English Expat/immigrant communities around the world

April 28, 2018 1:49 AM

This is just out of curiosity but having lived in a few cities in the UK and visited similar enclaves globally, where are the British expat communities?

I'm used to areas in cities that have populations from other nations. The classic example is Chinatowns but there are loads of other examples - the Portuguese communities of New Jersey or South London. The French communities in Kensington. The Sri Lankan community on Staten Island.

Yet when I think (or Google) where Brits reside in a similar way abroad there seems very little. Yes there is the Costa Del Sol - or certain towns in France (Eymet for instance). But there seems does seem scant else? I seem to recall something in Buenos Aires but where it is IDK from Googling.

...and yes I am aware of Wee Britain.

posted by treblekicker to Travel & Transportation (14 answers total)

Brussels has huge British and American expat communities.
posted by humph at 2:24 AM on April 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think the example you gave of the Costa del Sol is pretty much the epitome of what you're looking for. The way some of the other communities came about such as where they may have been escaping war, or just emigrated from communities which are significantly culturally different from where they have migrated to, are derived from significantly different drivers to Brits emigrating (note how Brits are often referred to as "expats" rather than immigrants, although these are ostensibly the same thing) to another country.

Brits in the 21st century who are moving of their free will to another country (and also noting that they are probably more regularly migrating to culturally similar nations) are going to likely have less of a need to associate with an expat/immigrant community in the same way.
posted by ryanbryan at 2:55 AM on April 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think you're forgetting that in places that used to be British colonies, British immigrants wouldn't form small distinct communities like Chinese people in the U.S. did, because there weren't the same pressures of racism, nationalism, etc, working against them. British immigrants would just blend into the general population, since they were standard against which all other immigrants were measured.

So, for example, Boston, Massachusetts; New Haven, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island all still have a lot of laws, customs, and traditions that are heavily British-influenced, and they also still have a lot of people with British ancestry who can trace multiple generations of immigrants back to the ship their ancestors came over on from Britain. I think that's the closest you can get to a British equivalent to the historic Chinatowns.

In terms of modern immigration, here is a list of American cities that draw a lot of British expats: Denver, Colorado; Boston, Massachusetts; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Burlington, Vermont; New York City, New York; Saratosa, Florida; Kissimmee, Florida (near Orlando); Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California.
posted by colfax at 3:17 AM on April 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

There's great hordes of them running around LA, too.
posted by Celsius1414 at 4:21 AM on April 28, 2018

There are expat neighbourhoods populated by Brits in Marrakech. Expat enclaves tend to be multi-national these days, though.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:22 AM on April 28, 2018

There's a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires called Hurlingham that used to be very strongly British, or rather Anglo-Argentine, but other than a couple of very old ladies and The Hurlingham Club, it's gone pretty much mainstream Argentine now. Schools, churches, shops, everything used to be in English. The houses and gardens look english, there were english boarding schools. My wife's grandmother, born and bred in Argentina, considered herself English. She was one of the last of the hardcore Anglos in the area though.
I'm not sure if there are or were other english communities in other Argentine towns. If we're talking British, then there is the welsh area in Patagonia, not sure if there are any native speakers left down there.
I'm sure if you went to Kenya or Zimbabwe or maybe Belize, you'd find similar colonial leftovers (Argentina was a British colony in everything but name, economically), but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.
There are a large number of young Brits living in Buenos Aires, but they tend to stay for a year or two at most. Same here in Barcelona.
posted by conifer at 4:43 AM on April 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Huge British expat community in Hong Kong, although with the caveat of the particular colonial history.
posted by cushie at 6:23 AM on April 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Hong Kong for sure. I live here and it is trivial to go decades without speaking a word of Cantonese with, if you wanted to, an entirely British group of friends and relations. There are tens of thousands of British folks here, and millions of British National (Overseas) passport holders.

See also: Singapore. Interestingly, also, Bangkok.
posted by mdonley at 6:27 AM on April 28, 2018

Tokyo doesn't have specifically English neighborhoods, everything is too spread out for that, but there are certainly communities of British people here, and specific bars and other venues where you'll find a lot of them. Well, mostly bars I guess. I imagine that would be true in a lot of big first-world cities.
posted by Umami Dearest at 7:18 AM on April 28, 2018

Chiang Mai has a massive expat community: English teachers, digital nomads, and retirees. Broadly speaking, the younger ones live and hang out in the trendy Nimman neighborhood but it's not exclusively expat. The retirees British, Australian, Irish, American, i.e. English speaking, are at the pubs and bars in Loi Kroh which sport a lot of flags and giant flat screens for watching football and cricket but live scattered about although I stopped once on a highway outside the city to ask for directions at a roadside restaurant next to a gated community and everyone inside was Danish. That's where they lived, or had a holiday home at least. I think this sort of development starts in eg, Denmark. The project is announced, buyers sign up, et voila. I knew a Dutch guy who was going to do this in Indonesia.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:15 AM on April 28, 2018

Would Gibraltar also fit what you are looking for?

Canada, as a commonwealth country, has a huge British population (both recently arrived and generations of decent). Increasingly, they are a smaller part of the visible population and some are "ghettoising" themselves in smaller towns (Oakville, outside Toronto, used to be one, Niagara-on-the-Lake is another, and I believe Kingston has a sizeable population jousting against the United Empire Loyalists from the US war of Independence). Victoria, British Columbia is also another well-known British immigrant community. Canada also has the history of Quebec and a strong French tradition. Montreal for decades was the home of many Canadian businesses' head offices before they fled down the 401 to Toronto to avoid the "language police" back in the sixties and seventies. Montreal, a primarily French-speaking culture, has still has enclaves of English-speakers (tending to be from generations of English rather than recent immigrants however). I know people that spend decades in Montreal with just a passing familiarity with French (ie dep and le pepsi are the extent of their French) with English-only Protestant schools including an English-Language university.
posted by saucysault at 9:35 AM on April 28, 2018

Burlington, ON has a good-sized chunk: seemingly mostly Yorkshire/Lancashire. Toronto still has a lot of Scots, especially in the east end around Bendale. Both communities are aging out, though.
posted by scruss at 12:25 PM on April 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

In Ireland, you find them in West Cork
posted by Morpeth at 9:42 PM on April 28, 2018

The northern suburbs of Perth, Australia.
posted by imaginary_mary at 8:03 AM on April 29, 2018