Expat type two: splitting the definition

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By AMANDA VAN MULLIGEN

When I first moved overseas I was struck that some expats are more equal than others. We all live in countries and cultures other than where we were brought up, or have legal residence. The difference lies in the “temporarily or permanently residing” part of the definition.

I found a job in an international corporation that employed both Dutch staff and people on expat contracts who’d moved overseas with this company. I’d arrived independently (borrowed trailer and all) to be with a Dutch partner and was on a local contract.

After four years, the others moved on to further country assignments or repatriated back ‘home’.  I was still here, an expat on a local contract.

Through my career in human resources, I’ve delved into a world full of expat issues (trailing spouses, third culture kids, portable careers, international schooling, cost of living allowances, spousal work permits, relocation services, the 35% ruling, rotation schemes.)  None applicable to me.

My kind of expat gauntlets include a backwards step in our career; job hunting in a foreign language and unfamiliar market; endless paperwork without external help to legitimise our stay; the shock of in-laws who speak an unknown tongue;  kids who naturally speak two languages; friends we struggle to express ourselves with; mundane tasks requiring interaction with locals; loss of independence; a lack of common culture with our offspring; missing knowledge about the world we live in.

What separates one type of expat from another is the temporariness of the challenges.

No contract end, no get-out clause. For those of us who signed up for life with a local: are we lifelong expats or not expats at all?

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Amanda van Mulligen is a British-born writer, blogger and mother experiencing life in the Netherlands. This week marks ten years of her expatriatehood.
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Tagged as: 35% ruling, Amanda van Mulligen, bicultural, bicultural family, British, Dutch, expat category, expat contract, expat on local contract, expat type, foreign employee, foreign spouse, Holland, longterm expat, Netherlands, portable career, relocation services, repatriation, spousal work permit, temporary expat, Third Culture Kid, trailing spouse, types of expat, United Kingdom

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  • http://thechangingman.livejournal.com/ Joe Clarke

    I feel like I am transplanted. My roots have been dug up, taken with me and replanted in a foreign soil.

    An expat, for me, conjures up British couples on teh Costa Del Retirement, moaning about the price of beer and lack of decent chips.

  • http://www.isolatedinternationals.com/ Norman Viss

    I have been wondering lately if ‘expat’ is a good term in our global community of today. It would be an interesting excercise to try to find another word to describe us and get it to stick. I like the word ‘international’ myself, but when you Google that word get football topics. (sigh)

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      You’re right Norman, ‘expat’ makes so little sense in the globalized life we lead now. I like the word ‘international’ too. (Related shock: all the strange Internet search results when trying to find a place to register this site for global citizens!)

  • http://www.bazaarbayar.blogspot.com Catherine Bayar

    Great conversation, everyone! Anastasia, visa runs are an adventure (and much much cheaper than resident permits…)

    But I digress – my angst comes in every time someone describes me as the “American”. Yeah, that’s my moniker here forever I suppose, but it’s a little more complicated than that. I feel like a dual national, even if I don’t hold a Turkish passport (long boring story why not). So, are my feelings of being a Turk/American hybrid delusional without the official paperwork?

    • http://www.skaiangates.com Yazarc

      Absolutely, without the paper work I mean really….
      I kid from behind my little pink card which probably excludes me from being an expat at all and leaves me as a Turkish citizen living in Turkey. I’m glad to have it, as it makes bureaucracy easier and allows me to vote (don’t have a Turkish passport, they are more expensive than Irish ones!) but it holds its own set of restrictions and mixed feelings.

  • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

    I think I understand you, Jo… as a foreign spouse with a supportive local family there are plenty of things I'm shielded from that perhaps a hardier species of expat would have to deal with. It seems I always have a 'handler' — if I want or need one, and sometimes even if I don't.

  • http://www.thewritingwell.eu/ Amanda

    Definitely a diverse group us expats. The reason for being abroad already determines a subgroup for sure and also determines the nature of the issues faced. The good news is that however expat or not you feel, there is always common ground – at the end of the day we are all foreigners in a land.

  • http://www.thewritingwell.eu/ Amanda

    Expat Mum – know exactly what you mean – but the distance back to England from the Netherlands is obviously not in the same league as what you face. When you have kids who are a different (or dual with a dominant) nationality it makes for a weird situation. When I moved to the Netherlands, I had no intention of curling up with my Zimmer frame here, yet ten years later the reality is that leaving is looking less and less likely……. Maybe the kids will spend some time in the UK at some point – maybe we will all move back there as a family one day, who knows, but one thing is for sure – it got more complicated when kids came along!!

    • Anonymous

      Well there you go, when I read “overseas” I thought, a skip and a hop across “The Channel” to the Continent, doesn’t remove you as far from your familiar. That’s merely calculating sea miles though. In reality I’ve come to the conclusion that relocating within the U.S. or for that matter between provinces in the Netherlands can be as shocking an experience as moving across the world. If only because you think speaking what supposedly is the same language proves to mean nothing when you can’t for the life of you understand the tongue of people who are trying to keep the desert dust from entering their mouth. Question this discussion raises for me personally is whether I’d have considered myself an expat I or II if I hadn’t had to succumb to that forced emigration. I don’t think so, I’d still consider myself a worldburger, a wanderer, but no, not an expat.

  • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

    Massively diverse, Judy! In fact, I count a whole bunch of subgroups of the main two Amanda mentions — variations on how and why and for how long and in what style we might find ourselves abroad. It's also why expat circles in any particular location break along certain lines…

    As a foreign spouse I don't feel less an expat, but I am grateful I have local family and colleagues to help me when I hear some of the stories of expats without company links — the struggle to get a telephone line, for example, or deal with a government office. I don't exactly envy the visa runs of expats without residence permits, but nor do I yearn to have a Turkish passport like many foreign spouses who have lived here even less time than I have!

  • http://expatriatelife.wordpress.com/ Judy

    Oh my what a angst-ridden lot we are, lol! – Jo feels guilty, Barbara is resigned, Amanda feels fraudulent and dutchessabroad doesn't feel she's an expat at all. And I'm an ex-expat – a repat – lowest on the totem-pole perhaps? ;-)

    Expats are a VERY diverse group and some of us do have it easier than others – but isn't that just life? We do have a lot in common though – as the writing on this excellent forum illustrates.

  • http://www.expatmum.blogspot.com Expat Mum

    I've been in the US for 20 years and I'm a citizen yet I still call myself an expat. I don't intend to die here, but it's slowly dawning on my that I may never go back to the UK since my kids are American. Yes, they might move to the UK for a while but I have a feeling they will put roots down here, and where does that leave me? I might move back “home” but my family will be here. It's a bit depressing actually.

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      I can appreciate the limbo, Expat Mum, both the kind you feel now and the kind you envision for the future.

  • http://twitter.com/JoParfitt Jo Parfitt

    It seems I am type I but feel guilty. I feel I should be a type II and that would make me 'better' in some way. Why do I feel like this? Is it because my way feels like a cheat? We are in our fifth country. Every time I was led here and someone else paid for my shipment and did the packing. and now, even though we have no 'expat benefits' and have bought I house I don't feel as 'real' as Amanda and co. Anyone understand me?

  • http://www.thewritingwell.eu/ Amanda

    Oh no – look what I’ve started!! :-OJudy has it spot on! Whatever circumstances you move to another country in, and however long you stay there, (expat) life throws up different challenges. Some take to it like a duck to water, others struggle but don’t want to leave because of personal commitments. It’s always hard. There are always adjustments. Jo – funny that you use the term guilty. Talking to an expat II once, she revealed how easy she thought life would be as an expat I – delving into the reality of moving children around from country to country, partner career issues, having to start all over again every few years soon took the shine off relocation expenses and support and education fees paid for……. It’s not for me, I know that much and I am impressed by others that do it and thrive – like Jo!At the end of the day – you’re as expat as you feel!! :-) I feel in the middle – am certainly not a local but expat is not the first description that springs to mind either. I touched on this in a blog post at the beginning of the week http://letterfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/2010/09/ten-years-in-netherlands.html and touch on it again next Monday in another post answering a question that funnily enough Jo asked for a blog series I am running. I am realising more and more that there is a huge range of expat types – and this post just touches the surface.

  • http://theinternationalmama.blogspot.com Barbara

    I am neither Type I nor Type II. My husband and I are not French and after 9 years in Paris we can't call ourselves temporary residents with a straight face. We face all the struggles and challenges that Amanda does, but because we have no blood or cultural ties to France, in theory, we could leave whenever we want. But it wouldn't be easy. France is the only home our children know. Many of our friends are here. Our life is here. Although I hate thinking that I'll never live in my home country again, because I really do love much about the U.S., I also hate the thought of digging up the roots that we planted here. I am half-resigned to living a life where I don't quite know what's going on.

    To make matters more complicated, DH is German and I'm (African-)American. So, wherever we live *somebody* is going to be an expat. Except maybe our kids. :)

  • champacs

    I don't agree with previous posters. I'm currently an expat type I, but before that I was an expat type II (emphasis on the word 'expat' and not immigrant). I lived for 17 years in my expat type II country, my house is still there, my husband is from there, but I don't consider myself an immigrant to that country. I didn't before, and the fact that I'm now living for three years in another country has, if anything, loosened my ties to the expat type II country. I know I'll go back there for a while sooner or later, but I won't necessarily retire there …

  • http://www.thewritingwell.eu/ Amanda

    I completely agree that many of those that come to a new country via their employer do have a lot more resources at hand to make a transition to a life abroad. They have a helping hand with things like accommodation, culture training, language tuition, education options for their children etc etc and those that come to make a new life in a country off their own backs have a lot more at stake and less resources to help them settle in. Very different circumstances in those first few months abroad between different types of 'expats'.

    Catherine, you have it spot on with the idea that expat type II commitments are very different – I did not come over to the Netherlands committed to an employer, but to making a relationship work – and now we have a family who is deeply affected by my 'foreign' status (with so many positive things to that as well as issues we have to work through). That means assimilating to the local culture and environment is not a choice – it's an essential element to our family life. It's what makes it work so well. At the end of the day my children are more Dutch than they are English and whilst I will do my best to let them experience my culture too (and they will be/are bilingual) they are in Dutch society on a daily basis and I can only help them make sense of it if I understand and participate in it myself.

    If I was here on a 4 year assignment, it would be a whole other story and my focus would be different. I originally titled this post “A fraudulent expat' because that is how I felt in the beginning of my time abroad – officially I was an expat but I really don't feel like that sums me up! Expat to me, rightly or wrongly, has temporary connotations.

  • dutchessabroad

    Yep Catherine, immigrants we are. In my mind and eyes expats have it easy compared to immigrants. They land in a spread bed, a corporation or business that welcomes the breadwinners and guides the companions. In Seattle companies such as Boeing and Microsoft have people on the pay-roll who help newcomers find homes, schools, and tips on everything from where to buy groceries to explaining the role of DMV. If joining a local could make it easier, my husband and I moved across the country for equal opportunity in feeling new to an area. Far removed from his family, he might as well be an immigrant within the U.S. Something that Europeans don't seem to understand is that relocation within the U.S. comes close to relocation within the EU. Of course we have the benefit of speaking one language, but eh, I needed Gary to translate for me in Connecticut as well as West or East Texas. The longer I'm here in the U.S. the more I become aware that I often understand only a part of what people are saying. I kid you not! They might as well be speaking the Queen's English (the two of us often remark we'd like subtitles for our fave BBC mystery shows). In immigration one, yours truly.

  • dutchessabroad

    Before getting married to an American I felt about being in the U.S. the way you describe your staying in your new hometown. I liked being in Los Angeles, in Austin, TX, in New York. Funny thing is, before I had to immigrate (because I had married an American) nobody in the Netherlands questioned my wanderlust. I was the traveler, who'd always return home with plenty of stories, a welcome guest at the dinner table. After my immigration however everybody started wondering about my choice, which, I have to add changed again after Obama became president. Now it's okay again for me to live in the U.S.

  • dutchessabroad

    Gosh Amanda, Why, you beat me to it, as many other writers have since I discovered Anastasia's expat+Harem platform. Good on you though, as my Aussie expat-in-the-U.S.-for-life friend would say.
    Part of the reason why I have so far only written responses to posts by others, rather than writing my own post, is because I've never felt I was an expat. My story didn't quite belong on this platform. And yet, I often feel enticed to respond, many sentiments ring true for me whether I'm this, that or the other, and what is that I asked myself. If anything, I've told myself repeatedly, I'm an immigrant and at the time of my entry a reluctant one. There was no need to immigrate other than the U.S. requirement since I had married an American. No country to flee, no bad circumstances back home, just the law.

  • http://kellyhevel.wordpress.com/ Kelly

    It strikes me that in using the word “expat” we are defining ourselves by what we are NOT and not what we ARE. Maybe because, as this post suggests, we expats are not all one thing.

    Sometimes I feel that my type of expat is the hardest to explain because I am not here because of a job relocation or a husband. I am here because it is where I want to be, and, by the way, not because of where I don't want to be, I still love the place I consider my American home even as I am beginning to feel that I no longer have a home in America.

    When I am asked why I am here I often feel people are confused and sometimes even disappointed at being cheated out of a good story about an exotic romance. Sorry, I am just here because I want to be! I never got so many questions about why I moved to New York, which was in many ways as foreign to Pennsylvania as New York city is foreign to Istanbul.

  • http://www.bazaarbayar.blogspot.com Catherine Bayar

    “Those of us who signed up for life with a local: are we lifelong expats or not expats at all?”

    I've been asking this question for awhile now, Amanda, so thank you for writing this post. And congratulations on your Dutch decade! I don't think we “expat type 2's” are expats at all. Our commitment is to our local, not to a company. We're immigrants – for a few years or forever. We have much higher stakes, since our get-out clause would include divorce and the break-up of families. Little wonder we try so much harder to assimilate, to learn the language, to fit in as best suits us and our adopted home. I'm sure I'll have more to say later, but I'm looking forward to the conversation here.

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