Source: http://www.bbc.

com/capital

The Problem with being a long-term Expat

People on long-term foreign assignments often find it hard to adjust
once they return home. Many leave their company within a few
years, and some leave the country entirely.
By Kate Mayberry

24 October 2016

After 15 years, and a life on the road that took her to Japan,
Singapore and Australia, Helen Maffini felt it was time to return
home to Canada. But, it took just a fraction of that time for her to
realise she had made a mistake.

“We moved [back] to Canada in 2013 because we thought we

wanted to settle down,” she says, via email. “We realised after a
year, we did not! Me, especially. I found it hard to fit in again, I
felt very different and things had changed a lot. We found the
long winter very hard and it was pretty quiet compared to where
we have lived before.”

Such long absences can play havoc with a person’s sense

of identity, a feeling that is intensified by the length of
time away and how often they visit home

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Maffini, 46, an education consultant,

this month, moved to Cambodia, where her husband, an Italian
chef, is taking up a new position.

Maffini's experience is not unusual, particularly as the expat

demographic has shifted over the past 20 years. Traditionally,
an expat posting involved a professional being transferred to an
international office by their company for what would typically be
 a one-off three-year deployment. A lucrative package of
incentives would often sweeten the deal.

But recent surveys show the expat profile is changing. Expats

are now as likely to be Asian, as Western European or North
American, according to one report. And expats are taking a
string of shorter, back-to-back assignments or agreeing to
longer-term deployments. People are also finding their own jobs
abroad. Whether by choice or design, many find themselves
living away from home for a decade or more.

Repatriation upheaval

But there are downsides. Such long absences can play havoc
with a person’s sense of identity, a feeling that is intensified by
the length of time away and how often they visit home,
according to Nicola McCaffrey, a psychologist based in
Stavanger, Norway. Some long-term expats can’t adjust to their
new life in their old home and struggle with reverse culture
shock. In some cases, they return to the road, unable to pick up
where they left off.

The longer I am gone, the less attached I feel to any

nationality - Helen Maffini

“The longer I am gone, the less attached I feel to any

nationality,” says Maffini, who has dual Canadian-British
citizenship.

Even for expats who take shorter assignments, returning home

can prove an enormous upheaval. The vast majority of
companies (78% according to Cartus’ 2016 Global Mobility
Policy and Practices survey) don’t track staff retention following
repatriation, but of those that do, 52% said that between zero
and 10 employees left within a year or two of returning home,
and 24% said between 11 and 30 quit.
 “Many people start to repatriate when they want to settle down
and have a family,” says London-based career performance
coach Nikki Thomas, who spent two years working in Hong
Kong. “It is the idea of bringing their children up in the same
country [where] they were born, and giving their child the same
passport – their identity. It’s also that you see your homeland
through rose-tinted glasses after you leave, and as the
generations get older you want to be ‘home’ for your parents.”

Expats in Boat Quay, Singapore. Those who live away from their home countries for
long periods can struggle with their sense of identity (Credit: Getty Images)

The problem is that those glossy expectations may not measure

up to reality. The world keeps moving while you are gone.
Thomas recalls the shock of the vote for Brexit to the British
friends she’d made in the territory.  “I think it scared them; that
their home wasn’t how they’d left it,” she says.

Although many organisations spend a considerable amount –

sometimes as much as three times an employee’s annual pay –
on expatriation, the return process is often whittled down to the
simple logistics such as flights, moving costs and school fees.
 The well-being of the employee and their family, even though
they may have been away for five years or more, is rarely
considered.
Living and working abroad can change the employee
and their family members profoundly, and in a way they
could never anticipate

“It’s something that is hugely overlooked, and something that

seriously needs to be looked at,” says Thomas. “Many people
who come home want to leave again, and that is primarily
because of the lack of support.”

Worse, employees may have taken an international assignment

thinking it would fast-track their career back home, only to find
themselves in a role that makes little use of the skills they
acquired abroad.

Reverse culture shock

Expats too often underestimate the transformational aspect of

living overseas for an extended period. “Living and working
abroad can change the employee and their family members
profoundly, and in a way they could never anticipate,” says
Jenny Castelino, director of intercultural sales and account
management at Cartus.

Although jobs may be a factor in the decision to repatriate,

particularly in these troubled economic times, many expats
return to their homeland to be closer to family.

It’s the reason conservation biologist Mei-Ho Lee, 39, returned

to Malaysia in 2009 after a decade in the United States.
Mei-Ho Lee (right) with friends at Central Park in New York City (Credit: A. Ghows)

While Lee had prepared for her return for a year, the emotional
upheaval still came as a shock. For the first few months, she
retreated to her parents’ house, swapping the chaos and noise
of New York and her laboratory at Columbia University for the
slower-paced city of Ipoh in northern Malaysia.
KL was a completely different place to what it had been
before. I couldn’t recognise anything - Mei-Ho Lee

“The first few weeks were like hibernating,” she remembers.

Then, once her job was confirmed, she moved to Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia’s busy and congested capital.

Lee had interviewed for a position with an American

conservation organisation while in the US, but could only start
work once the funding for the role had been confirmed.

“KL was a completely different place to what it had been before.

I couldn’t recognise anything; any roads at all. And I didn’t have
a car so it was very difficult. I missed the public transport in New
York.”
 Working practices in her homeland also came as a shock. “I
have to switch to Asian mode,” says Lee.

For Mei-Ho Lee, working and living in Kuala Lumpur took a lot of adjustment (Credit:
Alamy)

Third Culture Kids

And then there are the expat children.

Karen, a British citizen now in Malaysia, who prefers to be

known only by her first name because her husband works for a
large multinational, recalls their 22 years on the road became
more difficult as their children got older. Both are now at
university in the UK. Having never lived in Malaysia, they don’t
see it as home, and their actual home in Europe is rented out.
“Their home is out of a suitcase,” Karen says.

The term Third Culture Kids describes children who’ve

spent much of their formative years outside their own
country

American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem coined the term Third

Culture Kids (TCK) to describe children who’d spent much of
their formative years outside their own country. Her research
was triggered by the experience of her own children growing up
in India, where she was posted on a research project in the
1950s. A typical TCK will tend to have multiple answers to the
question of where they’re from, friends from numerous countries
and, often, the ability to speak more than one language.

Maffini describes her children as “resilient” but says they’d

probably be hard-pushed to define the idea of home. She has
written a book, Sammy’s Next Move,  to help guide other
children through the realities of a life on the move, and the
notions of home and identity. The main character is a snail who
takes his home with him wherever he goes.

In fact, Maffini dates the start of her own expat life to when she
was 15 and her father accepted a job at a research laboratory in
Japan. So it's not surprising that she's chosen a similar life for
herself. Her own daughter, now 20, is studying hospitality in
Ottawa and, like many TCKs, appears to have inherited her
parents’ restlessness. She has no plans to stay in Canada. Her
ambition is to travel the world.