Three Reasons to Become an Expatriate

Hong Kong Disney

by Margarita Gokun Silver

Growing up I never had an opportunity to travel and see the world. I was born in a country that didn’t let its people go abroad and thus I was effectively cut off from anything that lay beyond the borders of my homeland. Naturally, as it is with all human beings, the prohibited became an fascination — and I wasn’t of, course, the only one fascinated with seeing what lie beyond. Most of my generation was just as infatuated as I was.



When I finally broke free and moved to another country, I had all the freedom in the world. I could travel, see new places, experience new things, and learn. Travel was no longer prohibited yet the fascination stayed with me. To this day I am happier when I find myself in a completely new territory with adventure, things to explore, and change to experience.

Later in life, when I learned about values, I realized that my fascination with the “abroad” was the direct result of values that I held and hold dear to this day. Values such as adventure, newness/change, learning/growth, and challenge are central to my feelings of fulfillment. And those values are the ones that I was seeking to honor when I embarked on an expatriate lifestyle.

And so here are my reasons for becoming an expatriate in no particular order:

1. Learning and Growth. Expatriate lifestyle offers you an unmatched opportunity to grow. Yes, you can read about most places in books, you can watch programs about them on TV, and you can even travel to most places for a vacation. But you’ll never learn as much about a country and its people as you learn living in their midst. So, if you have a particular hunger for learning about different places of the world, this might be a reason for you to consider becoming an expat.
2. Challenge. Surely things can be challenging anywhere, but living in another culture takes the concept of challenge to a whole other level. So, if you thrive on being challenged to the brim, if you enjoy overcoming difficulties, and if you find yourself being bored in you current place of residence, expatriate lifestyle might for you.
3. Change. Many people have trouble tolerating change, but I am certainly not one of them. I even have to move furniture around in my house in order to change something. I thrive on change — change feeds my creativity, it empowers me, and it creates possibilities. So if you feel that change is something you crave, becoming an expatriate will definitely help you find it.Read more from Margarita at the Global Coach Center blog. Thanks for permission to reprint this post, which is copyright 2009, Global Coach Center.

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Learn the Language

As a cultural expat, you are motivated to bring your culture, or a specific aspect of it, to the people you’re living among (missionary expat), or you are a student of the new culture. Either way, you’ll need to speak the language well enough to communicate on the level of ideas and interests, not just on the level of asking for the bathroom or ordering in a restaurant. While there’s a lot of commercial communication that can take place through sign language, pointing, and the like (think of bargaining in a market for something you want), understanding culture necessitates knowing the language.

Language is Culture.

German anthropologist Franz Boas believed that culture and language were inextricably intertwined. Boas believed you could not understand a culture without a deep understanding of its language, and that a language and its culture evolved together. In the process, each shaped the other, so that language, in effect, created culture while culture also created language.

If you’ve identified yourself as a cultural expat, better dust off that foreign language dictionary, take yourself off to class, or fire up that computer software.

So, bonne chance, viel Glueck, buona fortuna, 幸運, boa sorte, удача, buena suerte and 好运.

Students

Rice Research to Production Course

Today’s cultural students come in all shapes and sizes. Of course, there are the ubiquitous junior-year-abroad 20-ish college kids. But the students category of cultural expat includes so much more. A student can be one who takes a formal course of study at a college or a university, or someone who comes to a country purely to immerse himself in the language and the culture.

There are those who combine studying another country’s language and culture with volunteerism.




And there are people whose studies are less formal, but no less formative, who simply go and live among the native residents and absorb their language, culture, cuisine and art.

The Center for Study Abroad offers courses in Europe, China, Japan, Vietnam, South America, Mexico and New Zealand, and anyone over 18 is welcome. StudyAbroad.com lists a variety of overseas study, internship and teaching positions, as well as “volunteaching.” Amerispan, which started by offering opportunities to learn Spanish abroad, and has since expanded, features a page on their site outlining the 15 best “Bang for Your Buck” locations. They also offer combination learning/volunteer placements in educational, social work and environmental organizations. It’s even possible to obtain financial aid or other funding for your overseas studies.

Is your interest environmental rather than linguistic? Perhaps The School for Field Studies would be your choice, where you can get involved in environmental field studies in one of five countries. Even UNESCO has gotten into the act, with advice about studying abroad.

Study abroad can be an English lit class at that most traditional of English institutions, Oxford University, or it can be a Spanish-language immersion program in the Andes Mountains of Peru. You can dive in the Caribbean, or schuss down an Alp. You can study a language in the morning, then help in an orphanage in the afternoon. You can tour museums and ateliers. There are as many study abroad programs as there are expats abroad.

Have you engaged in a course of study (formal or informal) in another country? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Please add your comments below, and share some of your experience with us.

What kinds of people leave hearth and home for life in another country?

Here are a few categories I’ve come up with. I’m sure that many expats fit into more than one. I know I do! Let me know if you have a category I’ve missed.

Expats By Necessity

We won’t dwell on the first group — their reasons for expatriating are obvious.

• Military Personnel sent abroad
• Workers whose employers assign them to overseas positions
• Ambassadors and similar government employees sent to represent their country in another

Cultural Expats

The next group includes those who move to another country for what I think of as cultural reasons.

• Missionaries. In this category I include, not just religious missionaries, but anyone with a “mission.” This would include Peace Corps volunteers, people who start orphanages, and the literacy volunteers who try to teach indigenous peoples how to communicate with others around them.
• Students. The student category includes the hordes of college juniors who elect to take part or all of their year abroad as part of their school’s curriculum. It also includes those who wish to immerse themselves in another language or culture. Painters, musicians, writers and other artists who travel for inspiration or to learn how other cultures view the world would also be included in the student category.

Escapists

Next we find the escapists group. These are expats characterized more by what they are getting away from than by what they are moving toward.

• Geographic escapists. These folks want to escape from cold weather to the sunny tropics, from the mountains to the ocean, or from the farms to the cities.
• Social escapists want to break loose from uncomfortable family or social ties at home (or a lack thereof!) to create a new social network elsewhere.
• Economic escapists want to leave a more expensive country for a cheaper one. Many of these are retirees who, like myself, simply can’t afford to retire comfortably in their native land and don’t want to work until they drop. There are also many economic escapists who are still of working age, but want to pursue a career or vocation they might not be able to live on at home, but could afford in a less expensive country. Idealistists who work for non-profit organizations might fit into this category. So would those who believe there is more to life than work, and who feel they can better raise a family and have time for important activities outside of work, in a country where the cost of living is lower and the pace of life is slower.

Adventurers

Although the highest peaks have already been scaled, the Amazon has been explored by westerners, and the deserts have been mapped, there are still many who move abroad because it’s an adventure. While I think there’s a bit of the adventurer in anyone who willingly pursues an expat life, there are some for whom it is the primary reason they leave their home countries.

Opportunists

And, of course, there are always opportunists in any group.

• Business people who see a need they can fill, and/or a fantastic opportunity to make huge amounts of money in another country.
• Investors in real estate, businesses or farmland.
• Tax avoiders or evaders.
• Law dodgers, people who for legal reasons leave their home country to hang out in somebody else’s and hope they won’t be caught and extradited.

Since we have already determined we will move to Central or South America, and since I am already well past the age when language learning comes easily and naturally, I have started to learn Spanish already. This also means I am probably ruling out Brazil as a place to live, since they do not speak Spanish there. I have taken a couple of classes in conversational Spanish at the local community college, and have also been learning through language software.

Would love to hear from those who have also given some thought to this, or taken action.