Expatriate Totally Explained

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ť This article is about foreign human residency. For the Australian Indie Rock band, see Expatriate.

An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin ex (out of) and patria (country, fatherland), and is sometimes misspelled (either unintentionally or intentionally) as ex-patriot or short ex-pat (because of its pronunciation).

Background

The term is often used in the context of Westerners living in non-Western countries, although it's also used to describe Westerners living in other Western countries, such as Americans living in the United Kingdom, or Britons living in Spain. It may also reasonably refer to Japanese living, for example, in New York City. The key determinant would seem to be cultural/socioeconomic and causation.
In the 19th century, Americans, numbering perhaps in the thousands, were drawn to Europe—especially to Munich and Paris—to study the art of painting. Henry James was a famous expatriate American writer from the 1870s, who adopted England as his home.
A nickname in the UK for former expatriates who have returned to Britain is the "When I"s, or "When we"s, as they're accused of starting conversations by saying "When I was in Rhodesia" or "When we were in Singapore".

Famous expatriates

The so-called "expatriots," a term referring to United States American literary notables who lived in Paris from the period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression, included people such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. African-American expatriation to Paris also boomed after World War I, beginning with black American veterans who preferred the subtler racism of Paris to the oppressive racism and segregation in parts of the United States.
In the 1920s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as "the Harlem of Paris." Some notable African-American expatriates from the 1920s onward included Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. (External Link

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) Another famous group of expatriates was the so-called Beat Generation of American artists living in other countries during the 1950s and 1960s. This group included Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Harold Norse, Gregory Corso and Gary Snyder. Later generation expatriates also included 1950s jazz musicians such as Steve Lacy, 1960s rock musician Jim Morrison, and 1970s singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy.
Many American fashion designers have notably become expatriates in France and Italy to design for existing European design houses or to enhance their own collections. These fashion designers include Marisol Deluna, Tom Ford, Patrick Kelly, and Marc Jacobs

Trends in expatriation

During the later half of the 20th century expatriation was dominated by professionals sent by their employers to foreign subsidiaries or headquarters. Starting at the end of the 20th century Globalization created a global market for skilled professionals and leveled the income of skilled professionals relative to cost of living while the income differences of the unskilled remained large. Cost of intercontinental travel had become sufficiently low, such that an employers not finding the skill in a local market could effectively turn to recruitment on a global scale. This has created a different type of expatriate where Commuter and short-term assignments are becoming the norm, and are gradually replacing the traditional long term. Private motivation is becoming more relevant than company assignment. Families might often stay behind when work opportunities amount to months instead of years. The cultural impact of this trend is more significant. Traditional corporate expatriates didn't integrate and commonly only associated with the elite of the country they were living in. Modern expatriates form a global middle class with shared work experiences in multi-national corporation and working and living the global financial and economical centers. Integration is incomplete but strong cultural influences are transmitted. Middle class expatriates contain many re-migrants from emigration movements one or two generations earlier. In Dubai the population is predominantly expatriates, from countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines with only 3% of the population made up of Western expatriates.

Dealing with expatriates

In dealing with expatriates, an international company reckons the value of them and has experienced staff to deal with them. Furthermore, a company often has a company wide policy and coaching system and includes the spouses at an earlier stage in the decision making process by giving them an official say in this. Not many companies provide any compensation for loss of income of spouses. They often do provide benefits and assistance. The level of support differs, ranging from offering a job-hunting course for spouses at the new location to full service partner support structures, run by volunteering spouses supported by the organization. An example of an expatriate led project can be found in the Gracia Arts Project of Barcelona.

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