Feature - Happiness and Foreigners

It's just the first few weeks of the decade, and already, we seem to be awash with happiness surveys, and satisfaction indices. International Living's recently released Quality of Life Index lists Switzerland as number three among the list of places that offer you the best quality of life, behind France and Australia. Is it realistic, however, to use these surveys as a guiding light towards a career/educational/lifestyle change?

Consider the Quality of Life survey - while the ranking itself is derived from official sources like the UNESCO, WHO, the math is overshadowed by the magazine's own fatuous, touristy take on what it might be like to live in these cities. Here's what they have to say about Paris - " I always wish quality of life indicators could measure a country's heart and soul. But it's impossible to enumerate the joy of lingering for hours over dinner and a bottle of red wine in a Parisian brasserie..."

The writers clearly make more money and have more time on their hands than an average working Parisien. Most foreigners moving into a city like Paris face an intimidating house hunt ahead of them, many students in Paris live there as squatters, or pay absurd amounts of money to camp out on someone's couch. Language acts as another significant barrier to new entrants to France, or indeed most parts of Europe, not to mention artificially imposed barriers on job mobility in a seemingly endless recession.

Can quality of life be pinned down to the bricks and mortar of amenities like health, cleanliness, transportation and technology? Family, relationships, culture, friendships, art - do they count? Perhaps it is impossible to lay out how much we value these in our lives in black and white tables of numbers. Or perhaps it is - Costa Ricans recently ranked their satisfaction with their lives at an average of 8.5 on a scale of 10, putting them on top of a poll comprising 142 countries. Many foreigners living in any single country for an extended period of time choose to deal with cultural isolation through "ghettoising" themselves, they create mini replicas of their home countries, in an attempt to feel more at home, and to help their children relate to their ethnicity.                               

People making the move are not the only ones who face issues, the countries on the receiving end of large scale influx from immigrants are also doing some serious soul searching. Europe's ageing population is increasingly voting in favour of cultural protectionism, as they struggle to keep some part of their beautiful spaces to themselves. Patrick Marnham's recent exploration of Secret Venice for Conde Nast brings out the angst of the local residents" They are everywhere....with their cameras and ridiculous back bags.....Venice is doomed, the city is dying," is the frustrated outburst of a Venetian local.

Setting aside the positive impact that immigration has to their economies, citizens are not just voting to stand up for what they believe are essential components of their individual cultures, but asking newcomers to either put up with "integration" or leave.

Faced with having to interact with foreign culture on a day to day basis also has had the effect of bringing out hidden skeletons; Australian educational institutes recently saw a 46% drop in enrolment of Indian students, in the light of alleged racist targeting of Indians.

Would everyone just be better off where they were, then? Will the next few decades see an emerging trend of "deglobalisation", a contraction in the will people have to leave their home countries? Or will we see the emergence of more "potboiler" cities like Dubai, a fantastic, futuristic, glitzy mishmash of a metro that unabashedly attempts to recreate the best of the world in the middle of the desert?

Soothsaying apart, it is clear that it is not a clash of the civilizations that we need to be worrying about, but a clash within civilizations, a struggle to hold on to cultural icons that are dear to us in a world that has seemingly eased exchange to the point of universal uniformity. Either way, we should count ourselves as lucky to perhaps be the last few generations that will be able to view the world as we know it now.

Reading Picks

• International Living - 2010 Quality of Life Index
• Paris - Discrimination - Finding a place to live in Paris
• Is Costa Rica Really the Happiest Nation on Earth?
• Plans to build Lyon in Dubai