The first six months of your expatriate assignment are typically the “moment of truth” in terms of your stay abroad. That is when you are confronted with the conflicting demands of work and getting set up in a new place, when you experience the worst of your culture shock, and as you struggle to sort out your personal life on both the social and romantic level. Once you make it through those few months, life surprisingly becomes more cohesive and easier. You discover that you know how to satisfy your basic needs, that there are things you like about your new location, and that you can manage the things you do not. You make the transition from survival mode to actually enjoying your life at destination.
Before you know it, your two-year assignment is almost up and it is time to start thinking about returning home…or moving on to your next expatriate position. Perhaps not as obviously, this is the second “moment of truth” in the relocation process, both professionally and personally, and we will look at each of these aspects in turn.
Throughout this book, we have looked at the professional side of the expatriate experience only to the extent that it influences your personal life abroad. For the most part, the question of how to manage a business in a foreign country is quite separate from the question of how to manage your downtime. One crucial moment of overlap occurs when you decide that you want to come home. Though this decision may be driven by personal factors, its implementation begins in the workplace, by lobbying for a position in your home country.
Securing your next job with your employer can be quite a challenge. If you simply want to move up in the ranks at your present location, this is fairly straightforward because you naturally hear about job openings and are in daily contact with the managers making employment decisions. However, when you are looking for jobs at your home office from abroad, it can be more challenging and require greater personal initiative on your part. There are two main pitfalls to watch out for as you embark on this process.
First, there is the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon. Once you leave your home office, you cease being visible. When there is a job opening at the next level, the boss’ instinct is to look at the managers available on site for promotion, people whose performance he or she has been seeing on a daily basis and who have been lobbying for the position. He or she may simply forget to consider you. This makes it very important to keep in touch with your mentors, bosses, and former colleagues from your home office. Otherwise you risk getting “forgotten abroad” and you may find that you need to leave your employer and look for other opportunities to return home.
The second pitfall is subtler. It can happen that your employer does remember you and welcomes you back at the home office, but puts you in a position that does not fully reflect the learning experience you had abroad. This can be a function of several things. Headquarters and home offices tend to be more structured and procedural than satellite ones. Even if you hold the same job title as you had abroad, you might find that you suddenly need to refer everything to your boss, losing much of the independence you had when you were abroad. This might leave you feeling stifled and frustrated upon your return. Or you could be put in a job that simply does not reflect the international market and management knowledge you acquired abroad, both in scope and compensation. Either scenario could have you on the job market within a few months of coming home.
In summary, you almost need to think of your change of assignment as an internal job hunt. Though ideally your company should have systems in place to manage the transition, realistically you will need to get involved. You can improve your chances by starting early—about six months ahead of the time you would actually like to move. At that stage, you would do well to remind your current manager that he or she should start leveraging his network to find you your next position within the company. You should also revive your connections with the home office, both with your colleagues—to get the current gossip—and with your mentors, to be at the top of their minds when a position becomes available. When you talk to the decision-makers about the matter of your next position, bring up the issue of how to make the most of your international experience and how to ensure you stay challenged professionally. Securing the professional side of things will go a long way to help the personal side of your re-entry. There is nothing worse than to find yourself unemployed as you are in the throes of reverse culture shock, upon your return home.
The return home is also a personal challenge. If you settled down happily at destination, you probably found it an exhilarating ride. You mastered a new city, discovered new tastes, sights, and sounds, and made your place among them. The thought of returning home might seem so…well, ordinary by comparison. At the same time, you will probably be looking forward to it, if only because of the chance of reviving your friendships, revisiting favorite places, and resuming activities you gave up because of the move. In a sense, there is an expectation of returning to the familiar and picking up where you left off.
In reality, things may not be that simple. It is likely that your horizons broadened significantly when you were abroad, even though you may not realize it. For example, when Caroline left Montreal to teach English at the University of Heredia, in Costa Rica, she was taken aback by the personal nature of social interaction. Over time, however, she learned to accept and enjoy the degree of mutual involvement people had in each other’s lives, the impromptu visits of friends, and parties with lots of drinking and dancing. When she came home, she thought that she could continue meeting with her Canadian friends as she always had: over beer at a pub. Yet when she tried it, it just was not as satisfying anymore. It seemed frightfully staid compared to the liveliness of things abroad. This was a painful discovery to make; it meant that the friends and rituals that made up the home she had expected to find did not exist anymore. Or, rather, they existed, but her perception of them had changed.
This is known as reverse culture shock. If “normal” culture shock occurred upon departure, when Caroline realized that it was possible for people to show up at her door unannounced or start dancing at a moment’s notice, she ultimately grew to appreciate these facts and her value system changed accordingly. This kind of warmth became desirable. Upon her return to Montreal, the Canadian way of doing things came as a shock to her. Reverse culture shock is particularly insidious because it comes at a time when we believe life is finally going to go back to normal—and we discover that there is actually no going back.
The unpleasantness of being a stranger in your own home in terms of values can be aggravated by a number of other factors. To begin with, there is the return to the ordinary. As an expat, you often get to circulate in more refined social circles than you would at home, primarily because you interact with people who have the money and education to speak a foreign language, but also because of your lucrative expat package if you have one. Besides, you get more attention as a foreigner, especially in countries where you stand out physically from the locals. Upon your return, you become an ordinary citizen. If your initial culture shock challenged your assumptions about how the world works, including proper ways of thinking and doing things, then reverse culture shock challenges your assumptions about yourself. It opens up questions like: Who am I? How do I fit in? You may have to reexamine who you are when stripped of the glamorous trimmings of being an expat. You may also have to consider how to reconcile the values and ideas you adopted while abroad with the way things are done at home.
On a social plane, after the initial joy of catching up with your friends, life simply goes on. You may find that people do not have as much time for you as they used to. This is normal. If you think about it, your departure created a gap in their lives, which they had to fill somehow. Your return finds them busy with their own lives, and there may not be a place for you immediately. Alternately, your friends may expect that you come back and fit right where you were before you left. This is also tricky, as you will have changed during your time abroad and may not be ready to resume your old role and attitudes.
When you do get together with your friends, you might find the meetings disappointing. People will typically listen to your story for a few minutes, skim through your pictures, then move on to the trials and tribulations of their daily lives. Few, if any, will be able to discuss the socioeconomic situation of your destination country or the emotional and personal growth you experienced during your time as an expat. If you insist on sticking to the topic, they might perceive you as trying to show off; if you simply cease speaking about your travels, you may get the sense that one of the more transforming times of your life has just been obliterated as insignificant. You can end up feeling alone in the worst possible way: alone among people who used to be your friends.
Personally, I find that nothing is worse than the unexpected. The higher your expectations were regarding your homecoming, the bigger the potential disappointment. If you were not happy abroad and were anxiously awaiting your return home, you may be in for a particularly tough time. “But,” you will ask, “how can I prepare for the results of changes in myself, which I am not even aware have occurred?” As always, it can be helpful to talk to people who have been through the experience. Seek out people who have been repatriated and listen to their stories of reverse culture shock, and ask them about their coping strategies.
It is important not to expect to find everything just as it was when you left. It can be helpful to think of your return as a move to an entirely different place, as if you were not coming home but moving to a third location entirely. Be prepared to do things differently. Consider living in a different part of town. Think of it as a chance to redesign your life rather than fall into your old routines. How can this be helpful? If you try to reproduce your life as it was before you left, you will inevitably find changes, often unpleasant ones: your favorite neighborhood shop may have closed, your friends may not all be waiting for you, things you formerly found exotic may be dull. In a sense, you will be a victim of the changes; they will be happening to you. If, on the other hand, you proactively decide to do things differently, you will be leading the change. You will be creating new opportunities for yourself that will outweigh the losses, and you will be able to fit in parts of your former lifestyle, while leaving yourself the space to include new elements that reflect the ways you have changed.
Socially, you might find it useful to seek out other people who have been abroad, who have visited the country you were sent to, or who are natives thereof. They will be in a better position to acknowledge what you have been through than some of your friends who have never left home. Seek out restaurants that serve the cuisine of your host country or stores that sell its products. Find out if there is a community center for people of that nationality and look up events that you might like to attend. Volunteer at that country’s embassy or even at your local international school to act as a guide for expats who come to your country. You might discover a whole immigrant community in your hometown that you were not aware of before, and that can add richness to your life upon your return.
More than anything else, it is important to realize that reverse culture shock can be as potent as the regular kind, that it can follow the same phases and take as much time to overcome: three months, six months, or even a year, depending on how long you were away. Do not expect to be 100 percent up to speed on the day you return just because you are returning “home.” You will be facing exactly the same issues as when you were leaving: house hunting, paperwork, adjustment to a new job, building social networks, adjusting to a new environment with your partner. Give yourself time to cope emotionally with all the changes…and then start thinking about your next foreign assignment!