Noémie Hautot, a master’s student of Globalisation and Development Studies, is sitting on her leather couch in her room near Emmaplein with a mason jar of water in her hands and a smile on her face. The windows are wide open. Behind her, on an old record sleeve leaning against the wall, is a dancing man. It’s Herman van Veen, a well-known Dutch singer. “I found it at the thrift store. I’ve never listened to the record, I don’t even know who he is, but I just like the way it looks. I got almost everything in this room from the thrift store.”
Eight times
Just like her room, her life seems quite chaotic. During her childhood in France, she changed schools no less than eight times. “We moved around a lot, first in Normandy and later near Geneva.” As a teenager, she already had plans to go abroad. France never truly felt like home to her. “I found the part of Normandy I knew – the industrial area around Le Havre – ugly and the people in the Alps racist and homophobic. I didn’t feel like I belonged.”
The frequent moves made it difficult for her to form deep and lasting connections with others. She still struggles a bit with this. “On the last day of school, I just told my friends, ‘Bye, I’ll never see you again!’ We weren’t close. It hurts, sure, but I was used to it.”
After secondary school, she was finally free to leave France. But where to? “I looked at the map. I wanted to go as far away as possible. Vancouver seemed interesting and open-minded, so I moved to Canada on my own.” She worked various jobs there and generally had a good time. “I had to leave because of the pandemic. That’s when I thought, maybe I should go to university. I was interested in studying digitisation, which is a topic I care about. But no one in my family had gone to university. I had no concept of life as a student.”
What she did know was that she didn’t want to go back to the stifling world of France. And she wanted to enrol in an English-taught programme, to become fluent in two languages. She’d previously visited Amsterdam and liked it there, so that seemed like a good option. But the programme in Amsterdam didn’t have a spot for her. The bachelor’s programme of Digital Society in Maastricht did. Was it a problem for her to go to Maastricht instead? “I thought, ‘Oh, it must be similar to Amsterdam, everything in the Netherlands is probably the same”, she laughs. “I was 18 and naïve.”
No lifelong relationships
She quickly realised that Maastricht is a lot smaller than Amsterdam, but she didn’t mind. By then, the pandemic had hit, and everyone was sheltering in place anyway. Studying turned out to be easier than expected. “From the first week, I found the programme very interesting. The literature, discussing it with my fellow students… I thought, ‘This is really for me.’ But I didn’t think about what I could do with my degree.” Now, more than three years later, pursuing her master’s degree, she still has no concrete plans. But she’s certain of one thing: “I want a meaningful job. I don’t want to work in the private sector, but for an NGO or in the public sector, maybe somewhere in Latin America. For me, work is also about the exchange of cultural knowledge. Money isn’t the most important thing.”
So what is? “Exploring, travelling. That’s why I want to leave the Netherlands again – it’s too much like France. I’ve seen enough of Western Europe.”
She wants to go to another country or continent, with no obligations, not dependent on anyone or anything. That means no relationship, either. “My parents are divorced. I don’t really believe in lifelong relationships anyway.” She doesn’t want children either. Partly, she says, “because the world is f*cked. Our history is a burden weighing on us. Do you really want to bring a child into this world?”
She’s also not convinced she’d be any good at it. “There’s always a 50 per cent chance of raising a child well and a 50 per cent chance of things going wrong. It’s a gamble.”
But, she admits, that’s how she feels now. “I’m proud of where I am. And what I want right now is freedom. But later, when I’m 30 or something, who knows? Maybe everything will be different by then. I might meet someone who already has children – I’d be fine with that, too. We’ll see.”