New survey names and shames Paris as worst European city for expats

The popular InterNations Expat City Ranking survey of 51 world cities has slammed Paris into last place in the ‘ease of settling in’ category.

Would-be expats and those relocating for business reasons could well be forgiven for being totally confused by the huge number of surveys revealing every aspect of individual destinations via a poll of expat ‘been there, done that’ replies. Many of the surveys contradict others, but it has to be noted there’s nothing ambiguous about Paris’s spectacular fall from grace in this most important category, especially as it’s the Parisians themselves who are at fault.

It seems the major contributing factor in Paris’s downfall was the cold, unwelcoming attitude of the average Parisian towards foreigners in general, horribly apparent in spite of the fact that a majority of Parisian businesses thrive on the zillions of tourists arriving every year in the City of Lights. Just under half all respondents to the French part of the survey scored local friendliness unfavourably, referring to Parisians as difficult and distant. According to 58 per cent of expats, as against the global average of 33 per cent, making new friends is almost impossible. It seems the French have no interest in broadening their experience of people outside their narrow social and family milieu.

In the overall survey, Paris scraped in at 49th place on the list of 51, surrounded by undesirables such as Nigeria, Lagos, Jeddah and Saudi Arabia. In addition to friendless lives in the world’s most romantic city, expats in Paris don’t feel at home, especially if they’ve been unable to master the language. The high cost of living and constant frustration caused by problems in making ends meet were also mentioned by respondents.

Almost half of France’s 102,000 InterNations expat members live in Paris with, it seems, the vast majority wishing they didn’t. At lease two respondents, US citizens Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johnson, have voted with their feet since the survey was taken and are now living back home in the USA.