Worrying article

[idun]

 This is where Val_2 and I diverge as if I had ended up widowed I would have left France immediately. I would never have considered  staying or even moving somewhere else in France.

There is most certainly more for me in the UK.

And looking after grandkids and elderly relatives is kif-kif between my friends in France and the UK. A good french friend, who still works, has her mother with dementia living with her. Her brothers and sisters won't help and complain about her not giving up work to be with their mother more. And another friend goes to help with the old lady and this friend looks after her grandkids too. As I said, no difference. I believe we are called the 'sandwich' generation.

[EuroTrash]

Just want to echo 'don't believe what you read in the papers' - as often as not journalists post a couple of adverts asking a certain group of people; such as returning ex-pats, to get in touch and tell their stories, they get a handful of responses, and that's their research done.

I would slightly disagee that those who come here to work are more likely to give up and go home than those who come here to retire; Obviously some haven't done their homework and don't make a go of it, but I think those who do put down stronger roots and are more likely to make it their forever home. Having been working here for several years I am often stunned at how little some (not all; by any means) of the retired brigade know about the country they have lived in for as long as I have if not longer - they know all the UK news but they don't know what,s going on in their own village, they are surprised to find the local shops closed on French public holidays, and they always talk about the UK as 'back at home'. To me they seem like they're here on an extended holiday.

[idun]

EuroTrash, maybe that is how they feel, that they are on an extended holiday. And if they chose to live such narrow blinkered lives, well I could never live anywhere and not know what was 'going on'. From the basics to if they could be putting up a wind farm or a new TGV line next to my back garden.

And the work, well doesn't that depend on what 'work'? A proper job with a proper company and one can live like everyone else in France, or just about, but in spite of that, France would never have been my forever home.

[EuroTrash]

I agree, I guess that is how they feel, and that being the case it is normal that at the end of the holiday they will go home. So I don't think the OP need worry too much about why people are leaving.