Interesting to compare the challenges of a northerner moving south and vice versa. I think they are quite different problems. My mother (FL) and wife (AL) are both from the deep south but I'm a dyed in the wool Yankee. My best friend in high school was orginally from Alabama and we spent hours and hours playing a complicated Gettysburg board game for years, always taking the predictable side. So, yes, there are significant cultural differences and those seem to have been set in stone well before the Civil War. Yes, northerners are brash and their "normal" behavior is often grating to southerners who generally avoid conflict in social interactions. Yes, northerners are still operating under the "good fences make good neighbors" philosophy while southerners are famously hospitable. However, I don't think that a southerner moving north would need to worry at all about being accepted at work or neighborhood or socially. We not only tolerate southerners up here but we almost always like them. We even like Texans, at least as individuals (why are Texans so pleasant individually and so nuts as a group???) I think a good part of it is that deep down northerners are not at all threatened by southerners. We like their food, their accents are charming, they are almost always personable so what's not to like? Really no issue for a southerner moving north except for their need to adapt to our winters and less charming society. And, it is certainly easier to get good BBQ up north than it is to find a clam bake or good kielbasa or bagels in most of the south.
A northerner moving south however would find 1) near universal suspicion regarding dam uppity Yankees, 2) difficulty breaking into society without joining a church, 3) be considered a pinko if they didn't own a pickup and at least half a dozen firearms. Most importantly, because northerners are at baseline less comfortable dropping in to say hello and more likely to mind their own business, the various stereotypes applied to those from the north tend to be confirmed. Yankees don't automatically adopt southern customs so they remain outsiders. There is a relatively tight social bond between folks in the south and northerners aren't easily accepted largely because they simply don't have any experience with that type of society. We make friends at school and work but are much less likely to have tight neighborhood bonds (exceptions in some big cities like NYC and Boston but in that case the tight neighborhood bonds typically serve primarily to exclude outsiders from other neighborhoods rather than as an open welcoming community so common in the south).
Overall, I'd rather be a southerner moving north. Just learn to use a snow shovel and get some proper snow tires. No complex and delicate social structure to navigate.
