This article is part of Letters Home for Christmas, an Irish Times series exploring views about Ireland among young emigrants as the year draws to a close
On a packed Paris Métro during rush hour on any given morning, the sounds and voices of Donegal’s Highland Radio, aired from more than 1,000km away, play in the ears of Ryan O’Connor.
“It’s quite funny, the concept of listening to Highland on the metro,” he says. “It always makes me smile a bit.”
It’s O’Connor’s second year living in the French capital, having moved there to pursue a master’s degree in European Affairs and Economic Policy at Sciences Po, which he is set to complete next summer.
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Originally from Donegal, O’Connor has observed that “Parisians are the Dubs of France”. During his daily commute, “nobody speaks to each other, nobody looks at each other”.
“I do miss being able to talk to strangers,” he says. “Growing up in Donegal, I’m very used to chatting to sort of anyone you’d see in the street, or if you’re sitting on a bus sitting chatting to a person beside you, or whatever, and getting all those nice little interactions that put you in touch with the people around you and the community you’re in.”
O’Connor is speaking to The Irish Times just over a month before Christmas. The festive lights have already gone up on the street where he lives, and miniature trees for the tight balconies and small apartments of the city have begun to pop up in local stores. “I suppose we need to go out and get one soon,” he notes.
Though he’s enjoying the festive spirit in Paris, he is very excited to spend two weeks at home in Donegal this Christmas, where he will see his family and most of his friends from secondary school, with whom he is still very close.
“I thought more [people] would go to Australia,” he says. “I haven’t really lost anyone from Donegal yet to emigration. I’m the emigrant, I suppose.”
O’Connor initially considered Trinity College in Dublin for his master’s, where he completed his undergraduate degree, but the cheaper cost of public universities in Paris attracted him to make the move.
He notes that Sciences Po “calculate their fees based on family income”, meaning his two-year master’s is costing approximately €2,500, compared to the master’s degree courses he was looking at in Dublin, which ranged from €10,000 to €15,000.
When he’s not listening to Highland Radio, O’Connor stays connected with home through the Centre Culturel Irlandais, which regularly hosts Irish artists, poets, authors and musicians.
He says that it’s “almost easier” to catch Irish musicians in Paris than in Ireland. He recently attended one of Galway DJ Kettama’s sets in the city, and plans to see the Dunboyne singer-songwriter CMAT at the Le Trianon venue in spring.
O’Connor has also taken great pride in introducing friends from across Europe to the GAA in the summer months, and “had a load of friends from different places cheering for Donegal” in the local Irish pub.
He feels there’s lots of factors about Paris that make life “really good” for young people, citing the night-time economy.
[ Ireland’s deep cultural connections with the French capital and France itselfOpens in new window ]
“There’s a different sort of drinking culture,” he notes. “I’ll go out a few times a week for two or three pints with friends – there’s less binge drinking.
“In Ireland, I don’t know if it’s because it’s a drinking culture, or because pints are more expensive, but it’s the idea that if you go out, you have to get drunk, and there’s no point in drinking unless you’re going to get drunk.”
He takes advantage of free or reduced-price museum entry for people under 26, which he says makes the city more accessible. While staying connected to Irish culture, O’Connor has also ensured he can immerse himself in French life through taking an intensive French language course, which has brought him to a C1 (advanced proficiency) level of the language.
Reflecting on whether he will ever return to Ireland, he says “it depends what comes up”.
“I’m doing an internship at a French video games company in January, which I’m really excited for. I suppose it depends where I go from there. There’s a couple of things I’m applying for in Dublin, but there’s also stuff I’m applying for here, and I think if things were even, I’d prefer to stay here or go somewhere else, but if the right thing came up in Dublin, I would be open to moving back.”
The result of last year’s general election, however, has affected his outlook on returning home.
“Seeing that election going the way it did, and seeing a continuation of the same housing policy that’s failed over the past decades, two decades really, I think, made me lose a bit of hope for how possible, or how feasible it would be to move home.”
Observing the election from abroad, he says that there was the chance for it to be “a really pivotal moment to be able to turn things around” for housing policy, which he sees as a “huge reason why some people have emigrated”.
“Five more years of the same sort of policy is going to do damage for the rest of our lives,” he says.
However, he feels that the election of President Catherine Connolly has “brought a lot of people hope”.
“The sort of attention behind that here was huge. And I think it’s really interesting being able to show it to my other European friends and just be like, this is what our presidential elections are looking like right now.”
His European classmates, he says, found the topics highlighted by Irish media during the campaign fascinating, such as the comments made by Ivan Yates that Fine Gael should “smear the bejaysus” out of Catherine Connolly, and the €3,300 debt owed by Jim Gavin to a former tenant.
“I think other Europeans found it quite funny that we were focusing on, you know, single phrases like that,” he says.
He feels the Irish news cycle can be “very focused” on “very small things” happening within Ireland. “I definitely feel like I was living in a very Irish-centric bubble when I was living there,” he says.
While the possibility of returning home lingers in the air for O’Connor, for now, he’s enjoying “being out of Ireland” and “seeing a lot of the world”, in between visits home to family in Donegal.
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