‘I no more decided to emigrate than one decides to get hit by a bus, or fall in love’

Last year I became a naturalised French citizen during a ceremony at the Préfecture des Bouches-des-Rhône in Marseilles, where I’d been living since January 2015. When I was called to the dais, the Préfet shook my hand, spoke familiarly about our countries’ common values, joked that as Ireland’s closest EU neighbour I hadn’t far to travel and gently ribbed me about our nations’ rugby rivalry. We were then enjoined to sing the Marseillaise.

I was 25 years old when I left Ireland in 2008. It had nothing to do with the recession, I merely wanted to live somewhere foreign. Though my father kidded at my going-away party that it was my “American wake”, I fully intended to return. I certainly didn’t think that I’d never come back. You know what they say about “best-laid plans”. Had I known, I might never have left.

I didn’t feel, as Joyce did, that the country I was leaving was an “old sow that eats her farrow”. I didn’t look upon my departure in the self-aggrandising terms of exile. No one forced my hand, nor was I voting with my feet. One can leave home, then emigrate, without quite intending to. I no more decided to emigrate than one decides to get hit by a bus, or fall in love, which is exactly what happened (the latter, that is).

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Though others might unreservedly extol the emigrant experience and/or censure life in Ireland, I find the grass is rarely greener or only in patches anyway. At a bus stop in Marseilles a woman once asked me where I came from. “But you find the quality of life is better here?” she asked. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact corresponding to whatever maudlin image she’d formed about Ireland. The truth is I find the quality of life in Ireland and France comparable; each country has its strengths as well as its shortcomings.

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How is it then that I never looked back?

The truth is I did. For a time I thought we might move to Ireland, but gradually we put down roots, and after Covid we had a child. It was at this time I applied for French citizenship, which is not an automatic right but described as an “honour”. People would ask why I wanted to become French. It’s the first question one is asked during a naturalisation interview. The decision to assume a second nationality is a subjective one, and people are naturally curious.

There isn’t a one-dimensional explanation for why it was important to me. There were practical considerations certainly. However, unlike with my British friends, there wasn’t the imperative of Brexit. My status as an EU citizen made any legal differences between me and my French hosts negligible.

Truth be told, perhaps I’d made the decision, on a subconscious level, 38 years ago – on Bastille Day 1985 – when a photograph of my brother and I at Kilmainham Gaol, where our ancestor was incarcerated at the end of the 18th century, appeared on the front page of the Irish Press newspaper.

Over the years I’ve met people who equate emigration with betrayal

James Bartholemew Blackwell become a naturalised French citizen in 1786 when he joined the Irish Legion and was an officer in the French army during the First Republic, and then under Napoleon I. In 1798 he participated in the Irish Expedition commanded by General Hoche when he was captured by the British and imprisoned. He was condemned to death but his sentence was commuted thanks to his French nationality.

I had no illusions that French nationality would spare me from the gallows, rather it was the idea of symmetry, of closing the circle, of being – to the best of my knowledge – the first person in my family since this antecedent to be granted French nationality, that appealed to me.

Ultimately, I didn’t want any barriers – tangible or intangible – between my son and me.

Over the years I’ve met people who equate emigration with betrayal. Once, in a conversation about voting rights for Irish-born people living abroad, I was told that “those who stay and pay should get a say,” as though one’s patriotic bona fides were conditional on one’s location.

Others feel the acquisition of a second nationality would diminish their sense of their own national identity. Yet, my Irish sense of self is unassailable. The Préfet correctly surmised, handing me my certificate of naturalisation, that my allegiance would irrevocably be to Irish rugby.

Today, we live in my partner’s hometown: Ajaccio, the capital city of the Mediterranean island Corsica and birthplace of Napoleon. The names and likenesses of any number of Bonapartes are ubiquitous here. Though I always refrain from reminding my in-laws that it was a fellow Dubliner (albeit a begrudging one) who defeated their immortal son, the marriage of our two islands, with so much in common, is a happy one.

Anthony Blackwell is from Dublin. He left Ireland in 2008 and now teaches in Corsica

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