What Is An Expat, Exactly? – Part III

Posted on 27. Jan, 2009 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Life, Musings & Inspiration
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In this last post in our series, I will attempt to give my own definition of an expat.

The dictionary and most academic definitions of the term leave out the psychological and emotional impact of being an expat. Predictably enough, I beg to differ!
As a coach, I find the human aspect of expatriation extremely important. In attempting to introduce this dimension, I am ultimately answering the question “As an expatriation coach, who do I work with?”

I can see three main factors:

1. The people I work with self-identify as expats- or immigrants, global workers, global nomads- the label does not matter. What matters is that they acknowledge that they have certain experiences, emotions and needs in common with other expats;

2. The people I work with have lived abroad long enough that some of their patterns, behaviours and worldview have shifted. There is no prescribed length of time before this shift occurs. A stay in a foreign country, even a long one, does not make you an expat if the experience does not change you internally in some way. On the other hand, some people become expats the second they learn they might be moving overseas- their habits change, their patterns are disrupted and powerful emotions emerge;

3. A “fish out of water” feeling is present to some extent. Obviously there are many degrees, from the pain and disorientation of severe culture shock to the fleeting moment of homesickness experienced by long-time, fully integrated immigrants.

A perfect counterexample would be my Belgian-born mother, who moved to France in her late twenties after meeting my French father.
She is so entirely assimilated that she does not even think about Belgium anymore. She does not have the slightest hint of a Belgian accent. Last time she went back to Brussels, she felt like a foreigner there. She certainly does not think of herself as an expat or immigrant, and neither do I think of her as one. For all intents and purposes, she is a Frenchwoman who happens to have been born in Belgium.

By contrast, I will always be an expat/immigrant in Canada. Even though I am very happily settled in Vancouver, have made my life here and love it to bits, I am aware of being both Canadian and European.
Every time I open my mouth, my accent is there to remind me that I actually was not born here. Then there are all those TV programmes I have never watched, all those nursery rhymes and children books I did not grow up with, all those references to long-ago political events I do not fully get. I do not feel at all like an outsider (I definitely feel very, very Canadian and a Vancouverite to boot)- I am simply an expat.

Emmanuelle