Global Nomads
Friday September 29th 2006
Jutta KönigAn expatriate is a person who for a short or long period of time lives outside their country of origin. It may not be of their own volition but rather because of a job taken by a spouse or parent. Even refugees and migrants could be considered as expatriates as they are often qualified professionals who have been forced to leave high-profile jobs due to a political crisis in their home countries.
Children growing up as expats often become global nomads through no choice of their own. They develop a hybrid identity with cultural roots in many countries. They may feel at home all over the world but without the sense of any single country being home. They are usually more worldly wise than their peers, adapt easily and have good social skills but they can be restless, often have issues of unresolved grief and may reshuffle their furniture or other aspects of their lives, every few years.
They may experience some difficulty adapting to their parents home country if they go ?back? for university, but they may just as easily choose a completely different country and university and make their way there. Often these children follow in their parents? footsteps and choose international careers, leaving elderly pensioned parents little option but to do traipse around the globe visiting their scattered offspring.
Migration and acculturation also involve the rebuilding of a new identity in a new environment, not only health, finances, friends and work but even beliefs and values. A cross-cultural move, especially if you are a trailing spouse or a refugee who has given up a career, can lead to a crumbling sense of self.
Health can suffer in the new environment, especially if the move is coupled with loss of career and earnings. Needless to say this crumbling sense of identity is accompanied by feelings of despair, loneliness, anger and frustration: the classic signs of culture shock. It is important to understand this process and take time to regenerate and recharge batteries. Finding a satisfactory activity to do, or some employment in a new environment is an excellent way of rebuilding a crumbling identity.
Janice was a 48-year-old Dutch woman who visited our career consultancy firm in the Netherlands, looking for a job. After graduating from law school she had started her career as an account manager in a bank but discovered she did not like finance or hierarchy. In her next job she taught law at an economic faculty and loved it. But she gave up her teaching profession to move to the United States when her husband got a good job there. They went on to have three children, and Janice took on charity work: teaching social skills to prisoners. After 11 years in New York the family was transferred to London where she took a two-year course in art history. After six years in London the family had just returned to the Netherlands and she had come to us in the hope of picking up her career where she had left off.
Janice felt very insecure when we first met, eager to return to work as her children were by now teenagers, but unsure of her value on the job market after ?doing nothing? for 18 years. Watching the blossoming career of her ambitious husband had only contributed to her insecurity and sense of incompetence.
We talked about what she would like to do, and made an analysis of her talents. It was her ideal to go back to teaching as she loved working with adolescents. Needless to say her English language skills were excellent. She had had international exposure, showed flexibility, independence and social skills by successfully moving her family around the globe for 18 years, and was eager to learn. Even now she was brushing up her knowledge of law with a postgraduate university course. I explained to her that her international experience would be a very valuable asset as many Dutch universities offer classes in English. This came as a complete surprise to her.
We agreed that it might be a good idea to contact old friends and colleagues to find out what is going on in the educational field. Within weeks she had heard of a vacancy in an economics department, and applied for the job.
Her CV made her sound almost apologetic about the fact that she had not worked while living abroad and raising her children, and we discussed how important it was to turn that apology into an asset.
Gradually she came to realise that she had a lot to offer: appreciation, care and understanding of growing children, international experience, an easy and direct approach to people, excellent language skills and, through her partner?s work, indirect experience of international law.
With regained self-confidence she went for her interview and was offered the job.
Janice?s case is not unusual as the world shrinks into a global village with travel and communication increasing at break-neck speed. Over the years many international schools have become available across the world, providing educational continuity for migrating children, but spouses are still left very much to their own devices on overseas postings.
I remember sitting desolately between a mass of half unpacked boxes wondering what was to become of me after following my husband?s career to Singapore. It took me about a year to find my bearings, explore the market, make connections and set up a private practice as a psychotherapist. There I became painfully aware of the dark sides to the ?glossy? expatriate lifestyle: children struggling academically, making and losing friends at high speed, some lost in time and space, even suicide attempts as they struggled to understand the hidden and conflicting codes of conduct amongst their international adolescent friends. There were high divorce rates, adultery, alcohol abuse, and lonely, flailing adults, having a hard time reconnecting themselves to their new environment.
It took Janice two months to reorient herself to her changed circumstances, decide what she wanted to be doing, and find networks that she could reconnect to. This process in her case was accelerated through the professional coaching by a career consultant with hands on knowledge of her new environment, and the psychological consequences of cross cultural moving.
More often than in the past a trailing spouse may want to continue a career while abroad. A network of associated companies, Career Net International, offers an initial orientation and links to international partners so that they can continue the job searching process in the new country.
Human resources departments of multinational companies are beginning to discover the talent cruising the global arena, be it trailing spouses or refugees.
As more and more young adults strive to keep a career alive in spite of international migration, it is important to start networking as soon as possible. Global connection is a web-based community for expatriate partners that many multinational companies have access to. It makes it possible to connect to people at your future destination before you have moved there, and exchange information about schools, work and families with children the same ages as your own.
Jutta König works as a psychologist and career coach with Van Ede and Partners, a career consultancy and outplacement firm in the Netherlands.
Contacts
Van Ede and Partnerswww.vanede.nl
Global connection
http://www.global-connection.info
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