The Dark Side of the Expat Life
By MARCUS MABRY and JAN BENZEL
Albert Einstein
If you are a member of Rendezvous’s global tribe, “home” might be where your apartment, your work or your belongings — or even your family and friends — are. But it might also be a place where language and culture are confounding. And deep down, despite the thrills and invigorating challenges of an experience abroad, more often than not, we know it’s not a place we’ll stay forever.
This dislocation — psychic as well as geographic — comes with inevitable lonelinesses, small and large. There are holidays with family missed, and life events — weddings, birthday parties, memorial services, births — that happen without you.
When we asked recently who studies abroad, who stays put and why, one comment struck many Rendezvous readers as particularly pointed, and poignant:
Alex Ellsworth, a former New Yorker living in Seoul, South Korea, wrote:
Studying and living abroad has been a fantastic journey spanning 12 years and three continents.
But … expat life has a dark side: getting stuck in limbo, neither here nor there. I’ve watched as peers back home have married, had children, bought houses, advanced in their careers.
Meanwhile, most of us here in Seoul find ourselves living Peter Pan-like existences. I’m entering middle age with nothing tangible to show for it.
Except wonderful, rich memories, sure. But the future looms.
So should I go home pre-emptively and try to build a life there? But therein lies the expat’s problem: there’s nothing back home for me now. Home is not “back home”; home is Seoul. My life is here.Colleen, in London, responded:
Thanks for your thoughts, Alex. I very much share your sentiments about being abroad long term. Today especially I’ve been struggling coming to terms with being away from home for so long. I wanted to move to England for most of my 20s after studying abroad in London for my last semester of undergrad. I completed my MSc here in the U.K. and really been able to do all that I set out to do. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been worth it. I would never have the kind of self-reliance and strength of character that I do today if I would have stayed Stateside. That’s the really lovely bit of being abroad.
I have been living in England for three years now. I haven’t seen my family in two years and it weighs heavily upon my heart. E-mail and Skype can only do so much for you. I do worry whether I should return and put down roots permanently for once in my life.
I am about to start a new permanent job, but I worry a lot about finances, visas, finding love and starting a family. I wonder if it would be easier to get on with life if I were in the States. How do you know when to pack it in and head back?
I think this kind of thought and uncertainty is good. And it’s nice to have a place to express the thoughts and feelings with other expats.And Kayan, in Algiers, wrote:
I totally agree with you Alex.
However, we can transform ourselves into “ants.” If you really feel attached to your adopted country, maybe it’s better to think about how to settle down permanently by finding a long-term work contract or establishing a family.
My best Asian friend did that in Paris and he’s just so happy about his family and job.
But it also depends on luck. We’d found love almost at the same time, then I broke up with my partner five years later and became “rootless” again.
Now drifted to Africa in my middle 30s, I have exactly the same ominous feelings about my future as Alex wrote.The Hague, where our contributor Chris Schuetze lives, has several global courts and international headquarters — and, therefore, a large and multinational expat population. Many of them do not learn Dutch both because of the complexity of the language and the fact that virtually everyone speaks English.
Separate American, French, German, Polish, European (with English, Spanish and Dutch streams), international and Indonesian schools mean that not even children — who have a much easier time picking up language — have to learn Dutch beyond a few playground pleasantries. In such situations it’s no surprise that home abroad never becomes simply “home.”
Project Xpat: Exploring The Expatriate Life
by LINTON WEEKS
November 22, 201311:11 AM
Ernest Hemingway
But which is the dominant sentiment? Absence makes the heart grow fonder? Or out of sight, out of mind? The answer depends on a lot of variables.
Over the years, various people and projects have explored those variables: the mechanics and meanings of expatriation.
One of America's most notable expatriates, novelist Ernest Hemingway, examined the notion from many angles in the 1920s.
On one hand, Hemingway glamorized the expatriate life. "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man," he wrote in a memoir, "then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
On the other hand, he mocked Americans living in Europe. "You're an expatriate," Bill Gorton tells Jake Barnes in Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. "You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes."
A Privileged Lot
Now, nearly a century later, Americans still wrestle with the pros and cons of international living. For a while, the International Herald Tribune website produced a lively blog, Rendezvous, with stories about today's expatriates.
"Our world faces daunting challenges," the Rendezvous editors wrote in the inaugural post in January 2012. "Those of us who travel, live, work, connect and reason across national borders are a privileged lot; we see many of those challenges up close. And this fortunate minority of globetrotters is growing. We know more about the world — and one another — than ever before."
When the IHT was rechristened as the International New York Times, the diary ended, in June 2013.
Other groups, including Transitions Abroad and Expatnetwork, continue to connect with — and provide news and services to — the global community of American expatriates.
Making The Decision
On her website, Clary Estes, a 25-year-old American living in Japan, poses a question: Why are we ExPats? She is hoping to develop "a crowd-sourced journalism project where people can come together and talk about this question, while ultimately creating a forum to talk about globalization and personal identity outside of one's home."
She says, "It struck me early in my move to Japan that living in a totally different place is not easy and frequently requires people to learn another language, be far away from their families for long periods of time, adapt to new customs and laws, and a whole myriad different issues. It is as stressful, complicated, frustrating as it is exciting. So why do people do it?"
What It Means
It's an intriguing question.
We at Project Xpat have another.
Ours is a 10-word question: What Does It Mean To You To Be An Expatriate?
We want to hear from Americans living in other countries. And from Americans who know others living abroad.
And we are looking for a 10-words (or less) answer. With good, crisp photos of the American expatriates. If you'd like to participate, please use this form. (Sorry about the form-ality, but it's the easiest way for us to collect your answers.)
The Protojournalist is an experiment in reporting. Abstract. Concrete. @NPRtpj
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