Much has been written about the classic scenario of the senior executive going abroad with his wife and children. If you are a GenXpat moving abroad with your partner, you may certainly find some of this literature relevant, including Robin Pascoe’s book, Culture Shock! Successful Living Abroad: A Wife’s Guide. That being said, the case of the GenXpat is again distinctive for a number of reasons.
Typically, the GenXpat is not yet married, but simply living with his or her partner. Despite the increasingly frequent view that a marriage act is a dispensable piece of paper, when dealing with immigration authorities, papers do count. Jennifer White, Global Client Services Director at Primacy Relocation, reports that she has seen couples actually get married to fulfill the requirements of the host country. In the case of married couples that relocate, the accompanying spouse usually has a right to a residence permit and is covered by the working spouse’s benefits. However, in the case of unmarried couples, countries rarely legally recognize the accompanying partner and, as such, he or she must file an independent application for a residence visa, which is typically only granted if the partner is sponsored by a potential employer or an academic institution. If the country does not grant the residence visa to the accompanying partner, then he or she can only enter the destination country on three-or-six-month tourist visas, and will be denied things typically open to residents only, such as the right to open a bank account or be a co-signatory on the partner’s account, rent an apartment, and buy a car (the details vary based on the destination). Even if the accompanying partner does obtain a residence permit, this is not the end of the troubles: he or she will have to independently purchase costly international health insurance and will not benefit from the support that companies offer to accompanying spouses, such as language lessons or career support. Finally, a residence permit is not equal to a work permit: most countries only grant these on the express request of the potential employer, and few employers are willing to go through the extra paperwork, costs, and hassle of making such a request.
The second difference of GenXpats is that they are younger than the classic executive expatriate couple, in which the husband works and the wife takes care of school-age children. More often than not, GenXpats and their partners are both active professionally and still childless. Many envisage dual-career futures for themselves, even if they do plan to have a family. If one partner wants to move abroad, the question of the other partner’s career becomes critical and does not come with easy answers.
When I was faced with the option of relocating to Tel Aviv, to help open the local Procter & Gamble subsidiary, the opportunity seemed too good to miss. The only drawback was the question of my relationship: would my Swiss boyfriend, who held a backoffice position in a Swiss bank, be able to join me? I made a strong sales pitch to him in favor of the move, listing seemingly endless job opportunities—the Swiss consulate in Tel Aviv, Swiss banks with operations in Tel Aviv and Israeli banks with operations in Switzerland, multinational companies that do business in English… Not to mention that he could spend time at the beach during breaks in his job-hunt.
Once we got to Israel, things suddenly looked very different. Local companies pretty much refused to hire someone who had no work permit and did not speak Hebrew. My boyfriend had little chance of getting a work permit because he does not have a Jewish background, and priority was being given to the large influx of new Jewish immigrants. Also, he was understandably unenthusiastic about learning Hebrew because the language is so different from French and English, and because it has little chance of re-application outside of Israel. As the weeks of job-hunting turned into months, my boyfriend finally decided to give up looking for paid work and chose to volunteer. He ended up working at an animal shelter, cleaning cages and caring for the animals. Though he liked the work, this was not a solution that could have lasted for more than the eight months we spent in Israel.
As this example shows, finding a job abroad is very difficult for work permit and language reasons. The accompanying partner will likely remain unemployed for the duration of the expatriation, resulting in a career interruption and a gap in his or her resumé. Without a job or a family to raise, the question becomes how to occupy his or her time abroad.
Thus, if you are a GenXpat thinking of moving with your career-oriented partner, you may actually be facing some tougher challenges than the traditional executive. It may be helpful for you to pause and consider the impact of the proposed move on your partner. Understanding his or her context fully can help you decide together whether the move is right for the both of you. The following list highlights some key things that your partner may have to face or experience as a result of the move. He—I will use “he” for simplicity—will have to
1. Quit his current occupation for you. Regardless of whether your partner is currently studying or working, he must give up what he has chosen to do for your sake. It may make financial sense to do so, in that your combined earnings will still be better if you move, or it may make career sense, in that you have the more promising career opportunity, but nevertheless the fact remains that you will take priority over your partner. This can impact his self-esteem, unless you talk about it upfront and discuss how you can ensure that his needs can also be met. How does your partner really feel about such a situation? What can you do to make up for it?
2. Job hunt with losing chances. If you consider that the regular process of job applications can be difficult due to the inevitable rejections, think what it must be like if the chances are set against the seeker, due to work permit and language issues. The whole process can be extremely discouraging for your partner, especially if he has high qualifications, motivation, and ambition, yet cannot even get in the door because he is a foreigner.
3. Depend on you financially. Chances are that as an unmarried couple you each had separate pay checks, bank accounts, and contributed equal amounts of money to expenses, such as rent, groceries, and vacations. When your partner gives up his job, he also gives up his income. He will have to ask you for money. What is your attitude about this? How will you handle it so that he does not feel as if he has to justify himself for every item he buys? Again, it is important to discuss this upfront, so that he does not lose his sense of self-worth because he is not contributing financially.
4. Become Ms. X’s partner or simply Mr. Unemployed. Once we begin our professional careers, a large part of our identity tends to come from our jobs. When we meet people for the first time—and we meet many when we move abroad—one of the more frequent questions is, “What do you do?” I know from my own experience that “I work for P&G” got me more points than “I am working on a book.” The accompanying partner or spouse also has the possibility of becoming known by association with the working spouse or the working spouse’s job: “Oh, that’s the new manager’s boyfriend.” If your partner had his own career before moving with you, such a transition can be very difficult to deal with.
5. Lose access to his social support networks and hobbies. Dealing with change can be much easier when you have your family and friends nearby to support you, or if you have access to your usual hobbies and recreational activities. When your partner moves with you, he is not only going through a major reformulation of his identity, but his usual methods of diffusing stress are not readily available.
6. Deal with too much time on his hands, leading to loneliness and boredom. Your partner can only send out so many resumés in a day. After finishing his work, he would normally meet with friends or pursue his hobbies—only he has no friends yet and he does not know where or how to practice his hobbies. You are never around because you are too busy with your professional transition, so all of a sudden your partner finds himself alone all the time, bored, and lonely.
Overall, the relocation experience and the transition from having a career to a support role in the couple can be a serious hit to your partner’s confidence. On occasion, it can even be a cause for depression, and it can certainly have a major impact on your relationship.
While your partner will bear many challenges, some of the strain may also fall on you. You may feel responsible for the difficult times you are putting your partner through, pressure to make things work for both of you, and even guilt for spending too much time at the office while your partner waits at home, or if things are not working out as planned for him.
Overall, for the relocation to be successful for you as a couple, your partner must buy into the move for its own sake. If your partner understands the risks and possibilities of the move, and sees a way to make it fit with his personal objectives, then he will take the responsibility on his own shoulders. If, however, your partner decides to move only to be with you, you will inevitably be saddled with the blame if anything does not work out.
To make sure that your partner can make his own informed decision, it is important that you paint a realistic picture of the relocation and deliberately tackle the challenges listed here. The most important point to drive home is that if your partner does not speak the language of the destination country, he probably will not be able to get a job locally. This does not mean he should not plan to job hunt, but that he should assess his interest in relocating on the premise that it is not likely he will be working in his profession. For perspective, the following are some of the routes accompanying partners have actually taken:
Learning the destination country’s language. Some languages might be worth learning in the context of your partner’s career. If you are relocating to a country where the native language is English, Spanish, French, German, or Japanese—the most commonly used languages in international business—then it might make sense to devote a year to intensive language courses. In most cases, this should be enough to become functional in the language, that is, to be able to work or study in the country.
Earning an advanced degree. If your partner already speaks the language of the destination country, if he is willing to invest a year to learn it, or if the destination has a relevant program taught in his native language or a language he speaks well, your partner may consider pursuing an advanced degree in his field. This can also act as a stepping stone to getting a work permit and a job at destination, though there are never any guarantees.
Teaching languages. If your partner is a native speaker of one of the more commonly taught languages, then he may be able to get a job as a language teacher, and this is one of the professions where employers are used to filing work permit applications for foreigners.
Volunteering. If your partner is comfortable with the concept of volunteer work, he could get involved in one of the many local and expatriate organizations.
Starting a family. If you have been considering starting a family, this may be a good time to do so, since your partner will be at home full-time. However, it is important to do your homework before making such a major decision. If you are not married and are planning to have children while abroad, you may want to find out how this impacts their legal status in terms of citizenship and custody. You also need to consider other things such as the medical facilities at destination, health insurance coverage, and availability of your family to help out with things.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it covers some of the more classic scenarios. Feel free to brainstorm additional ideas, as long as they do not involve getting the ever-elusive work permit. Once you have all the options laid out on the table, your partner needs to honestly assess whether any of them works for him.
If you value your relationship, I cannot overstate the importance of presenting your partner with a genuine alternative, that is, while you would like him to seriously investigate the possibility of moving with you, you are prepared to remain where you are and give up your professional opportunity if he does not feel comfortable with the relocation. As we have seen, the relocation entails a tremendous sacrifice on your partner’s side: career, independence, family, and friends. Only by having a strong personal interest in the relocation and a sense that he can achieve his objectives as well as yours, can your partner have the motivation necessary to deal with these challenges. Otherwise, in all likelihood, he will give up and go home or harbor increasing resentment toward you, thereby destroying your relationship.
One final thing to consider as you discuss relocation: your long-term view of life as a couple and the relative priority of your respective careers. Are you currently putting priority on the working partner’s career with the intention of swapping after two years? Or are you consciously deciding that the working partner has the more promising career and will be the driving force behind future relocations, while the accompanying partner will pursue a more flexible type of work? Because relocation is rarely a one-time thing, you both need to consider this seriously. Once the working spouse agrees to relocate for the first time, there are no guarantees that he or she will be returning home after two years. The next opportunity may well be in yet another country, so it is important for you as a couple to know where you stand on that possibility. There have been countless cases of accompanying spouses agreeing to a two-year relocation on an exceptional basis only to find that they keep getting moved around for a decade.