On expatriate identity

Each time I fly into England , I have to fill out a Landing Card.  Name, address, passport, family, occupation: my identity.  I usually put “Scientist”, not strictly true, I suppose, but it does describe how I think of myself and who I want to be known as.

I also define myself as I’m seen by others, a job title, personal relationship, or hometown,   But, more deeply, I have  a personal identity, persistent qualities that describe and define me, that set me apart from other  people as unique and exceptional.

“I am an expatriate” is one of those qualities.  I am someone who has chosen to leave home to live in another culture, to experience life and form lasting relationships away.  It’s different than living an identity in my home community: I’m creating one in someone else’s.  It’s not ‘fitting in’;  it’s purposeful.  I am discovering who I am and building who I want to become. 

The heart of the paradox is that I also have to be tolerant and adaptable.  The Big 5 Traits of Expat Success stress the importance of extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.  Very few long-term expats write about it, and little research has been done.   But balancing conviction and change to preserve who I am is the most difficult and stressful part of the expatriate experience. 

The long-term expats who I know, by definition successful ones, are curious, confident, optimistic, and committed to making a complete life within their adopted culture.  But, to an even greater degree, I would characterize them by their rootlessness: the absence of strong ties to people, places, community, or jobs in both their adopted and their home countries. 

And that leads to key questions about personal identity.

• Can expats define themselves by the absence of things?
• Can expats maintain themselves with a shipping container of personal effects and long-distance relationships over Skype?

I’ve taken on this challenge of building a new facsimile from the objects, tasks, routines, events, language, and  history around me.  I’ve sought out and committed to connections with local people.  I became whole in my adopted home, with an image and a narrative that describes a vision and a future.

But it’s situational, fragile, too easily lost when an apartment ends or a connection fails.

‘just that simply.

The paradox, and the existential stress, is that expatriates are the most likely to need a strong personal identity yet least likely to have the means to sustain one.  And that rootless search may be the signature characteristic, and the defining problem, of expatriate life.