On Becoming Mentonnais

As most people will acknowledge, beginning college is a big accomplishment and so it makes sense that it would be hard. Coming to Menton, you assume you will face all sorts of challenges, and the town certainly doesn’t falter in that regard. For example, French bureaucracy and administrative incompetence, is in many ways key to defining the student experience over the two years. 

Yet, after having been here for a month, I found myself grappling with a deeper and more persistent difficulty, a kind of existential unease. I had never expected to find it so hard to assimilate. At first glance, Menton seems to present itself as a joyous, picturesque Mediterranean beach town with its endless lemons and famed festivals — what’s not to love?

Yet, for much of my first few days, the town seemed quite impersonal to me: I felt disconnected. Because for all its beauty, I felt as if Menton always found a way to avoid intimacy. It pushed me to ask, what does it mean to be a part of this town anyways? 

In the days that followed, I attempted to pinpoint why I felt so detached, and the more I dwelled on it, the more I realized that my problems lied in how I viewed Menton. I saw it as an ambiguous place, formed out of a sort of placelessness. And that’s not to say Menton lacks a rich cultural character: Menton is well-known for its unique cultural offerings, binding the Mediterranean and Italy with greater France. Rather, it was Menton’s relationship with tourism that alienated me.

You see, as I walked through town, I noticed how the faces of the passerbys moved in a constant flux, especially in the early weeks of the semester as the summer vacation period stretched on. In a similar manner did tourists flood into town, and with them, new tongues were momentarily introduced into Menton’s alleyways. Neighborhoods then became revolving doors, with new people every other day moving into various lodgings across the street. The town seemed to bend to accommodate such temporality, and at least in my eyes, its identity seemingly got more and more lost in the mix.

My existence as a student in the town felt paradoxical in that sense: as I attempted to embed myself into a culture that wasn’t mine, how could I even hope of achieving such integration amidst such transience? I felt lost in a place that I saw as belonging to no one, tailor-made to indulge tourists in their escapist fantasies. So I asked myself the question: am I truly any different than the tourists who pass through town, or if I too, am simply stuck in a space where I would feel constantly out of place?

Of course though, Menton’s reputation as a site of disengagement and relaxation, was nothing new relative to the state of the rest of the world. In reality, what I felt was not a unique local condition, but rather the consequence of globalization and mass tourism in its purest sense. It’s well known that such phenomena when unchecked can lend various harms, not only economically disadvantaging local populations, but also in terms of spatial and cultural erosion. Whilst in larger cities such as France’s metropoles, gentrification and "airbnbification" has taken the helm, even smaller communities are seeing the consequences of such mass tourism through the commodification and consequent oversimplification of their cultural identities. Menton arguably faces both of these challenges, being victim to a housing crisis (with over 1000 local families waiting on social housing) whilst simultaneously relying on popularized images (such as its lemons) to continue attracting tourists.

In all honesty, it should come as no surprise that the town so famously known as “The Pearl of France” faces such issues, but when I first discovered Menton’s issues, I was in pure shock. And perhaps even more than a sense of surprise, I felt unsettled, questioning my own culpability in the proliferation of Menton’s problems as a foreigner. As students, our economic and social presence may be more limited than the average French retiree, yet they are not negligible. To Menton, we bring with us everything from our pasts, including our languages, habits, and expectations. Some of us are in the privileged position to afford private accommodation, which many local families currently cannot. Though my French thankfully has improved since arriving, I also remember feeling quite guilt-ridden during my first few days in town when locals would feel the need to default to English to help me get by. It’s in these instances, within even the smallest interactions, in which I am reminded of my identity as an outsider, and in turn, the influence I yield in the town’s social dynamics.

Given the nature of existence, I eventually came to the conclusion amidst my quest to assimilate that I could not remove myself from this reality — to attempt to make myself invisible as to pass through the streets ignored would be futile. I will always be, to some extent, a foreigner in these lands. This, I cannot escape. In contrast, I realized that I must be aware, and recognize, at the very least for transparency’s sake, that my presence is intrinsically linked to the local environment and all the problems that circulate within it. I recognize now that there is truly no middle ground: I am part of the problem. 

That is not to say though that I must tie myself blindly to such a fate. If not only for me to feel shame and have some remorse, I believe it is the recognition of my culpability which will enable me to involve myself in city affairs in a much more positive way. Because if I cannot detach myself from these systems, then at the very least I can change how I engage with such spaces. And these changes can apply to even the smallest acts, from being informed and engaging with local happenings to interacting with locals wherever possible. It can be Anto organizing Retro nights in town, the BDA inviting local artists to host workshops, or the various political societies on campus that contribute to regional political debates whilst attending local protests. There exists an array of opportunities for me, and other students like me, to get involved! And though it should be beared in mind that local hostility to Sciences Pistes is not unheard of, I would hope that it would be such interest in engaging with our local communities that could build bridges past such strife, or if not, at least enable us to temporarily set aside our differences for the greater good of the town.

As French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas claims, through his concept of infinite  responsibility, it is responsibility which provides the foundation to be present and by extension, the self. The self is not autonomous or internal: it is called into existence via how it relates itself to others, through our responses to society itself. Thus, I return to my question on integrating into the locality, with the understanding that if I am to ever feel at home here, it is for the responsibility I choose to take upon myself. Responsibility may be uncomfortable and exhausting, but it is precisely in deciding to bear it that one is able to distinguish themselves from the apathy that some who pass through our streets may hold: making good on our obligations to the people in town, to those on campus, to those around us. So I say, through action, it is how we begin to belong. And dare I say, through action, it is how we become Mentonnais.

Photo Source: Claire Tresse, Flickr