Heres the flipside of the story....

" I understand Joey Barton's faux French accent: he's just an expat trying to fit in
If you've never lived abroad and been reduced to tears by a perplexing aisle of foreign muesli, don't laugh at Barton's travails"
Before yesterday, I didn't think that I had anything in common with footballer Joey Barton, the Queens Park Rangers midfielder currently on loan to Marseille. Indeed, I did not know who Joey Barton was. But yesterday afternoon, I watched Joey Barton give a press conference with a fake French accent and I felt a thud of recognition, like I was looking in the mirror, and a northern footballer with a fake French accent and a history of violent conduct looking back at me "Joey Barton," I said, in a fake German accent (I moved to Berlin two months ago), "I don't even really know who you are, but you and I are not so different at all.

For only when you've been an expat yourself – I've been one for 13 years, having not made my home in the country where I was born since I was 18 – can you understand the bizarre behaviour that the experience of being a stranger in a mildly strange land can elicit: the urge to adhere to national stereotypes, as if doing so might be a shortcut to belonging.

Both Barton and I have opted for gentle immigration experiences, living as expats in countries where all the comforts of home are available, albeit weird versions of them. It's brave, but only a tiny bit: it's less difficult than it is irritating. In contrast with home, our challenges may feel dramatic, but they're really banal: how do I use a bank machine, what's a typical breakfast, why did those people just shout at me for crossing the road? The illusion of overall familiarity in countries that are not too unlike where we're from prompts a belief that it shouldn't be long before we fit in like locals. We hasten to demonstrate our devotion to our new homes by out-nativing the natives. In the process, we humiliate ourselves. But at least we are trying."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...t-expat-fit-in