly no effort on their part.  It was a gift that I believed would serve them well.  Not unlike making children start piano lessons when they are young and malleable.  "You'll thank me for this when you get older."  

Power:  And finally there was the question of power.  To be able to pass on my language was a way of showing that I was an equal partner in my marriage with equal influence over the children.  That my culture and language mattered just as much as his and this would be reflected in part of me being included in the making of them. 

What does Varro have to say about all this?  Well, though I and other Franco-American women in France may have aspired to language and cultural equality in our bi-national marriages, the reality is that the battle is not and never was an equal one.

Dans le cas des couples residant en France, l'avantage revient au père Francais car les enfants parleront de toute manière la langue du pays de residence.  Leur bilinguisme est certes une "victoire" pour la femme transplantée, il signifie qu'elle a réussi à transmettre une partie importante de son identité, mais il est difficile d'evaluer le prix subjectif de ce qu'elle a "donné" pour l'obtenir.
(In the case of couples living in France, the advantage is to the French father because in any case the children will speak the language of the country of residence.  Their bilingualism is surely a "victory" for the transplanted woman, it signifies that she has succeeded in transmitting and important part of her identity, but it is difficult to evaluate the subjective price of what she "gave" in order to get it.) 

L'homme a obtenu que les enfants soient elevés dans sa religion (catholique, le plus souvent) mais lui, par contre, n'a pas du "donner" sa langue, puisque les enfants sont, non pas anglophone, mais bilingue avec le francais dominant.
(The man won the right to raise the children in his religion (usually Catholic) but he did not have to "give" his language because the children are (not English-speakers) but bilingual with French as the dominant language.)

This is what I refer to as the "home court advantage."  The native spouse does not have to do anything in his or her own country to transmit his language and his culture.  Not much effort is required here.  But for the foreign spouse it is a battle that is waged over years and has uncertain results - children with varying degrees of competence in the other language, though most are bi-lingual in some sense.  But even if they are bi-lingual, the language of the country of residence will most likely be dominant over the other one.

What happens in the third generation?  Varro looked at language transmission from the second generation to the third.  In two cases out of three the effort at bilingualism (English/French) had disappeared.  Only a third of the grandchildren were being raised bi-lingual.  

Fascinating.

I recommend without reservation Varro's work.  I have scanned the article and will happily send it to anyone who would like a copy.  Hopefully I will be able to get a copy of her book soon so I can re-read it.  She has another article that I'm looking for called Americans in Europe, a Sociolinguistic Perspective. Probes in Northern and Western Europe in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language n° 133.   If anyone knows where I can obtain a copy, I would be most grateful for the information.

 Just a few final observations and questions here from my read of this article:

1.  American and French culture and language are not any more powerful than any other culture or language in the world.  "Language loss" will occur just as it does for any other migrant group over time.

2.  The assumption that having an American or a French parent means that the children will speak the language well and receive all the "important" cultural goods wherever they happen to be living is simply not the case.  Relying entirely on the migrant parent to shoulder this responsibility (or placing unrealistic expectations on him or her) will yield uncertain results.  

3.  Gender matters here. France or the US,  where the father is a native and the family is living in his country, the transmission of the mother's culture and language can be much more difficult.  The lack of relative power comes from the dual status of migrant women - they are women and foreigners. Coming from a developed country does not overcome the basic inequality of women in these marriages.   It would be interesting to know if this is globally true - even of other countries which have more egalitarian societies.  I would also be very interested in hearing from American and French men who are living in their spouse's countries.  What is their experience?

4.  Since both countries transmit citizenship via jus sanguinas (blood) there can be a complete divorce here between culture, language and citizenship.  Under both countries' laws it is entirely possible for someone to speak no English (or French), to know nothing of French or American culture, but to still be part of the nation. 

I would not argue from the last fact for more restrictions in citizenship laws.   What I would argue for is more attention and services for these countries' diasporas.  There is clearly a desire on the part of American men and women abroad (and I assume French as well) to transmit at least the language to their dual-national children.  Knowing that this is not an easy task for American and French migrants alike, funding for language and basic civic classes would be very helpful and in the best interests of the homeland as well.

And perhaps services like these would make some Americans abroad more willing to swallow the bitter pill of double taxation.

Just a thought.

Pinktober in Paris

Last Sunday I had the immense pleasure of walking in the Odyssea march against breast cancer.

October is often referred to as "Pinktober" among us breast cancer sufferers/survivors.  Lots of manifestations all over the world to raise awareness and money for research into better treatment options.  The marchers/runners/walkers dress in pink (not my favorite color) to show their support for the cause.

It is a cause that is more controversial than you might think.  As one blogger put it, "cancer isn’t cute. It is a mortal illness. It disfigures. It kills."  There are also criticisms of just how useful raising awareness is (mammograms don't necessarily mean higher survival rates).  There is also some anger on the part of those facing Stage IV (late state breast cancer) because the research (and the money) tend to be devoted to treating and curing the earlier and more easily treatable stages .  Very little, they say, goes to the treatment of breast cancer that has already spread and is complex to treat.  Scorchy over at The Sarcastic Boob is boycotting the events and will not discuss them on her blog.

And I just read this extraordinary post up on Considering the lilies - lessons from the field called Booby-trapped this October.  Read it and you won't be able to look at those pink ribbons in quite the same way ever again.

I'm aware of all this and even agree with most of it.  Nonetheless, last year a group of people marched for me and others and they even sent me a picture when I was doing chemo.  This year I'm just so grateful to be able to walk and to have my hair and fingernails back.  So to celebrate being alive, and in the spirit of service and of giving back, I agreed to be "pinked" and to get out there with the other 30,000 people that Sunday at the Chateau de Vincennes.

We had a wonderful time.  I participated in the 5 km walk with a group of Franco-American women.  the organizer of our group came with ribbons for our hair and flowers for our lapels.  A few minutes into the march a women's percussion group called Zalinde was performing and they were HOT!   To give you some idea of their style, here is a video of one of their performances:



I was dragging at the end and it took me two days to recover  - deep deep fatigue.  I now know my limit and it is 5 km.

Still, I'm very glad I went and I want to thank all the ladies I met, and the organizer of our group, for making it such a special and festive occasion and for giving me the opportunity to be a "fashion victim."

France/US FATCA IGA Signing Postponed

"My government isn't working.  What shall I do?"

"Have you tried turning it off and on?"

One of the consequences of the U.S. government being firmly in the "off" position right now is that the signing of the France/USA FATCA deal was cancelled.  At a press conference in Washington French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said:

"We were supposed to sign the French-US convention implementing FATCA which, unfortunately, must be delayed at the request of the Americans because of the shutdown and the working conditions at the US Treasury."

I suspect that regardless of who may or may not have been available to put pen to paper, the timing was terrible.  France is a big win for Treasury and their victory would not have garnered much attention with all the brouhaha over the shutdown.

What we can safely say, however, is that there is an FATCA IGA coming soon to theaters near to us in France.  But we still don't know the particulars though we are all pretty certain that it's a Model I agreement (see comments on yesterday's post).  

Yesterday, a Flophouse reader did leave a link to an intriguing story in Les Echos,  Le modèle d’accord intergouvernemental français enfin prêt pour signature.  The authors claimed to have inside information about the negotiations.  The French government had three objectives, they said:  reciprocity (the French want information from the US), the legal security of French financial institutions, and the protection of personal data.   Here are a few of the details they say are in the IGA:

• Les diligences à respecter devraient être établies par le Trésor public plutôt que selon les règles de l’IRS. Cela devrait permettre une approche par ligne de métier ;

(The procedures to follow should be established by the French Treasury rather than according to the IRS rules. This should allow an approach by line of business.)

• Exclusions des produits d’épargnes (livret A notamment), des caisses de retraite, des produits d’épargnes retraites, et des FCPE. Le PEA reste inclus dans le périmètre FATCA ;

(Exclusion of the proceeds of savings (notably the Livret A), pensions, retirement savings and the FCPEs.  The PEA remains within the scope of FATCA;)

All this to be confirmed as soon as the US government gets turned back on and has the time to boot up.

Last word.  Something that I and others (French citizens at home and abroad and legal residents of France) have been very frustrated by is the lack of transparency by the French government about these negotiations.  There has been almost no information forthcoming about it and precious little attention paid to the impact on private citizens (not banks).

We are very aware that this IGA is going to have an enormous personal impact on us and our families.  And yet even today all we can do is sit and wait and stew and speculate.

But there is more than one way to skin a cat.  

The United States has something called the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  Anyone can petition the US government for information pertaining to a particular topic and, unless it is top secret for one reason or another, it is usually granted.

James Jatras of Repeal FATCA has submitted an FOIA request for:

"copies of records in connection with negotiation of IGAs with the governments of Canada, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The request covers “all departmental records (paper or electronic) concerning communications (emails, paper correspondence, or records of in-person meetings) between Treasury officials and officials of the three foreign states indicated above relevant to negotiation of IGAs with such foreign states, as well as departmental records concerning worldwide implementation of FATCA that may be relevant to the IGAs with any of the three foreign states indicated."

I humbly suggest that we file another FOIA asking for exactly the same data about the IGA negotiations between France and the US.   

What do you think?