Expatriation and Migration: Two Faces of the Same Coin 9004529500, 9789004529502

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Expatriation and Migration

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International Comparative Social Studies Editor-in-Chief Mehdi P. Amineh (Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, and International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University)

Editorial Board Shahrough Akhavi (Columbia University) W.A. Arts (University College Utrecht) Sjoerd Beugelsdijk (Radboud University) Mark-Anthony Falzon (University of Malta) Harald Fuhr (University of Potsdam) Joyeeta Gupta (University of Amsterdam) Xiaoming Huang (Victoria University Wellington) Nilgün Önder (University of Regina) Gerhard Preyer (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) Islam Qasem (Webster University, Leiden) Kurt W. Radtke (International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University) Mahmoud Sadri (Texas Woman’s University) Jeremy Smith (University of Eastern Finland) Ngo Tak-Wing (Leiden University) L.A. Visano (York University)

Volume 55

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/icss

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Expatriation and Migration Two Faces of the Same Coin Edited by

Sylvain Beck

leiden | boston

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Cover illustration: “L’horizon”, figure in bronze, 2011. Courtesy of Sebastien Alibert - sebastienalibert.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Beck, Sylvain (Sociologist) editor. Title: Expatriation and migration: two faces of the same coin / edited by Sylvain Beck. Description: Boston : Brill, [2023] | Series: International comparative social studies, 15684474 ; vol.55 | Includes index. | Summary: “Why are some people free to move around the world while others are constrained for crossing borders? This book challenges this crucial injustice that creates inequalities in the face of global issues such as climate change, wars, diseases and other local risk factors. The main theme of this collective work is to consider the representation of human displacement as a moral barrier between expatriates and migrants, with the former being seen as ‘unproblematic’ and ‘desirable’ while the latter is portrayed as ‘problematic’ and ‘undesirable’. Surveys show that this binary categorization subsists on at least four continents, stigmatizing different categories of people. Contributors are: Julia Büchele, Clio Chaveneau, Milos Debnar, Karine Duplan, Abdoulaye Gueye, Omar Lizarraga, and Chie Sakai”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022042114 (print) | LCCN 2022042115 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004529502 (hardback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004529526 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Emigration and immigration–Social aspects. | Social classes. | Social justice. | Noncitizens. | Immigrants. Classification: LCC JV6225 .E96 2023 (print) | LCC JV6225 (ebook) | DDC 304.8–dc23/eng/20221024 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042114 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042115 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1568-4474 isbn 978-90-04-52950-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-52952-6 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors viii

PART 1 Beyond Words: Questioning Categories and Defining the Problem 1

Introduction: Categories of Expats and Migrants Issues in Reappraising Global Human Displacements 3 Sylvain Beck

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Behind the Words: On the Use of Expatriate and Emigrant in the French Context 18 Abdoulaye Gueye

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Privileged, Highly Skilled and Unproblematic? White Europeans in Japan as Migrants 41 Miloš Debnár

PART 2 Gender Differentiation within the Categories: Blurring Tradition and Modernity 4

Expat Spouses as “Quasi Members”: Inside a Privileged Migration in Kampala, Uganda 69 Julia Büchele

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Between Lifestyles and Economic Opportunities: The Gendered Expectations of Japanese Expatriates in China’s Global Cities 89 Chie Sakai

PART 3 Beyond the Privilege: The Expatriate as a Symbol of Modernity 6

Enjoying the Advantages of Freedom: Multi-Local Practices of US “Pleasant Expats” in Northwest Mexico 113 Omar Lizárraga

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Privilege in Migration: The Benefits of Nationality for Northern Migrants in the Middle East 132 Clio Chaveneau

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The Expatriate as Heroic Figure of Globalization? Privileged Migration and Neoliberal Ideology in Luxembourg 157 Karine Duplan

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Conclusion: Sharing a Common Humanity: Expats and Migrants in Anthropocene Narratives 184 Sylvain Beck



Index 191

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Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 Number of European nationals registered in Japan by years (1986–2019) 52 5.1 Survey on the Number of Overseas Residents by gender from 1992 to 2019 97

Tables 5.1 The number of informants in each research year 95 6.1 US citizens resident in Sinaloa 122 6.2 US citizens residents in the state of Baja California Sur 124 6.3 US citizens residents in the state of Sonora 125

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Notes on Contributors Sylvain Beck holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Paris-Sorbonne University. His interest in expatriation stems from his the experience as educator in France and abroad and inquiries among teachers from France in Casablanca (Morocco) and London (UK) by ethnographic and qualitative methods. Author of several articles and book chapters, he is an active member of international research networks in Sociology: “Comparative Sociology” and “Sociology of Migration” at the International Sociological Association at the conference at Tokyo (2014) and Toronto (2018), “Global, Transnational and Cosmopolitan Sociology” and “Sociology of migration” at the European Sociological Association at the congress in Torino and Bilbao (2013), Praha (2015), Athens (2017), Helsinki (2018) and Manchester (2019). He has also participated to the IMISCOE conference in Malmö (2019) and is a member of the Lifestyle Migration Hub. He has led research with homeless people and on the use of alcohol in Paris and guided social workers with students in training progress. He has taught Sociology of migrations at Sciences Po Paris and is now Lecturer in Social Work at Ecole Pratique de Service Social (EPSS/Cergy-Paris University) Cergy-Paris University. French Collaborative Institute on Migration. Julia Büchele is currently head of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (G3S) as well as lecturer and coordinator of the MA program Changing Societies at the University of Basel. In 2017 she earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Basel. From 2012–2015, she held an assistant position at the Center for African Studies in Basel and was part of the organizing committee for the 2017 bi-annual European Conference of African Studies (ECAS) with approx. 1500 participants. From 2015–2016 she was a visiting scholar at the African and African American Studies Center at Harvard University. Clio Chaveneau is Associate Professor in Sociology at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi in the department of Philosophy and Sociology. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Paris Descartes-Sorbonne University (2016). Specializing in migration studies, she focuses her researchs on privileged mobilities and contemporary social dynamics in the Middle East (Palestine and the UAE). She published her work in several journals and collective books and she is the author of Les Interna-

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Notes on Contributors 

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tionaux en Palestine: Portrait d’une migration singulière (l’Harmattan, 2018) and co-author of Abu Dhabi Public Spaces: Urban Encounters, Social Diversity and (in)formality (Motivate Media Group, 2021). Miloš Debnár holds a position as an associate professor at the Faculty of International Studies, Ryukoku University in Kyoto. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Kyoto University in 2014 and his main research interests are migration, ethnicity, and race issues in relation to contemporary European migration to Japan. His most recent research project focuses on the decisions of migrants about settlement and further mobility. His monograph Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan was published by Palgrave in 2016 and his most recent publications include a comparative research paper co-authored with Špela D. Zorko, “Comparing the racialization of Central-East European migrants in Japan and the UK” (Comparative Migration Studies 9:30, 2021). Karine Duplan (Ph.D.) is a senior lecturer in geography at the University of Geneva. At the crossroad of critical migration studies, urban research, and feminist and gender studies, her research unpacks inequalities and privileges in the context of neoliberal globalization. In terms of migration research, she is particularly interested improving spatial justice in transnational elites’ formation and circulation. Abdoulaye Gueye is a professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His current research examines the collective process by which social actors are assigned distinct racial groups, and more importantly come to understand when race is at play. His prior research is concerned with the mobility of African intellectuals. His articles have been published in The DuBois Review, Esprit, The British Journal of Canadian Studies, and other journals. He is the author of several books (in French): Oublier l’amère patrie, Les intellectuels africains en France and Aux nègres de France la patrie non reconnaissante. Omar Lizarraga has a degree in Tourism, a Master in North American Studies and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences at the University Autonomous of Sinaloa (UAS) Mexico. In 2014 he did a postdoc at the University of Alicante, Spain. In 2011, in Mexico he was the winner of the National Award for the Best Doctorate Thesis; Award

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Notes on Contributors

granted by the Mexican Academy of Tourism Research. In 2016 he received the National Research Award from the Mexican Academy of Sciences, in the area of Social Sciences. He is currently Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University Autonomous of Sinaloa. He is the author of La transmigración placentera. Movilidad de Estadounidenses a México ([Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN)/ Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa (UAS)] 2012). Chie Sakai is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Sociology Kansai University (Japan). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2007. She has studied Japanese overseas for more than twenty years, focusing on women in China. Among her publications are, “Unintentional Cross-cultural Families: The Diverse Community of Japanese Wives in Shanghai” (in Sari K. Ishii ed., Marriage Migration in Asia: Emerging Minorities at the Frontiers of Nation-States, Kyoto University Press , 2016) and “The Japanese Community in Hong Kong in the 1990s: the Diversity of Strategies and Intentions” (Global Japan. The Experience of Japan’s New Immigrant and Overseas Communities, ed. R. Goodman et al., Routledge, 2003).

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PART 1 Beyond Words: Questioning Categories and Defining the Problem

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Categories of Expats and Migrants Issues in Reappraising Global Human Displacements Sylvain Beck This book aims to highlight, through a critical approach, the place of e­ xpatriation in the field of international migration studies. This increasingly studied topic is often linked to lifestyle migration (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009, 2016; Hayes, 2014, 2015), privileged mobility (Croucher, 2012; Kunz, 2016), or skilled and highly skilled migration (Conrad and Meyer-Ohle, 2019; ­Findlay and Cranston, 2015; Scott, 2006; Beaverstock, 2005). Expatriation is usually associated with a specific form of displacement by Westerners (Fechter, 2007). To some extent, it is associated with transnational elites (Beaverstock, 2002), international communities such as expat bubbles (Cohen, 1977), cosmopolitanism, and tourism. While expatriates are represented as international workers and travelers, the term is often used in human resources and management studies (McNulty and Brewster, 2019; van Bakel, 2018; Shen and Xie, 2018; ­Langinier and Froehlicher, 2018; Fan, Harzing and Köhler, 2018; Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018). Interestingly, most current research blends sociological and anthropological perspectives, with references to gender and race (Yeoh and Willis, 2014; Fechter, 2007; Leonard, 2010). There have also been attempts to reappraise common words and categories for expatriates and skilled migration (Cranston, 2017; Kunz, 2020). Benson and O’Reilly (2009) have powerfully demonstrated the need to move beyond push and pull factors in their tools for the analysis of lifestyle migration. Fechter (2007) has brilliantly linked sociology and anthropology to show the blurring of identities of self and otherness. Croucher (2009) has followed Amit’s insight (2007) concerning passports as a legal privilege in the right to nationality for traveling the world. The dichotomy between expats and migrants is variously perceived as desirable and undesirable, problematic and unproblematic (Kunz, 2020; Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014). This leads us to seek empirical definition of the dichotomy between migration and mobility studies (Faist, 2013). Given that expatriation is often encouraged, while migration tends to be stigmatized, this book explores a dichotomy which continues to be relevant. In sum, the dichotomy between expat and migrant is closely related to the © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_002 -

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norms of the neoliberal global market. But this may be changing in the wake of the pandemic crisis from March 2020, with worldwide experiences of lockdown for half of the seven billion inhabitants. This collective feeling of being vulnerable in the face of disease, and of experiencing immobility as the sole response of states to protect their populations, has increased awareness of the ­Anthropocene in modern societies (see the Conclusion to this book). Thus expat and migrant studies remain relevant in explorations of d­ isplacement and vulnerability, modernity and tradition, freedom and authority, the ­individual and the collective. What kinds of legitimacy and normativity are produced in furthering knowledge about expatriation and migration? These types of ­categories are a crucial issue (Dahinden et al., 2020). 1

Beyond the Images

A quick internet search provides a significant selection of the images diffused in the media. Planes, suitcases, suits and ties for men and suits and high heels for women are representations associated with the word expatriates. Gender differences and whiteness are associated with business, professional careers, investments, finance, and management. Smiles, relaxation, comfort and cleanliness are also prominent. Expatriates have the appearance of modern individuals. Meanwhile, images associated with the word migrant are overrepresented, evidencing the prominence of migration in the media, and leading to the construction of social representations. Black and Arab men, life jackets, tents, tracksuits and jeans, hoodies and puffa jackets, roads, walking, the Mediterranean Sea, other seas or deserts, borders, camps, coastguards, death. The images show poverty, danger, and huddled crowds. The basic questions may be blindingly obvious: how can these people share a common humanity? Do they live in the same world? National borders, rights to nationality and citizenship, identities, integration, culture, and race are classic notions for capturing differences, borders, and boundaries. But we can suggest that they also have a common characteristic in the modern world, namely individuation. This introduces the idea that vulnerability—defined as inability to change to a new life, or to adapt to the natural and social environment (Soulet, 2005, 2009)—amounts to the main difference between human beings undergoing displacement and those engaged in social and spatial mobility. The editor of this book aims to draw on insights provided by grounded ­theory based on fieldwork (Beck and Weinar, 2017, 2018a, 2018b), taking a comparative perspective to those of the seven chapter authors. All the chapters

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Introduction

draw on long-term fieldwork and reflection on the topic, seeking to understand the notion of migration as a problem. Expatriation is generally the domain of human resources management literature, while migration studies are generally claimed by human rights advocates. These two academic disciplines are not really attuned to each other. The reasons are multiple. On the one hand, we can suggest a teleological explanation: in producing knowledge, the first aims to adapt to the sociopolitical environment, while the second seeks social change. On the other hand, an academic social hierarchy can be observed between business and management schools, and university-based social sciences, the former being more connected to multinationals, while the latter are more connected to NGO s and civil society. In other words, the difference is mainly ontological: a relationship to multinational companies and individual property, or to public services and commonality. Notwithstanding the diversity of this book’s authors, they tend to belong to the second type. In both cases, proximity to the figure of the expatriate and the international elite should be regarded as a bias in the production of knowledge. But the aim of this book is not to deal with the sociology of professions, or the sociology of labor, or of human resources and management organizations. Several chapters discuss these aspects (especially chapter 3, and to some extent chapter 8), but they do not draw on a sociology of managers and executives, even abroad. Although we can observe the social hierarchy between expats and migrants in the international social division of labor, it is also possible to suggest a hierarchy in scholarships and funding between multinational companies and their equivalent for expat studies, and international organizations, NGO s and other associations for migration studies.1 The main issue lies in dealing with the meanings of words (see especially chapters 2 and 3), in order to broaden discussion beyond the classic dichotomy of expat and migrant (see the conclusion to chapter 9). The aim is to take a line of approach between the sociology of international elites, commonly called expatriates and often studied by human resources management, and the sociology of migration. This ambitious project entails the risk of comparison. Even though each chapter is based on robust fieldwork—particularly, long-term fieldwork—the results could be perceived at best as an attempt at reconciliation, or as a provocation to be discussed. Both readings need to be addressed. Let us hope that this collection of essays will open the way to ­stimulating discussions!

1 When they are not self-funded by campaigners for the defense of human rights, especially in France where philanthropists are scarce.

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The seven chapters are concerned with expatriation generally. This means empirical, theoretical and semantic research that places expatriation at the core of the analysis. It is particularly interesting to have a critical approach to the uses of words and their links with migration studies. The main themes of interest are as follows: meanings or translations of the words expatriation, migration, and mobility in the languages of origin and adopted societies; tendencies in representations and practices in these societies in a global political economy; categories relating to privilege or skilled status in migration, such as gender, class, race, nationality or qualifications; reflections on colonial, imperial, national, cosmopolitan, linguistic, and political economies, or any social questions that might further the exploration of expatriation. The cross-national comparison presented in this book aims to move beyond ethnocentrism. Talking about migration implies talking about the self, individually and collectively, about history, the future, common projects, desires, and the fear of having to live with people who are not yet familiar, or who are over- or undervalued. Considering expatriation as the reverse face of a s­ ingle coin has the ambitious intention of opening up the identification of self to otherness, the stranger or foreigner in a broad sense, in order to integrate intuition of the “stranger” in Georg Simmel (1908) and the phenomenological approach of Alfred Schütz (1944) with that of Robert Park and his “marginal man” (1928). All the chapters explore what has been labeled the problem of migration. This book project started before the coronavirus pandemic, but while global movements ceased for a few weeks and have restarted gradually since then, the words and definitions of the migratory problem are still operative worldwide, and have even been amplified by nation-states’ responses to the health crisis. After the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, what interest is there in expatriation and migration? The world has not collapsed, and ‘the world after’ is not appearing. However, the experience of modernity has been transformed, especially in the inability to preserve individual freedom of circulation even for those from Western countries who previously had this privilege. At the same time, working on this topic during the lockdown has been very fruitful. Indeed, the differentiation between expats and migrants appears not simply as social, racial, or class distinction. These representations evidence the powerful influence the terms have on political debates, as well as differences in the ability to cross national borders, thus underscoring inequalities in human displacements, and also characterizing vulnerabilities as problems (homelessness, unemployment, poverty, violence). When migration becomes a central question, other very real local and global problems are hidden.

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Introduction

2

Rethinking Integration

To address migration is to care about physical and social protection, because it is first of all a moral and policy question (Faist, 2009). But studying migration also means taking an interest in integration (Favell, 2008, 2003; S­ cholten, 2011). Integration can be understood in the light of “the point of view of the dominant over the dominated” (Lapeyronnie, 1993). Beyond multiculturalism or assimilationist policies (Schinkel, 2018), geographical categories (North and South), historical categories (colonial, postcolonial and decolonial), ­anthropological categories (Us and Them) or racial categories (Wimmer, 2015) expatriation studies suggest that integration can be envisaged from the ­perspective of an access to modernity as a sense of existence. Following this recognition, all migrants, because they are persons in displacement, are seen as modern individuals. In a neoliberal world where mobility is a norm, defining social hierarchies, evaluations, distinctions and judgments, why should some immigrants be deprived of the possibility of becoming modern? Modernity is assimilated into citizenship in a modern state. In this sense, protection and “the right to have a right” for individuals to be protected remains a prerogative of the nation-state that globalization has markedly reinforced rather than weakened (Weil, 2011). In spite of different philosophies around the world, more or less ethical or utilitarian (Pécoud, 2020), the regulation of migration is state-­centered. ­Citizenship has been nationally and culturally anchored in the history of international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and, subsequently, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial history. We can argue that global hierarchies distinguishing expat and migrant influence the current outlook on migration. Firstly, Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10/12/1948), that everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state, and that everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country, is not recognized worldwide. Additionally, the 1951 Refugee Convention structures the basis of legal refugee status. Ratified by 149 states, it defines the term refugee and outlines the rights of displaced people, as well as the legal obligations of states to protect them. Drawing on Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, which recognizes the right of persons to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries, the United Nations Convention related to the status of refugees, adopted in 1951, is at the heart of international refugee protection today. But the practices of law are produced in the host countries by administrative procedures (Spire, 2009) and the personal conviction of judges, for instance in France’s National Court for Asylum Seeking (Laacher, 2018). Words are still powerful in officials’ representations,

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despite efforts towards neutrality linked to their function and their oath. Given the resilience of the dichotomy between expats and migrants, and the lack of debate on the subject, we can expect to find the influence of domination towards those labeled as migrants in the discourse on integration, even in the framework of national law. Using persecution as a requirement to justify ­asylum-seeking and refugee status, and the third-world status of countries of origin, capitalist economies or postcolonial societies seek to justify differences between individuals. But migration is often the project of a modern individual even when those concerned are influenced by a community, given that individuals are always part of a social network. In contrast, multinational companies are examples of how so-called expats experience traditionalist outlooks in their recruitment (see, for instance, chapter 4 in this book). Integration in the sense of assimilation is ambivalent, because how can people become integrated in individualistic societies? All immigrants are clearly individuals and modern in the sense that they are mobile. Displacement can be seen as a kind of emancipation, from a country, a community, or a family of origin. This lack of recognition of emancipation applies to a part of the world population who still have to challenge administrations in order to prove how modern they look – as if struggling with an administration was a proof of becoming a modern individual. Immigrants have to show how modern they look in spite of originating from developing countries. They must be “developing individuals”. A “good” migrant should look like a modern migrant in a neoliberal society. Expatriates are viewed as the best migrants because they are seen positively for their entrepreneurship, but this is not the case for all, and these qualities are often denied to people labeled as migrants. Ironically, ­expatriate individuality is strongly structured by multinational companies, especially via working conditions and the job contract, or the individual’s status in the public services of the state. Freedom of circulation is constitutive of the imaginary sphere of modernity that finds its original meaning in the concept of Bildung as the formation of a cosmopolitan self, as with European students, but in the labor market, ordinary cosmopolitanism also operates in the working classes. We can rethink the discourse of integration in a global world in the light of discourse on the Anthropocene, which encompasses all humanity in a common global history. The aim is no longer to become integrated into the modern world, but to feel included in the A ­ nthropocene2 as more or less vulnerable people face from the global changes produced by human activities 2 Anthropocene is used here in a general sense: that of a narrative that considers humanity as a telluric force on climate, biodiversity, soils, rivers and sea. It is not adding to geologic debate,

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Introduction

and the consequences on the liveability of parts of the Earth. The Anthropocene replaces the dichotomy between tradition and modernity by a global view reunifying nature and culture. In this sense, the moral order is changing: the expatriates, these “good migrants” and “heroes of globalization”, according to the brilliant discussion in chapter 8 of this book, are becoming “bad migrants”, losers because most of them actively participate in necropolitics, with its power for the destruction of nature and humanity (MBembe and Meintjes, 2001). 3

Aiming to Produce Knowledge

Definitions of migration in international organizations like UNHCR3 and UNESCO4 can be influenced by scholars in migration studies. It is generally accepted that a migrant is a person living in a country other than their country of birth, and who has been living there for at least one year. We can distinguish labor migrants, economic migrants, forced migration, asylum seekers, refugees, skilled and highly skilled migrants, and expatriates. We can also include a distinction between international and internal migration, since definitions of migration are a result of state policies introduced in response to political and economic goals and public attitudes. In the usual meaning, a migrant is a person who is displaced, or more broadly any living being in displacement (for example, birds in their seasonal migrations). Researchers agree that expatriates are migrants (Kunz, 2020: 2148). But can migrants be expatriates? As we will see, expatriates are legitimized as the winners of globalization (the “heroes”, see chapter 8). Racial studies tend to reify whiteness versus blackness, oriental or southern versus northern and western. If intersectional approaches are clearly required, difficulties remain in envisaging identity beyond the reification linked to skin color, gender, or social class. Sociologically, researchers continue to construct a public problem of migration, in spite of attempts to move beyond categories. How can we construct a category of common humanity? Expatriation not only raises the question of residence; above all, it raises the issue of the homeland (patria). This is more than a question of location neither including all of humanity as being equally responsiblee; the term capitalocene might also fit. This term emphasizes the limits of the possibility of life on Earth. 3 https://www.unhcr.org/asylum-and-migration.html. 4 https://wayback.archive-it.org/10611/20171126022441/http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social -and-human-sciences/themes/international-migration/glossary/migrant/.

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and belonging. The homeland is associated with a sense of comfort in relation to self and environment, to individual and collective memory, to feelings and affects, in resonance with the relationship to the world, as in the German concept of heimat (Rosa, 2019: 358–9). This book will question knowledge production in migration studies (­Dahinden, Fischer, Menet, 2020: 2). International comparison can nourish reflection on the decolonization of knowledge (Connell et al., 2017; Dufoix, 2018). Social scientists contribute to the creation of the social world through terms such as performativity. They often contribute to the construction of the public “problem” (Dewey, 2012 [1927]) by widely sharing categories without questioning them enough. Even if they are involved in the defense of rights, they use the words of domination. By making sense of the words and highlighting their meanings, the intent is to reverse our representations of human displacements. 4 Contents This book gathers seven authors—social scientists, sociologists and geographers from different parts of the world—in order to provide reflection from various cultural viewpoints. This enables us to demonstrate how the dichotomy between expats and migrants is widespread and influential, especially in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America. The chapters implement different methodologies, namely an analysis of the semantics of official texts (chapter 2), multi-site ethnography (chapters 5 and 7), ethnography (chapters 4 and 8), and mixed methods (chapters 3 and 6). They examine migrations that are North–North (Westerners in Luxembourg), North–South (Westerners in Africa and Americans in Mexico), West–East (Europeans in Japan and Westerners in the Middle East) and East–West (Japanese in China). The authors provide significant diversity in terms of nationality, race, gender, and age. Nevertheless, these criteria are not central, since the aim of the book is to blur the usual categories. They are merely landmarks and points of departure, but they are useful for comparison with other kind of migration discourse and representation. The book is divided into three parts. The first part comprises chapters that consider the meanings of words. Chapter 2 looks at meanings of the words expatriate and migrant in the French context. Based on an analysis of French parliamentary reports on expatriation, and public discourse on immigration, the author maps out the differentiation by modern nation-states among their citizens. Looking at categories of self-perception and the modern nation-state,

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Introduction

he shows how in France the categorization of immigrants has developed since the mid-1970s, and progressively drifted towards Arab and black people as a result of racialist political discourse and public policies. He evidences this social construction and the stigmatization of the “other” at the forefront of political debate, and the instating of the word expatriate with its positive connotation to describe the French abroad. He emphasizes a French paradox which glorifies emigrants, referring to them as expats, and stigmatizes immigrants. This attitude stems from political will and not from scientific knowledge. He points out that the term patria or homeland is not sufficiently discussed because academic debates on privileged forms of migration on the one hand, and labor migration, asylum seeking and refugees on the other, are centered on race. Chapter 3 corroborates this argument from a Japanese perspective. This demonstrates the inconsistence of the expat category and shows how these connotations are apparent in media representations of migration in Japan. It also shows that the expat category does not apply solely to Western migrants living abroad. From surveys of white Europeans in Japan, there is a connection between whiteness and postcolonial legacies, and the profiles of expatriates are constructed as good and unproblematic migrants. The author emphasizes that, in spite of pinpointing critical aspects, existing studies lack comparisons between Western and non-Western migrants in analyzing different types of migration. Consequently, analyses tend to reproduce the image of Westerners as unproblematic expatriates. Beyond the words in Japanese and the usual categories of nationality, race, geographic origin, and ethnicity, the author emphasizes the sense of existence, the process of individuation and the affects related to the concept of patria or homeland, which is not just a feeling of belonging and of being safe and secure. This enables us to look beyond political categories, to consider all people in displacement (both classic expats and migrants) and in mobility (without displacement). The second part of the book is devoted to gender differentiation between expats and migrants. The two chapters open up new horizons of modernity and tradition to look beyond the image of the expat as a white male, reversing the usual conceptions. Chapter 4 describes a kind of vacuity of existence among expat wives, underlying the postcard image of expat families in Uganda. The description of the German party is eloquent on social distinction via the role of decorative elements in the house and partitioning inside the expat community. Nevertheless, refusing to yield to the temptation of considering women as merely followers, the author emphasizes their agency via their identification as quasi-members of the team. In a discussion of human resources literature and observation of recruitment, she shows the influence of the employer on mobility choices. A “family project” is expected by multinational companies.

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For the purpose of this book, this utilitarian perspective blurs the notion of modernity, counterbalancing the image of the “heroes of globalization” (see chapter 8). Indeed, companies’ expectations when recruiting ­ expatriate ­professionals show the importance of so-called traditional family values in the decision to become an expatriate: stability in the couple, dependency of the spouse towards her husband. The support of wives for domestic tasks and the formation of social networks is the hidden face of expatriation. But although they participate in the project, lack of recognition for their work and the pressure put on the family counterbalance the glorified image of free individuals. On the one hand, spouses struggle to exist as individuals, implementing strategies to erect arbitrary boundaries (as in the German party), or staging their leisure activities. On the other hand, the familial project highlights a type of dependency on the companies and their scope for providing employment in the global labor market. This important point allows us to see beyond the postcard. If we add the nature of the colonial activities of certain companies, especially in Africa, this can cast a shadow on the unproblematic view of expatriates, calling for another discourse on modernity (see the Conclusion). Following the idea of individuality, chapter 5 focuses on single Japanese women in China’s global cities. Their expectations are framed in terms of a happier lifestyle rather than economic gain. Based on twenty years of fieldwork, the author describes Japanese expatriate women as escaping from their female condition in Japan, for instance through promotion and responsibilities at work that they could not have expected in their native country. These openings show that expatriation can be understood as emancipation from a paternalist society. Japanese women change our view of expatriates as white males, and are also emblematic of expats belonging to a risk society, materially secure but psychologically unsafe because uprooted. Focusing on choice as a gendered difference for motivations to live abroad, the author shows greater freedom and determination among women than among men, emphasizing expatriation as an experience of individuals who escape national borders. The third part of this book corroborates the relevance of the distinction between tradition and modernity through the meanings of privilege in ­migration. Chapter 6, based on the concept of a pleasant transmigration of Americans to Mexico, and adjusted to expatriation, shows that the two terms are almost synonymous. This shows the malleability of the term expatriate in migration studies (see also chapter 8), which may contribute to a denationalization of the expatriate individual, and also a discussion on expatriation beyond nation. More importantly, this chapter reinforces the idea of ostentatious consumption and leisure associated with expatriation. The concept of pleasure is related to tourism. We can argue this from the perceptive insights

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of Zygmunt Bauman (1998) on the tourist and the vagabond (see also the ­Conclusion). One is more secure and socially protected than the other, according to a transnational social question (Faist, 2009). Here, nationality is crucial, but variations are observable within groups of workers with similar characteristics in terms of race and nationality (as in chapter 7). Pleasure is seen positively, and related to modernity in a global neoliberal era. This provides an advantage over the local Mexican population. Among Americans in Mexico, their enjoyment of freedom of circulation across national borders and their enjoyment of economic advantages are particularly ostentatious. This chapter shows that expatriation needs to be considered as more anchored in patria— homeland—than in nation. Indeed, the term patria, or homeland, is related to home, pleasure and well-being, or feeling comfortable and secure. That is why expatriation appears to be linked to social and physical protection, and to psychological and environmental consequences. Chapter 7, which explores boundaries between homogenous groups of Westerners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and the local populations, highlights the idea that privilege is tempered by the protection of nationality with regard to international relations and freedom of c­ irculation. This allows us to view expatriation beyond race and colonialism, in terms of feelings of insecurity. Not totally disconnected from this, there is the issue of the Kafala system, an informal administration process for obtaining work authorizations. This ­traditional sponsorship system for obtaining and renewing authorizations contrasts with the formal and legal right to cross national borders. Thus, modern appearances are not always positively connoted, beyond race and nationality. Discomfort and anxiety caused by the Kafala for Westerners contrasts with the usual privileges of circulation and brings them closer to the illegal immigrant’s anxiety in the face of European administration. Without putting the two on the same level, this highlights the ability of the local social organization based on tradition and local bureaucracy to remain above international law. The chapter shows that privilege is perceived differently at different levels, formal and informal, and there is a need to consider all the dimensions of existence and to locate the place of power. Finally, the desirability of unproblematic expatriates is stressed in chapter 8, which questions the idea of the expatriate through reframing as a modern individual. These “heroes of globalization” as ideal free-floating neoliberal subjects enable us to reach the heart of this topic. Illustrated by the self-perception of Westerners in Luxembourg, it is interesting to see how expatriates consider themselves at the summit of normativity in international mobility, while migrants are seen as being at the bottom of the international social scale. In this representation, migration appears as an attempt at integration into global norms of mobility

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through displacement and the hope of social mobility, close to the idea of social emancipation. ­Linking to chapter 2 and the power of words in the production of norms, the expatriate can be seen as a distinctive category that legitimizes the social position of individuals in a global world ranked by the norms of the labor market. These seven chapters, reaching across the world, blurring categories of tradition and modernity with categories of gender, race and nationality, also blend migration and mobility. By considering the normativity of the labor market, nation-states and subjectivities separately, we can construct the ideal figure of the expatriate, its meaning and its consequences. Finally, in conclusion we will see that, in the age of an Anthropocene narrative, the expat and the migrant pose the question of existentialism and cooperation for a common humanity on different levels, rather than the question of competition to survive. References Amit, Vered. 2007. Going first class? New Approaches towards privileged travel and movement. New-York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: the human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2002. “Transnational Elites in Global Cities: British Expatriates in Singapore’s Financial District”. Geoforum 33(4): 525–38. Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2005. “Transnational Elites in the City: British Highly-Skilled Inter-Company Transferees in New York City’s Financial District”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 245–68. Beck, Sylvain. 2018a. “Déconstruire l’expatriation à la lumière de la diversité des statuts professionnels et des profils sociologiques des enseignants français au Maroc”. Migrations Société 174(4): 105–21. Beck, Sylvain. 2018b. “La politique du voyage. L’éducation spécialisée comme f­ ormation au cosmopolitisme”. Sciences & Actions Sociales 10(2): 94–111. Beck, Sylvain, and Weinar, Agnieszka. 2017. “Mobile French Citizens and La ­Mère-Patrie: Emigration and Diaspora Policies in France”. Emigration and Diaspora Policies in the Age of Mobility 9: 85–99. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2009. Lifestyle Migration. Expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2016. “From lifestyle migration to lifestyle in migration: Categories, concepts and ways of thinking”. Migration Studies 4(1): 20–37. Cohen, Erik. 1977. “Expatriate Communities”. Current Sociology 24(23): 5–133.

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Connell, Raewyn, Collyer, Fran, Maia, Joao, and Morrell, Robert. 2017. “Toward a global sociology of knowledge: Post-colonial realities and intellectual practices”. International Sociology 32(1): 21–37. Conrad, Harald, and Meyer-Ohle, Hendrik. 2019. “Transnationalization of a Recruitment Regime: Skilled Migration to Japan”. International Migration 57(3): 250–65. Cranston, Sophie. 2017. “Expatriate as a ‘Good’ Migrant: Thinking Through Skilled International Migrant Categories”. Population, Space and Place 23(6): e2058. Croucher, Sheila. 2012. “Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality”. Societies 2(1): 1–13. Croucher, Sheila. 2009. “Migrants of Privilege: The Political Transnationalism of ­Americans in Mexico”. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 16(4): 463–491. Crowley-Henry, M., and Al Ariss, A. 2018. “Talent management of skilled migrants: propositions and an agenda for future research”. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 29(13): 2054–2079. Dahinden, Janine, Fischer, Carolin, and Menet, Joanna. 2020. “Knowledge production, reflexivity, and the use of categories in migration studies: tackling challenges in the field”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(4): 535–54. Dewey, John. 2012. The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry. ­Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Dufoix, Stéphane. 2018. “Coming to Terms with Western Social Sciences: Three ­Historical Lessons from Asia”. Journal of Global Studies 5: 49–71. Faist, Thomas. 2009. “The Transnational Social Question. Social Rights and Citizenship in a Global Context”. International Sociology 24(1): 7–35. Faist, Thomas. 2013. “The mobility turn: a new paradigm for the social sciences?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36(11): 1637–46. Fan, Shea, Harzing, Anne-Wil, and Köhler, Tine. 2018. “How you see me, how you don’t: ethnic identity self-verification in interactions between local subsidiary employees and ethnically similar expatriates”. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(19): 2407–2433. Favell, Adrian. 2003. “Integration Nations: The Nation-State and Research on Immigrants in Western Europe”. Comparative Social Research Yearbook 22(Nov.): 13–42. Favell, Adrian. 2008. Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an I­ ntegrating Europe. Oxford: Blackwell. Fechter, Anne-Meike. 2007. Transnational Lives: Expatriates in Indonesia. Farnham: Ashgate. Findlay, Allan M., and Cranston, Sophie. 2015. “What’s in a Research Agenda? An Evaluation of Research Developments in the Arena of Skilled International Migration”. International Development Planning Review 37(1): 17–31. Hayes, Matthew. 2014. “‘We Gained a Lot Over What We Would Have Had’: The ­Geographic Arbitrage of North American Lifestyle Migrants to Cuenca, Ecuador”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(12): 1953–71.

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Hayes, Matthew. 2015. “‘It is hard being the different one all the time’: gringos and racialized identity in lifestyle migration to Ecuador”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(6): 943–58. Klekowski von Koppenfels, Amanda. 2014. Migrants or Expatriates? Americans in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kunz, Sarah. 2020. “Expatriate, Migrant? The Social Life of Migration Categories and the Polyvalent Mobility of Race”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46(11): 2145–62. Kunz, Sarah. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration ­Scholarship”. Geography Compass 10(3). Laacher, Smaïn. 2018. Croire à l’incroyable : un sociologue à la Cour nationale du droit d’asile. Paris: Gallimard. Langinier, H., and Froehlicher, T. 2018. “Context Matters: Expatriates’ Adjustment and Contact with Host Country Nationals in Luxembourg”. Thunderbird International Business Review 60(1): 105–19. Lapeyronnie, Didier. 1993. L’individu et les minorités: la France et la Grande-Bretagne face à leurs immigrés. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Mbembe, Achille, and Meintjes, Libby. 2003. “Necropolitics”. Public Culture 15(1): 11–40. McNulty, Y., and Brewster, C. 2019. Working Internationally: Expatriation, Migration and Other Global Work. London: Edward Elgar. Park, Robert. 1928. “Human Migration and the Marginal Man”. American Journal of Sociology. 33(6): 881–93. Pécoud, Antoine. 2020. “Philosophies of migration governance in a globalizing World”. Globalizations, 18(61): 1–17. Rosa, Hartmut. 2019. Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, trans. James Wagner. Cambridge: Polity Press. Schinkel, Willem. 2018. “Against ‘immigration integration’: for an End to Neocolonial Knowledge Production”. Comparative Migration Studies 6(31): 1–17. Scholten, Peter. 2011. Framing Immigrant Integration : Dutch Research-Policy Dialogues in Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Schütz, Alfred. 1944. “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology”. American Journal of Sociology 49(6): 499–507. Scott, Sam. 2006. “The Social Morphology of Skilled Migration: The Case of the British Middle Class in Paris”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32(7): 1105–29. Shen, Kathy Ning, and Xie, Xuanli. 2018. “Moving from the developing to the developed: compensation disparities of Chinese expatriates”. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 56(2): 260–85. Simmel, Georg. 1908. “The Sociological Significance of the ‘Stranger’”, in Park, Robert E., and Burgess, E. W. 1921. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: U ­ niversity of Chicago Press.

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Soulet, Marc-Henry. 2005. “La vulnérabilité comme catégorie de l’action publique”. Pensée plurielle, 10(2): 49–59. Soulet, Marc-Henry. 2009. “Changer de vie, devenir autre: essai de formalisation des processus engagés” in Grossetti, Michel, ed., Bifurcations. Les sciences sociales face aux ruptures et à l’événement. La Découverte, pp. 273–88. Spire, Alexis. 2009. Accueillir ou reconduire. Enquête sur les guichets de l’immigration. Paris : Raisons d’agir. van Bakel, Mark. 2018. “It takes two to tango: a review of the empirical research on expatriate-local interactions”. The International Journal of Human Resource M ­ anagement, 30(17): 1–33. Weil, Patrick. 2011. “From Conditional to Secured and Sovereign: The New Strategic Link Between the Citizen and the Nation-State in a Globalized World”. International Journal of Constitutional Law 9(3–4): 615–35. Wimmer, Andreas. 2015. “Race-centrism: a critique and a research agenda”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(13): 2186–2205. Yeoh, Brenda, and Ramdas, Karen. 2014. “Gender, Migration, Mobility and Transnationalism”. Gender, Place and Culture 21(10): 1197–1213.

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CHAPTER 2

Behind the Words: On the Use of Expatriate and Emigrant in the French Context Abdoulaye Gueye 1 Introduction In her 2020 article, Sarah Kunz quotes a contribution to the British left-­leaning newspaper, The Guardian, by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, an ­African writer and social activist. Titled “Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?,”1 Koutonin’s piece points to the different labeling of migrants according to their racial identity, and advocates for a similar identification of foreign-born residents regardless of their race (Kunz, 2020: 2146). The piece reinforces an observation made the year before by a French media professional, Julien Gonzales. In a report commissioned by Fondapol (a French think-tank) about French emigration and its impact on the socioeconomic welfare of France, Gonzales expresses surprise about the absence of the category emigrant in the French national census, before observing: “From a purely semantic standpoint, the terms emigration and emigrant are far from being consecrated. State officials prefer to talk about ‘French residing abroad’, ‘expatriates’, or ‘French citizens abroad’. The Senate website has a specific page devoted to them on its website titled ‘The Expatriates’ Room – The Senate at the service of the French living abroad’2 [‘Espace Expatriés – Le Sénat au service des Français de l’étranger’]”. (Gonzales, 2014: 19). The issue raised in the two texts is clearly about the arbitrary allocation of two different labels, expatriate on the one hand, and emigrant (or its flip side immigrant) on the other, to categorize nationals residing outside their own countries. In the past decade, an ongoing discussion in the social sciences has attempted to make sense of the rationale and justification for the double standard governing the use of these two terms. Looking at the far-right rhetoric used to galvanize Britons’ votes in favor of Brexit, Sophie Cranston highlights the populist United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) designation of 1 Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network /2015/mar/13/white-people-expats-immigrants-migration. 2 Translated from French by author. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_003 -

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British emigrants as “expats”, whereas the same party resorts systematically to the term immigration to describe the status of foreign nationals living in the UK. She underscores how the party exhorted these absentee citizens “to do [their] bit on May 7th [by] [r]egister[ing] to vote” (Cranston, 2017: 2058). Despite this observation, Cranston is not interested in accounting for the rationale of UKIP and others in labeling as expatriates British nationals living abroad. In her study (and in the majority of empirical studies), the narration of migrants themselves about their own self-identification as expatriates or immigrants is the key angle of analysis. However this approach leaves another angle of inquiry for exploration: the state’s designation of their own absentee citizens. This chapter contributes to academic discussion on the use of the terms expatriate and emigrant by looking specifically at the French case. Its goal is to unveil the rationale behind the use of the term expatriate by French officialdom, through the mirror of the political categorization of foreign nationals living in France as immigrants. This approach is relevant in several respects. Firstly, in light of the deconstruction of the concept of migration by authors including the sociologist Stephen Castles, who challenged the objectivity of the definition of migration and its associated terms (immigrant/ migrant/­emigrant). Castles points out that these definitions are the product of state policies, and are manufactured in “response to political and ­economic goals and public attitudes” (Castles, 2000: 270). Secondly, the approach responds to a substantial social sciences literature which demonstrates how the discursive power of the state imposes upon citizens and shapes their worldview, although in return citizens, too, sometimes act on the state (Gueye, 2006). Citizens construct their worldview from the language made available to them by institutions, among which the state is perhaps the most powerful. Steven Loyal highlights B ­ ourdieu’s contribution to the theory of the state when he reminds us that for Bourdieu, “the state thinking penetrates the minutest aspects of our everyday lives from filling in a bureaucratic form, carrying an identity card, signing a birth certificate, to shaping our day-to-day thinking and thought” (Loyal, 2017: 73). Elaborating further, Loyal adds that “[t]he categories we work and live with, the practices we label, how we perceive and evaluate social processes are all effects of state thinking and categories” (Loyal, 2017: 73). This echoes Wimmer and Glick-Schiller’s assessment of the effect of state thinking on migration studies: “nation-state building processes have fundamentally shaped the ways immigration has been perceived and received [and these] perceptions have in turn influenced, though not completely determined, social science theory and methodology and, more specifically, its discourse on immigration and integration” (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller, 2002: 301–302). Going further, Willem Schinkel (2018) brings home forcefully

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the implied subordination of academics—who are expected to be critical of socially enforced order—to the discursive power of the state, whose socially divisive terminologies such as immigrant, foreigner, refugee, and so on they appropriate and even naturalize. He argues, the genealogy of research on immigrant integration shows precisely this: that the categories, questions and modes of analysis of social science cannot be separated from those of the state. In fact, much immigrant integration research in Western Europe comes out of particular entanglements between university-based social scientists and state institutions. (…) Often state institutions set—and finance—surveys that others also work with. (Schinkel, 2018: 15) To account for French officialdom’s discourse, this chapter delves into a rich and diverse sample of data recorded in a group of four documents. The first consists of statistical notes collected by the French ministry of foreign affairs; these are contributed by embassy and consulate services around the world, and are published annually under the title “Répertoire des Français vivant à l’étranger.” This source offers one of the most reliable counts of French citizens living abroad, although many authors, including Biancaci, rightfully point to the limited methodology of this data collection by stressing that only French emigrants who register voluntarily at their embassies and consulates are included in the tally.3 The second document, “Enquête sur l’expatriation des Français”, is a report published in 2013, commissioned by the ministry of foreign affairs through its branch La Maison des Français de l’Étranger. The third, a report on the effects of French migration on France’s economic welfare, was commissioned by a parliamentary inquiry commission and authored in 2014 by Yann Galut, a member of parliament. This “Rapport fait au nom de la commission d’enquête sur l’exil des forces vives de la France” is important for two reasons. Firstly, it emanates from one of the most legitimate and powerful branches of the French state, the National Assembly. Secondly, the second part of the report, and the longest, consists of a verbatim transcript of statements made by all twenty-eight members of parliament who took part in the inquiry committee. While the entire French state cannot be reduced to the persons of these lawmakers, it is nonetheless represented through them, all the more so as the major French political parties had at least one member sitting 3 In comparison, the methods used by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) and Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), two statefunded national organizations, are more rigorous.

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in this commission. As a result, the terms used by these lawmakers during the six-month hearing organized by the French assembly offers a good assessment of the categorization of absentee French citizens by French officialdom. The last document, titled “La mobilité internationale des Français” (2018), is a report commissioned by prime minister Edouard Philippe, authored by Anne Genetet,4 representative of the eleventh district of French emigrants at the National Assembly, and under administrative supervision of Jean-Yves le Drian, minister for Europe and foreign affairs. Through this methodological approach, agreement between the anecdotal evidence upon which most texts are based (including Gonzales’s) and the ­systematic evidence will be empirically assessed. The French state’s aversion to the label emigrant when categorizing its own citizens living abroad—while the foreign-born living in France are designated as immigrants—in favor of the term expatriate will be rigorously documented. But beyond the goal of ­documenting the quasi-monopolistic use of the term expatriate to i­dentify French emigrants, this chapter intends to make sense of this preference. Among the key questions that will direct this discussion are: To what extent is use of this term by French officialdom to identify its own absentee citizens informed by national debate around the issue of migration? Does use of the term partake in the management of France’s self-definition as a nation? The above questions imply, if they do not convey explicitly, that the issue at stake in French officialdom’s choice to label absentee citizens as expatriate is simply the sociopolitical production of French identity. Indeed, France presents itself to the world through the labels it allocates to its own citizens. 2

Revisiting the Debate on Emigration and Expatriation

Focusing exclusively on the French context, Temporal and Brutel (2016) lament the lack of academic research on emigration, while the topic of immigration claims significant attention. In the same volume, Veronique Petit (2016: 9) agrees with their conclusion and expresses the hope of seeing scholars fill this gap. On a wider scale, Fechter and Walsh (2010) or Croucher (2012) underline the social scientists’ tardy engagement with the study of emigration of citizens from Western countries. Without denying these criticisms of social scientists’ responses to the official discourse, it is fair to say that they are being heeded. Indeed, in the past 4 Available online: https://www.vie-publique.fr/rapport/37634-la-mobilite-internationale-des -francais.

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ten years, a growing list of articles and books has been published dealing with Western citizens’ migrations abroad. This new and empirically rich literature also integrates theoretical insights that have contributed significantly to the study of migration. A pervasive feature of the literature is the variety of terms to designate Western citizens settling abroad. Some authors apply the term expatriates mostly, if not exclusively, to Western migrants (or at best migrants from economically developed countries), by assuming that expatriate identity is associated with “rank, power and privilege”, as Byron and Van de Vijver argue (2015: 324), and that being a citizen of a Western country automatically bestows these qualities. This identification is apparent in Beaverstock’s analysis (2002) of the professional, social, and cultural experiences of British migrants in S­ ingapore. Looking at the gender division of labor within two groups of migrant populations, Willis and Yeoh (2002) use the term expatriate to designate the British and Singaporean migrant populations on which they focus their analysis. In their effort to account for the role of the (colonial) past in shaping transnational mobility, Wang, Wong and Zheng (2013) focus more specifically on the British migrant population in post-1997 Hong Kong, and resort to the word expatriate to identify this group. In contrast, other studies, including Fechter and Walsh (2010), promote synonyms (if not competing terms) for expatriate, including “privileged ­ migrants” and “professional migrants”. In this way, authors may hope to distance themselves from the double standard, if not the discriminatory language, imposed by Western states (or their citizens) which labels non-Westerners as emigrants or immigrants, while referring to their own absentee citizens as expatriates. For some authors, these alternative terms are mostly intended to highlight a distinction within a large category of migrants, based on their economic and political status. “Privileged migrants” are assumed to be highly-skilled. As Benson and O’Reilly highlight (2016), these allegedly highly-skilled migrants control significant wealth, and their mobility is justified not by a need to be incorporated into the productive economy of their society of residence, but a desire to enjoy a specific mode of consumption, and a lifestyle which they would not have access to in their country of origin, due to the asymmetry between their individual wealth and the standard of living at home. In these studies, “privileged migrant” is almost never used to designate Asian migrants who work (sometimes side by side) with Western migrants, even though the former earn as highly as the latter (see chapters 3 and 5 in this volume). Probably this double standard derives from an assumption that these Asian migrants are not inherently wealthy; they are simply immigrants, not expatriates, in the host societies. Grinstein and Wathieu (2012) are critical of this double standard which attributes to the expatriate a culture that poses no problem to the

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host country, being allegedly cosmopolitan, inherently open, and adaptable to any environment. Echoing this, Faist (2013) remarks that behind the term im/ migrant lurks the assumption that the newly arrived foreign national is in the host country with intent to remain permanently, and consequently there is an expectation that he/she will convert or assimilate to the culture of the host society. This expectation is justified by the fact that his/her origin and culture are considered to be a threat to the host society’s national identity. Yet there exists a definition of migrant that suggests all groups of n ­ ationals living outside their country of origin qualify as international migrants. ­According to the United Nations, any person in this situation is a migrant. Sociological analysis shows, however, that the idea of the migrant is anything but uniform. The migrant, as Fry Jacobson stresses (2006), is not defined solely by the act of crossing borders, and legal status is not the exclusive criterion by which migrants are defined. Other criteria are added to, or substitute for, this status. Indeed, had the definition remained strictly geographical and legal, the concept of second-generation migrants to designate individuals born, brought up in, and holding nationality in a country would have been purged from the vocabulary of the social sciences. For several decades, many authors have charged themselves with emphasizing the underlying logic of such a contradictory logic. In his historical legal analysis of the making of French nationality, Patrick Weil (2008) points to the ethno-racialization of citizenship as well as immigration. Guojónsdóttir and Loftsdóttir (2017) discuss in a comparative study how racial identity presides over the categorization of citizens and immigrants in most Western countries. The recent sub-field currently known as the sociology of privileged migration or expatriation has extended these analyses. Drawing significantly on the postcolonial theoretical framework that consists of an analytical effort of deconstruction aimed specifically at the power relations between peoples, many scholars of expatriation emphasize the effects of first race and then class on the production of the expatriate label in relation to the migrant (Hayes, 2015, 2018; Leonard, 2010). By this deconstructionist effort, they strive to uncover the decisive contribution of unequal power structures characterizing the imperialist era to power relations in force in the contemporary era. Scholars of the postcolonial framework in the field of migration have thus striven to ­demonstrate that concepts of imperialist era power relations, namely racial status and class status, persist in the contemporary era and still shape the conceptualization of citizens’ mobility across national borders. Race and class, separately or additionally, are indeed suspected to play an important role in the design of the label used to identify these individual. Expatriates, synonymously labeled as “privileged migrants,” are characterized as mobile individuals defined

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primarily by their racial particulars, and secondarily by their class status. They are mostly European or North American nationals who are well integrated in the global economy and who move abroad mostly for professional reasons; they are very rarely citizens of well-developed non-Western countries. Pauline Leonard (2007), who uses the term expatriate, demonstrates that the nature of British migrants in Hong Kong is premised on their whiteness. And whiteness, as she argues, is tainted with the idea of hegemony, of superiority. Since it is seen as such by locals as well, the British migrants draw on this racial status to run their daily lives, and to enforce the specificity of their mobility, although many of them cannot claim particularly high economic status in their society of residence. In parallel, Legget (2010) has investigated the dynamics of identities within migrant communities originating from Western societies in Jakarta, and more specifically the persistence of the colonial imagination in relationships between these Westerners and Chinese-Indonesians in the workplace. Interviewing migrants and immersing himself in their professional setting, he discovered that—at the expense of national identity—the label Westerner emerges as the “master-status” of these migrants, in the phrasing of Everett Hughes (1945: 353). Specific national identities are concealed or downplayed within these migrant communities and a common Western origin is highlighted, erasing any differences of cultural identity among them. The author considers this attitude to be a consequence of the Western imperial imagination. Conducting research in the same city, but among the Western wives of transnational Western migrants, Fechter (2010) also discovered that a Western identity takes precedence over national identity among these female migrants. Studying a group of Western migrants in India, Korpela (2010) shows how some of these migrants who are not nationals of the former colonizing country, Britain, avoid presenting themselves as citizens of a specific Western country, but rather as simply Westerners, in order to benefit from the image of superiority that the label Westerner gives access to in India. Taking stock of the current literature outlined above, this chapter intends to make sense of French officialdom’s choice of expatriate instead of emigrant. It does so by building on theories of identity, particularly the theory of naming as elaborated in the works of social scientists, and the theory of impression management. Naming a category as expatriate in preference to migrant is not a naïve act (Dahinden et al., 2020). As a choice, it bears meaning, and its meaning is largely in the function that it assumes. But what function does naming assume? To begin with, Mary Waters (1999: 44) attributed to naming a promethean function of the production of social identity. Correctly, she argues that by the act of naming, things and beings are brought into existence, and as a result gain

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social relevance. Claude Lévi-Strauss previously contended that the function of naming is (among others) to give meaning, and to classify (Lévi-Strauss, 1966). Building on these insights, I will argue first that naming (whether applied to a category or an individual) is an act that reveals the status, ideas, beliefs, values, and ideologies of the namer as much as, or more than, it reveals the essence of who/what is named. The child named Gandhi by his parents does not tell us much through his name about his own character as a human being. Yet his name reveals a lot about his parents’ values and beliefs, such as non-violence, resilience, and altruism, as well as their aspirations for him. Mutatis mutandis, if French officialdom opts to call its absentee citizens expatriates instead of emigrants, analysis of this choice must first and foremost be concerned with the self-image France strives to present to the world, and how it defines itself through the proxy of these absentee citizens. Some re-evaluation of Goffman’s theory of impression management has demonstrated how individuals rely on the things or persons theoretically under their responsibility to enact the self-identities they want to project to the external world. Gillespie (1980), researching “The Public Wife” (political first ladies), demonstrates that individuals, in her case women, often use their associates as a means of managing their public personas. The way in which the external world interacts with an individual or a state depends on how the individual or state presents those under their responsibility or management. Jessica Collett (2005), for instance, researching interactions between mothers with young children through an online playground, states that at times, children are props, and at times associates; in each case, they are a “vital tool for parents’ self-presentation and identity work” (Collett, 2005: 331–332). These mothers, aware that they will be judged as parents, choose what to post about their children. Delving further into her data, Collett notices that mothers manage their children’s appearance differently in the public and the private sphere. They dress their children up when the latter go to highly frequented public places such as church, in contrast to the much more casual clothes they dress the same children in when they are at home. Making sense of this difference, she posits that “the character of the clothing […] represents, in a way, the character of the person wearing it. It also may be seen as a reflection of the mother who presumably clothed the child. […]. [T]he child’s appearance somehow reflects on the mother” (Collett, 2005: 337). Substituting words for clothes, I would suggest that use of the label expatriate to identify a French citizen reflects on France, for a citizen’s identity is an extension of a country’s identity, and therefore a country’s identity is mirrored in its citizen’s. Following this line of thinking, I would argue secondly that France, through its officialdom, discards the term im/migrant—synonymous

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with superfluity, unworthiness and powerlessness, and most often illustrated by the physical features of a non-white person—to embrace the label expatriate, which appears more consistent with the political and economic might it enjoyed in the proudness of a past grandeur, and which it aspires to hold in the contemporary era. The social construction of the label expatriate as a signifier of privilege and superiority. Although many Western emigrants are not “highly paid, nor are their skills easily sold in the transnational labor market”, as Farrer shows (2010: 13), and some may even be undocumented, the label expatriate as a signifier of privilege and superiority seems more in tune than the label emigrant with how France intends to manage its persona on the world stage. 3

The Other Option Seldom Mentioned

As a key institutional database, the French census is devoid of any information regarding the emigration of French citizens. INED and INSEE have in the past eight years started to collect data on this emigration, according to Temporal and Brunel (2016: 217). At the same time, immigration, the other face of emigration, is strongly documented, and data about immigrants has been collected by these two institutions for more than six decades. Many researchers extrapolate from this asymmetry an indifference, even disinterest, on the part of the French state towards its absentee citizenry. However, there are several reliable if imperfect documents that contradict this thesis, which this section will review briefly. The first is a 2010 survey by the French ministry of foreign affairs; the second is a 2013 report titled “Enquête sur l’expatriation des Français”, published by the same ministry from a survey completed the same year. The third is a 2014 report published by the French National Assembly. Finally, a 2018 report, “La mobilité internationale des Français”, was commissioned by the French prime minister Edouard Philippe. Each of these documents has been submitted to close scrutiny, with the goal of assessing the extent to which the terms expatriate and emigrant are used by French officialdom to designate absentee French citizens, comparing their respective occurrences. In the first document, the label expatriate is used ­twenty-four times (and its derivative expatriation seventeen times). In comparison, the word emigrant does not appear once, and there is a single occurrence of the word emigration. The latter is used in connection with the Argentine emigration service, and not to describe the movement of French ­citizens across national borders. In the “Enquête sur l’expatriation des Français”, which is forty-three pages long, the word emigrant is not used at all. The alternative term, expatriate, appears 209 times. The “Rapport fait au

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nom de la commission d’enquête sur l’exil des forces vives de France” confirms this terminological discrimination. Indeed, at more than 600 pages, this report best illustrates the reluctance of French officialdom towards using the label emigrant. This word appears sixteen times in the document, in most cases not for the purpose of characterizing French citizens, but rather as a generic term applied to any citizen living outside their country of origin. There are only five instances in which the term is used to identify specifically French citizens, as exemplified in the following statement by one of the lawmakers interviewed by the inquiry commission: “As a lawmaker representing the French living abroad, I am in daily contact with them and can assure you that they are not fiscal emigrants.”5 In the same document, the term expatriation appears 406 times, used in almost every case to identify the transnational mobility of French citizens. Finally, the 296-page report “La mobilité internationale des Français” contains seventy occurrences of the label expatriate; expatriation is used ninety-three times. In contrast, neither emigrant nor the concept of emigration appears. This tally provides solid evidence for French officialdom’s aversion to the term emigrant. The legitimacy of the French state to label its citizens ­expatriates is not questioned here, only the rationale of its preference for this term against emigrant. Veronique Petit advances a thesis that is worth considering in understanding this preference. Noting the absence of statistics on French emigration, she writes: “If methodological difficulties (the plurality of demographic and administrative sources: what do we measure exactly?) and conceptual ones (the definition of the migrant for instance) have partially explained the absence of measures of the migratory flux between France and foreign countries, this deficit of knowledge [on emigration] is also linked to the way in which France perceives itself, a country of immigration before being also a country of emigration” (Petit, 2016: 3). To be sure, Petit does not squarely address the question raised here, namely the semantic preference evident in French official discourse; she concerns herself with the “absence of measures of the migratory flux between France and foreign countries”. Furthermore, the episodic survey of the existence of an official register of French citizens residing abroad seems to contradict her claim that there is an “absence of measures of [this] migratory flux”; in fact, what is absent is more accurately a centralized means to measure emigration 5 Translated from French. Available online (p. 223): https://www.vie-publique.fr/rapport /34362-rapport-fait-au-nom-de-la-commission-denquete-sur-lexil-des-forces-viv. Fiscal emi�grant refers to relatively wealthy French, usually successful movie actors, singers, sportspeople, and founders or CEO s of large firms, who choose to live in countries with a much lower tax rate than that of France.

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which is comparable to the national census. But despite these caveats, Petit’s analysis includes a crucial point which could help to answer the question. This is France’s perception of itself. As a term, perception is, like many others, a p ­ olysemic one. The Lexico’s Oxford dictionary, which identifies the Latin ­etymology of the word as percipere (to seize, to understand), offers as two definitions the following entries: (a) “The ability to see, hear or become aware of something through the senses”, and (b) “The way in which something is regarded, understood or interpreted.”6 As these definitions show, both awareness and subjectivity inform perception. This precision is useful, for it allows us to analyze French officialdom’s discriminatory attitude to the words emigrant and expatriate through the lens of impression management. For Goffman (1956), impression management is a simple matter of self-presentation. Yet perception in particular is at the heart of impression management. In the context of interaction, actors strive to act upon how others see them, by offering the best image possible of themselves to their interlocutors, and in accordance with their own goals. The fact that actors have set goals for themselves and have also adjusted to the (anticipated) behavior of their interlocutors before or during the interaction reveals both their awareness of their action, and their subjectivity. In short, impression management theory accounts for how an actor desires to be defined and seen by others. Clearly, the image of France matters to French officialdom. In the documents analyzed, several excerpts are indicative of explicit concern with France’s public image on the world stage. The report published by the parliamentary inquiry commission, for example, voice concerns about the relation established between the migration of French citizens and the economic and unemployment crisis facing France: “It matters that the political leaders, whatever party they belong to, refrain from nurturing this sinister mood and the kind of morose delectation which harm the image of our country. […] It is without doubt because France has never been a land of emigration that the recent development [the outflux of French citizens] surprises us.”7 To understand the dominance of expatriate over emigrant in French ­official discourse, we need to realize the flexibility of meaning in terminologies, as Kunz points out (2020: 2146). Nancy Green (2009) offers a perfect example in her analysis of the category of expatriate in the American context. As she argues, the term has espoused multiple meanings since its inception in the seventeenth century, although it has retained a stable aspect, 6 https://www.lexico.com/definition/perception. 7 See Galut’s report, French National Assembly (2014: 9); the italics and translation from French are mine.

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namely the idea of mobility across national borders. In American perception, the e­ xpatriate was a person who created a life in a foreign country; then it was understood as a citizen who had definitely renounced or been stripped of their state allegiance; then again it has been seen as a citizen sent abroad by a US-founded multinational firm to represent the firm’s interests. As most of the literature points out, the expatriate has also come to be associated with racial and socioeconomic privilege, and therefore it has positive connotations. The white Western migrant, claiming high professional status and by extension upper-­middle-class status, has become the embodiment of the expatriate. In r­ eality a significant number of white Westerners thus categorized are confined in entry-level jobs in their country of emigration, or are sometimes unemployed, whereas highly-skilled and upper-middle-class non-white citizens who reside outside their country of origin are not thus labeled. Instead they are identified as ­emigrants. From the French perspective, emigrant has been loaded with negative connotations, and this precludes the likelihood of French officialdom embracing this term to identify absent French citizens. 4 The End of the “Trente Glorieuses” and the Disparagement of the Immigrant A receiving country’s immigrants are evidently a sending country’s emigrants. Given this correspondence, we can understand French officialdom’s attitude to the label emigrant by looking primarily at its perception of the immigrant. My analysis of French thinking about immigration since the mid-1970s will focus on identifying dominant traits in representations of immigration in ­government policies, legislative provisions, and party political debates. It is probably worth remarking that this period of French history has been characterized by several scholars as a time of the politicization of immigration (Hargreaves, 2007). Simon and Zappi (2013: 171) appear to locate the early signs of this politicization in the late 1980s. However, with the hindsight offered by Weil (2008) and Noiriel (1988), this politicization is not characteristic of the 1970s onward exclusively; it was already effective by this period. This was true for the early twentieth century when immigration was at the heart of party politics, the different political formations fighting over the need and conditions for the introduction of foreigners into the nation. Perhaps, as of the 1970s, immigration has simply reached a higher level of politicization for a number of reasons, including the steadily convergent belief of French political parties from one end of the spectrum to the other in the superfluity of immigration;

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the profound transformation of the ethno-racial body of immigration; and the wide consensus on the moral unfittingness of immigrants in the nation. 4.1 Immigration, Another Name for Superfluity By reducing immigration to its labor function, French officialdom heralded a narrative of the superfluity of immigrants as soon as the signs of the economic crisis of the mid-1970s were obvious. The earliest manifestations of this narrative date back to 1977 with President Giscard d’Estaing’s decision to proclaim a halt to labor immigration, and his design of a blueprint that aimed to encourage immigrants to return to their countries of origin in exchange for financial aid estimated at 10.000 francs, or about 1,525 euros.8 Faced with a low subscription to his offer, Giscard d’Estaing, reveals Patrick Weil (2008: 154), sought to implement a forced return of many of these immigrants, regardless of their legal status. In the early 1990s, when the right and center political alliance controlled the parliament while relinquishing executive power to a left-wing coalition, the same thinking about immigration prevailed. Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, introducing the eponym legislation of 1993, expressed openly his ambition to reach a zero-immigration rate. Although the left, mostly in the name of humanitarianism and justice, managed to undo many of the laws and executive orders introduced during the presidency of the right and center coalition when it came to power, and later criticized the Pasqua law, a subscription to and even reinforcement of the idea of the superfluity of immigrants had peppered its own narratives and actions. In the 1980s and the 1990s, while protecting the rights of immigrants settled in France, the left recognized this idea through two different initiatives. One was the pursuit, as of 1984, of voluntary repatriation assistance by another name, “aide à la reinsertion” (Hargreaves, 2007: 180). The other was the introduction in 1997 of the “co-development” policy under the premiership of Lionel Jospin. Intellectually inspired by political science professor Sami Naïr, and implemented by then Socialist Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, whom the former advised on immigration issues, the co-development policy emerged at the height of the immigration debate in France, and was premised on the assumption that halting immigration implied investing in the economic development 8 This goal was emulated by Great Britain in 1981. The Nationality Act passed that year “­contained a voluntary repatriation plan encouraging Commonwealth subjects who were not from New Zealand, Australia, or Canada to return to their Commonwealth […] These policies continued during the second and third Thatcher administrations (1983–1987; 1986–1990)” (Hanchard, 2018: 141). The British decision seems difficult to make sense of given that signs of the inefficacy of this measure were already visible in France.

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of countries of origin. But an action would be considered as a co-development action only if a migrant is involved, as Claire Rodier analyzes (2009: 3–6). The concept of co-development suggested therefore that the ultimate goal was the end of labor immigration, by drying up the pool of potential candidates, and encouraging the return of immigrants to their countries of origin. Unambiguously, this policy made explicit the thinking about immigrants as superfluous. Parallel to these institutional initiatives, a series of discourses, although apparently anecdotal, reinforced the superfluity of immigrants. Among the most symbolic was that of Prime Minister Michel Rocard. On 3 December 1989, justifying his highly restrictive immigration policy, Rocard stated: “We [France] cannot host all the misery of the world”.9 About a week later, on 10 December, President Mitterrand, too, brought it home by answering a question about immigration on the TV channel Antenne 2: “The threshold of tolerance was reached in the 1970s.” Reduced to the stigma of misery which no country is willing to take in, the immigrant became thereby, as Sayad (2004) poignantly analyzed in his pioneering book, a person whose quotidian life was measured by humiliation, in sum the embodiment of humiliation.10 4.2 The Immigrant Becomes Black Although ethno-racial diversity characterizes France’s foreign population, its representation has progressively been homogenized. After scrutinizing ­dozens of images produced by French television, Mireille Rosello (1998) notes an ­evolution of the description of immigrants from individuals vested with the phenotypical traits and cultural properties of a Maghrebi to men displaying the phenotypical and cultural attributes of a black African. From the mid1970s to the late 1980s, the first image prevailed. By the 1990s, this image gave way to that of the undocumented African – a person with a complex legal status to portray visually, but which television managed to do using symbolic meanings such as police escort or handcuffs. In the worldview of officialdom, a similar if not identical process was also taking place. The Maghrebi and the black African were concurrently or alternatively put forward as the epitomes of immigration, although arithmetically, at least until the mid-1970s, white European immigrants outnumbered their counterparts originating from the 9 10

Translated from French. A reminder is available in an article in the newspaper Libération, 22 April 2015. Available online: https://www.liberation.fr/france/2015/04/22/misere-du -monde-ce-qu-a-vraiment-dit-michel-rocard_1256930. This condition is well understood by many immigrants themselves, like Bachir, a young Maghrebi, who explained “when we say the immigrant, we think of someone lost, without honor, who has lost everything” (Noiriel, 1988: 9).

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Maghreb, let alone their black African counterparts. Patrick Weil (2008: 152) reminds us that the 1975 national census recorded the presence of 1,717,000 Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians contra 1,109,000 Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans, and less than half a million black Africans. Yet, the Maghrebi, and more particularly the Algerian, had crystallized the meaning of immigration. As the economic crisis hit harder by the late 1970s, and a decision to ­suspend labor immigration was imminent, President Giscard d’Estaing and his ­administration elaborated a policy whose basic content conveyed an ethno-­ racialization of immigration. Faced with the failure of the suspension of labor immigration as an efficient measure to address the rising unemployment rate, Giscard d’Estaing considered implementing a forced return migration. His administration specifically targeted Algerian immigrants, introducing thereby the synonymy of immigrants with Algerians. Slowly the figure of the Algerian faded away. Black Africans next epitomized immigration, as shown by the numerous agreements signed by France (either alone or with the European Union) with other countries to control the migratory influx, most of the latter being African countries. On 21 May 2009, in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, France signed an agreement for the purpose of regulating the influx of Cameroonians to France.11 In 2016, with a view to controlling immigration flows, the EU elaborated a partnership p ­ rogram which initially targeted fourteen countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Eventually the program was limited to five countries considered to be ­priorities, all of which are sub-Saharan: Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and ­Senegal (Tardis, 2018). Given the number of immigration candidates hailing from Africa, this decision is probably justified. However, it is still noteworthy that despite the multiplicity of its source nations, immigration has become exclusively reduced to its African sources. In party political discourses, the black African as the epitome of immigration has been mainstream since the 1990s. In an historic improvised speech delivered in the city of Orleans in the central north of France, Jacques C ­ hirac, then president of the Gaullist Party, the RPR, deputy as well as mayor of Paris, wove cultural symbols and stereotypes to convey his own portrait of the immigrant. In this portrait, the immigrant became a family structure: a polygamist household of three wives and about twenty children led by a male figure. A ­ nyone who is race literate can suspect in this portrayal the black African identity of this family; the polygamy brings it home. Indeed, whereas polygamy historically transcends ethnicities and religions, as shown by its prevalence in the 11

Accord France Cameroun relative à la gestion concertée des flux migratoires et au d­ éveloppement solidaire. Available online: www.migreurop.org.

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three monotheist books, in contemporary France it is specifically presented as an archaism surviving only within black African communities.12 4.3 Black and Morally Unfit for France As immigration became synonymous with African-ness in the political discourse, it was also clothed with the idea of moral unfitness. By this expression is meant the perception of the immigrant as having a worldview in conflict with the moral principles of the French state. In her insightful work, Mireille Rosello notes that the black Africanization of the immigrant figure was concomitant with publicization of the category of the illegal immigrant. In the political narratives, moral deviance was added to illegality. In Chirac’s improvised speech mentioned above, the immigrant was equated to a polygamous household, a matrimonial choice legally and morally condemned in France. What is more, the immigrant consisted of a family which took advantage of society’s generosity, at the expense of the natives. Chirac depicted a family with unemployed members who managed to earn a monthly income of 50,000 francs—a fortune compared with the monthly 5,000 francs of an active w ­ orking-class couple— by simply collecting childcare benefits from the state. Drawing on the same stereotype, an amendment to the bill on the control of immigration, integration, and asylum was discussed on 19 September 2007 in the French parliament. Introduced by the UMP (a right-wing party) ­deputy, Thierry Mariani, the amendment built on a report on the state of polygamy in France authored by another right-wing deputy, Françoise Hostalier. It advocated for compulsory DNA testing from applicants requesting a visa for the purpose of reuniting with their family. In its written form, the amendment appears neutral and non-discriminatory; it does not target a specific nationality, race, or ethnicity. Its ethno-racial bias only appeared during the parliamentary debate, which revealed the Africanization of the immigrant and his depiction as a morally corrupt being. This was evident both in the projection of polygamy to the center of the discussion, and the indictment of African 12

Hélène Carrière d’Encause, historian of the former Soviet Union, and Perpetual S­ ecretary of the Académie Française, offers one of the most vivid and stigmatizing illustrations of this view of sub-Saharan Africans. Interviewed by a Moscow radio station a few days after the fall 2005 riots that shattered the daily life of so many Parisian suburbs, she explained that this social unrest resulted from the irresponsible choices of African immigrant households: polygamous parents, in overcrowded apartments designed for monogamous families, for their own comfort allowed their children to roam the streets late at night unsupervised. Sociological and anthropological studies have lent credit to this view by studying almost exclusively African polygamy in France (Faizang and Journet, 1988; ­Quiminal and Bodin, 1993; Tribalat, 1996).

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countries as sources of fraudulent administrative practices. In support of her colleague Mariani, Hostalier belittled the ethical dilemma of her fellow MP  s at the French national assembly13 who questioned the right of the French state to request DNA testing from family reunification applicants, while on ethical grounds strictly restricting such testing on its own territory for fear of breaking up families, since such a test could reveal to a father, for instance, that his purported biological child was not actually his: I understand that this amendment raises ethical questions and appears to some of you, from both sides of the aisle, contrary to our Republican and humanistic values. […] During the hearings I conducted, the director of the office of the movement of foreigners [Bureau de la circulation des étrangers] and the head of the refugee families section informed me of the difficulties some of our consulates are faced with in validating birth registration documents and issuing visas. Some consulates oppose systematic rejections, others accept without having any objective basis. In short, everybody is uncomfortable with this issue, but does not know what to do. Today, the terms of the question are different: shall we base our decision on the ultimate conviction of the consular agent, or use, as is the case in twelve other European countries, a modern way to prove filiation? I, too, asked myself this question. Again, I cannot forget the case of a young girl admitted into France as the daughter of the man to whom she eventually became the second or third spouse. In conclusion, yes, if the civil registration of a country is failing, resorting to genetic testing can bring some progress.14 Under the guise of protecting young African girls from purportedly elder ­African male sexual predators, this amendment turned immigrants into morally deviant black Africans. Arguing in favor of genetic testing, right wing Senator Adrien Gouteyron reinforced this synonymy. Reporting to Senate members, he, too, authored a study which claims that in “certain countries 13

14

The national assembly and Senate are both chambers of the French Parliament. The MP s at National assembly, the low chamber, are elected by direct suffrage all five years while Senators at the Senate, the high chamber, are elected by universal indirect suffrage for six years (renew by half all three years). Laws are voted upon after a system of shuttle (navette) between both chambers with the debate and the vote of amendments proposed by the members elected at the chamber from different political parties. Translated from French. “Des tests génétiques pour le regroupement familial”, Le Monde, 13 September 2007, available online: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2007/09/13 /des-tests-genetiques-pour-le-regroupement-familial_954621_3224.html.

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such as Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, the two Congos, Togo, Madagascar and the Comoros, 30% to 80% of civil registration documents [actes d’état civils] are fraudulent”.15 The discursive strategy laid out here is worth highlighting. It builds simultaneously on omission and insinuation. Indeed, anyone reading the excerpts would probably assume Africa to be the sole source of moral corruption, since no other continent is mentioned, and would assume also that the practice is not marginal but pervasive, amounting to perhaps 80% of civil registration documents. 5 France Settles for the Label Expatriate Between superfluity, Africanization, and moral unfitness, the representation of immigrants has circled around three stigmatizing and negative characteristics for the past forty-plus years. This reality discourages France’s use of the term emigrant to designate its nationals who are part of the immigrant population in their countries of residence. The act of immigration is as much an indication of the immigrants’ condition as an indication of the condition of their country of origin. The invention of the modern nation-state is premised on mutual responsibility reminiscent of filial relationship,16 conveyed by patria as a metaphor for the native land: on the one hand, the citizens’ duty to show loyalty and commitment to their state, and on the other, the state’s duty to provide for them. If immigration suggests (implicitly or explicitly) a lack of patriotism in immigrants, it also suggests the state’s failure to live up to its own promise to its nationals. Moreover, as the symbolic interactionism theory of Jessica Collett (2005) suggests, this filial relationship is also assumed to translate into a continuity of identity between parent and child. As a result, the child’s image in the public sphere becomes equated to that of the parent, because parents are assumed to pass on to their child their values and status. An interesting illustration of this was a bill proposed by MP Eric Ciotti and voted into law in 2010 by the French parliament; the bill was to refuse child benefits to parents whose child was chronically absent from school. The child’s

15 16

Ibid. The equation of the state’s organization with that of family was posited in the writings of Aristotle. The Greek philosopher argued that every household is headed by a ruler whose task is comparable to that of a monarch. Through the invention of the title pater patriae (father of the land), the Romans, too, supported this equation between the state and the father.

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fault would be organically that of the parents; in sum, the child would simply be an extension of the parents. France’s aversion to the term emigrant must also be understood in the ­context of its colonial history. Indeed, France’s history for most of the past 150 years has been a process of constructing French-ness, particularly in opposition to African-ness. The colonial mission, called civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice) in Africa was premised on the idea of the antinomy of French-ness and African-ness. As an enterprise to bring black people to the level of the civilized French, colonization clearly implied the superiority of the French over “the Africans”, legitimated by the racialist thesis (for instance, these of biological anthropology) asserting the superiority of white people on black people. Logically, this history prevents any identification of the French with immigration, for such identification would imply the downgrading of the French to the level of the Africans. For all these reasons, it has been unacceptable for French officialdom to admit that France’s own citizens could be the immigrants of another country. Yet the presence of French men and women abroad demands the use of a term to name them. The label expatriate has assumed this role in the past couple of decades. However, the choice of expatriate cannot go unquestioned for a number of reasons. The first lies in the earliest meaning of the word. According to the French dictionary Le Petit Robert, the noun (expatriation) and the adjective (expatrié) were introduced into the French language in the fourteenth century. It would take three more centuries for the French language to coin the verb expatrier. In its earliest meaning, expatriation and the persons whose condition it designated (expatriates) had negative connotations, implying the existence of a conflict between the person leaving their native land and those left behind, or even a rupture between the two parties. The expatriate, according to Le Petit Robert, is one who has abandoned his/her patria, or has been expelled [chassé] from it. Of course, a person may voluntarily and unilaterally decide to leave their country. In this context, the interpretation of expatriate as negative is no more than partial. However, looking at the concept of expatriation casts a different light on this issue. The words listed in alphabetical order as the primary synonyms of expatriation are instructive in this regard: bannissement [banishment]; déportation [deportation]; emigration [emigration]; exil [exile]; expulsion [expulsion]; proscription [proscription]. Of these, only one does not clearly imply the intervention of an external force to keep a person out of their native land: emigration. There is a need to identify historical legal and political French texts dealing with expatriation and expatriates in order to fully understand the negative meanings associated with these words in early usage. This would be a task similar to that undertaken by Nancy Green (2009:

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310) in tracking the “shifting image of the presumed expatriate” in American political and legal discourses from the inception of the US nation-state to the contemporary period. Green showed how the expatriation of others—foreign nationals immigrating to the US—was viewed positively. In contrast, the expatriation of Americans appeared in a negative light in the Expatriation Act of 1907—suggesting US businessmen staying abroad for too long to increase their financial assets, and leading to loss of citizenship for US women marrying foreigners—while it gained a positive connotation at the close of the twentieth century, as globalization continued and mobility became synonymous with happiness, liberty, and privileged social and/or economic position. The official documents analyzed for this chapter all date to the 2000s. They emerged, therefore, within a historical context marked as much by a condescending and disparaging view of the immigrant in political narratives as by a glamorous representation of the expatriate. Yet there is insufficient e­ vidence to suggest that the French designated as expatriates have a different life t­ rajectory, or social, political and economic circumstances, to those designated as immigrants in France. Among French expatriates we find men and women illegally in their country of residence, others who hold a residence permit and a work permit, others who perform jobs requiring no specific expertise, and others who are barely educated. All these profiles may also be found within the foreign population living in France labeled immigrants by French officialdom. 6 Conclusion The prevalence of the term expatriate at the expense of emigrant in French officialdom’s discourse has gone unnoticed for a long time. Only very recently have social scientists raised this issue. Their basic argument to account for this invisibility is the difficulty of monitoring the departure of French citizens. This chapter shows, however, that the most important aspect of this issue is not necessarily a lack of official statistics, but in the choice of labels to ­categorize French people living outside France. As the term emigrant is ­quasi-invisible in the official statistics, it is also rarely used in French officialdom. In its stead, French public authorities prefer expatriate. This choice of words may have gone unquestioned had the same authorities not labeled as immigrants foreign nationals living in France (mostly those hailing from sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb). This chapter has been mainly concerned with analyzing this double standard. It has demonstrated that this dual process of naming is less shaped by the goal of accounting objectively for the facts than by the self-creation of France’s image on the world stage. This effort lies chiefly in

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distancing France from countries formerly under its colonial rule, and still today marked by the stigma of economic and political powerlessness. By labeling its own absentee citizens expatriates, a term associated with privilege and glamour—instead of emigrants, equated to humiliation and a deficit in self-governance—France retains its image of a powerhouse on the international scene, despite the decline of its actual political and economic standing. References Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2002. “Transnational Elites in Global Cities: British ­Expatriates in Singapore’s Financial District”. Geoforum 33(4): 525–38. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2016. “From lifestyle migration to lifestyle in migration: Categories, concepts and ways of thinking”. Migration Studies 4(1): 20–37. Byron, Gregory Adams, and Van de Vijver, Fons. J. R. 2015. “The Many Faces of Expatriate Identity”. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 49: 324. Castles, Stephen. 2000. “International Migration at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century: Global Trends and Issues”. International Social Science Journal 52(165): 269–281. Collett, Jessica. 2005. “What Kind of Mother Am I? Impression Management and the Social Construction of Motherhood”. Symbolic Interactions 28(3): 327–347. Cranston, Sophie. 2017. “Expatriate as a ‘Good’ Migrant: Thinking Through Skilled International Migrant Categories”. Population, Space and Place 23(6): e2058. Croucher, Sheila. 2012. “Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality”. Societies 2(1): 1–13. Dahinden, Janine, Fischer, Carolin, and Menet, Joanna. 2020. “Knowledge production, reflexivity, and the use of categories in migration studies: tackling challenges in the field”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(4): 1–20. Faist, Thomas. 2013. “The mobility turn: a new paradigm for the social sciences?”. ­Ethnic and Racial Studies 36(11): 1637–46. Faizang, Sylvie, and Journet, Odile. 1988. La femme de mon mari: anthropologie du mariage polygamique en Afrique et en France. Paris: L’Harmattan. Farrer, James. 2010. “‘New Shanghailanders’ or ‘New Shanghainese’: Western ­Expatriates’ Narratives of Emplacement in Shanghai”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1211–28. Fechter, Anne-Meike. 2010. “Gender, Empire, Global Capitalism: Colonial and ­Corporate Expatriate Wives”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1279–97. Fechter, Anne-Meike, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8) 1197–1357. Gillespie, Joanna. 1980. “The Phenomenon of the Public Wife: An Exercise in Goffman’s Impression Management”. Symbolic Interactions 3(2): 109–126. -

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Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Gonzales, Julien. 2014. Trop d’émigrés: Regard sur ceux qui partent de France. Paris: Fondapol. Green, Nancy. 2009. “Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept”. The American Historical Review 114(2): 307–328. Grinstein, Amir, and Wathieu, Luc. 2012. “Happily (mal)Adjusted: Cosmopolitan ­Identity and Expatriate Identity”. International Journal of Research in Marketing 29(4): 337–345. Gueye, Abdoulaye. 2006. “De la diaspora noire : enseignements du contexte français”. Revue européenne des migrations internationales 22(1): 11–33. Guojónsdóttir, Guobjört, and Loftsdóttir, Kristín. 2017. “Being a Desirable Migrant: Perception and Racialisation of Iceland Migrants in Norway”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43(5): 791–808. Hanchard, Michael. 2018. The Spectre of Race. How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Hargreaves, Alec. 2007. Multi-Ethnic France: Immigration, Politics, Culture and Society. London: Routledge. Hayes, Matthew. 2015. “‘It is hard being the different one all the time’: gringos and racialized identity in lifestyle migration to Ecuador”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(6), 943–958. Hayes, Matthew. 2018. “The gringos of Cuenca: How retirement migrants perceive their impact on lower income communities”. Area 50(4): 467–475. Hughes, Everett Cherrington. 1945. “Dilemmas and Contradictions of Status”. American Journal of Sociology 50(5): 353–359. Jacobson, Matthew Fry. 2006. Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights A ­ merica. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Korpela, Mari. 2010. “A Postcolonial Imagination? Westerners Searching for Authenticity in India”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1299–1315. Kunz, Sarah. 2020. “Expatriate, Migrant? The Social Life of Migration Categories and the Polyvalent Mobility of Race”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46(11): 2145–62. Legget, William. 2010. “Institutionalising the Colonial Imagination: Chinese Middlemen and the Transnational Corporate Office in Jakarta, Indonesia”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1–14. Leonard, Pauline. 2007. “Migrating Identities: Gender, Whiteness and Britishness in Post-Colonial Hong Kong”. Gender, Place and Culture 15(1): 45–60. Leonard, Pauline. 2010. Expatriate Identities in Postcolonial Organizations – Working Whiteness. New York: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago Press. Loyal, Steven. 2017. Bourdieu’s Theory of the State: A Critical Introduction. London: ­Palgrave Macmillan. -

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Noiriel, Gérard. 1988. Le creuset français. Paris : Seuil. Petit, Véronique. 2016. “30ème anniversaire: renouveler la question migratoire. ­Editorial”. Revue européenne des migrations internationales 32(3&4) : 1–7. Quiminal, Catherine, and Bodin, Claudette. 1993. “Mode de construction des ménages polygames et vécu de la polygamie en France”. Étude de la Direction de la P ­ opulation et des migrations,41. Rodier, Claire. 2009. “À la recherche du co-développement”. GISTI/Plein Droit 83 : 3–6. Rosello, Mireille. 1998. “Representing Illegal Immigrants in France: From Clandestins to l’affaire des sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard”. Journal of European Studies 28: 137–151. Sayad, Abdelmalek. 2004. The Suffering of the Immigrant. Cambridge: Polity Press. Schinkel, Willem. 2018. “Against ‘immigration integration’: for an End to Neocolonial Knowledge Production”. Comparative Migration Studies 6(31): 1–17. Simon, Patrick, and Zappi, Sylvia. 2013. “La lutte contre les discriminations: la fin de l’assimilation à la française”. Mouvements 3(27&28) 171–176. Tardis, Mathieu. 2018. “Les partenariats entre l’Union européenne et les pays ­africains sur les migrations: un enjeu commun, des intérêts contradictoires”. Notes de l’IFRI. https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/tardis_partenariats_ue_afrique _2018.pdf, last accessed 9 July, 2022. Temporal, Franck, and Brutel, Chantal. 2016. “La mesure des flux migratoires entre la France et l’étranger: et si on parlait (aussi) d’émigration”. Revue européenne des migrations internationales 32(3&4) : 215–229. Tribalat, Michèle. 1996. De l’immigration à l’assimilation: enquête sur les populations d’origine étrangère en France. Paris: La Découverte/INED. Wang, Cangbai, Wong, Siu-lun, and Zheng, Victor. 2014. “Postcolonial border crossing”. Asian Population Studies 10(1): 75–95. Waters, Mary. 1999. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American R ­ ealities. Cambridge (MA/New York): Harvard University Press/Russell Sage ­Foundation. Weil, Patrick. 2008. How to be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789. Durham: Duke University Press. Willis, Kathie, and Yeoh, Brenda. 2002. “Gendering Transnational Communities: A Comparison of Singaporean and British Migrants in China”. Geoforum 33: 269–285. Wimmer, Andreas, and Glick-Schiller, Nina. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences”. Global Network 2(4): 301–334.

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CHAPTER 3

Privileged, Highly Skilled and Unproblematic? White Europeans in Japan as Migrants Miloš Debnár 1 Introduction Despite steadily rising numbers of foreign residents, Japan still tends to be ­presented as a culturally homogenous country without a history or contemporary presence of immigration. The increasing influx of so-called ‘newcomer’ migrants since the 1990s contradicts such views, and it has been repeatedly argued by scholars that Japan de facto became “an immigrant country” by increasingly providing “foreign nationals multiple legal channels to enter and legal paths and institutional frameworks to permanent settlement” (Liu‐­Farrer 2020: 8). By introducing a new visa scheme from April 2019, the Japanese ­government has also officially allowed considerable numbers of essentially low-skilled workers into selected sectors of the economy, which the media have also started to describe as Japan becoming a country of (im)migration. In spite of that, the Japanese government continues to deny introducing any immigration policy, and officials avoid the word ‘(im)migration’ at all costs (Roberts, 2018). However, the Japanese government does acknowledge that it has been accepting foreigners (gaikokujin) under different guises. As Glenda Roberts demonstrates in her analysis of government documents, while this discourse still avoids any mention of the contribution of low-skilled migration to Japan, foreigners are acknowledged contributors to Japan’s economy and society as high-skilled workers, talented students, and tourists (2018: 91). Roberts draws attention to the naming policies of mobility—in particular, avoidance of the word (im)migration (imin)—in Japan, and the discrepancy between such p ­ olitics and reality. This chapter further develops this argument by focusing on the often overlooked type of migrant who is seen as representative of an expatriate category in both popular discourse and scholarship, and juxtaposes this with the realities of such migrants. Thus the chapter examines ways in which “the lexicon through which we talk about migration is a key political issue” (Cranston, 2017: 1), and engages in critical expat studies by problematizing “labels that work to differentiate ­people, such as ‘expatriate’, ‘migrant’, or ‘refugee’” (Cranston, 2017: 10). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_004 -

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The categories of expatriate and migrant as ideal types create a dichotomy of desirable/unwanted or problematic/unproblematic mobile subjects (­Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014; Kunz, 2020; Lundström, 2014). The ­category of expatriation is often conflated with other forms of privileged migration, whiteness, or migration originating in the West (Fechter, 2007; Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Leonard, 2010a), and expats tend to be represented as “good migrants”, both in their self-identification practices and by the reception ­countries (Cranston, 2017). This chapter demonstrates how such connotations are apparent in media representations of migration in Japan. At the same time, the chapter problematizes how gaps in migration studies on newcomer migrants in Japan are “failing to take seriously the experiences of migrants that do not fit this image”, and risk inadvertently “(re)producing a skewed image of migrants and immigrants as predominantly non-Western, non-White, nonelite subjects” (Kunz, 2016: 89). The chapter analyzes the migration patterns of contemporary Europeans in Japan and juxtaposes them with their assumed categorization or representation as expat-like migrants. On the one hand, due to their origin and w ­ hiteness, Europeans are often represented as expat-like “good migrants” (Cranston, 2017), and as such are often overlooked or become invisible as migrants. On the other hand, critical expat studies reveal “instabilities and ambiguities of the notion expatriate itself” (Kunz, 2016: 96), as well as the blurring of boundaries between expat and other types of migrant (Farrer, 2018; Fechter and Walsh, 2010), as has been recently suggested in a handful of studies on E ­ uropeans in Japan (Debnár, 2016; Hof, 2018, 2019). This chapter further exposes the ambiguities and instabilities of the presumed categorization of white Europeans as expat-like migrants by exploring how the social positions they occupy differ from or resemble those of other, non-Western foreign residents who are often perceived as migrants. This chapter thus aims to contribute to critical expat studies and the wider field of migration studies in three related ways. First, by accounting for overlooked patterns of migration to Japan, the chapter problematizes presumptions about their non-problematic, expat-like characteristics, and demonstrates the incongruencies of the expat category. However, as emphasized by Fechter and Walsh, analyzing the cases of migrants who are perceived as expats and are “less dominant in the popular imagination” does not just mean “‘add[ing] privileged migrants and stir’” (Fechter and Walsh, 2010: 1198, parentheses in original), but rather contributes importantly to the discussion on migration by “reconceptualising mainstream migration studies and methods” (ibid.). Second, the chapter critically assesses the skills and visa schemes that European migrants utilize for their lives in Japan, and draws parallels with

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other migrants from Asia. Such an approach avoids depicting the overlooked migrants as an inherently different category of migrant (i.e. as an itineration of the expatriate category), and problematizes the deeply political, racialized character of the categories used in migration studies (Cranston, 2017; Kunz, 2020). The chapter thus addresses the important issue of the depiction of “‘migrant workers’” and “‘expatriate migrants’” as “apparently contrasting” categories that eventually reinforce each other (Lundström, 2014: 5), and the problem of the category of expatriate as “axiomatically applied to western migrants living abroad” (Cranston, 2017: 1). Consequently, the aim is to question the established “lexicon that we use to talk about migration” (Cranston, 2017: 1) which renders the association of Western origin and especially whiteness with the term “migrant” as an “oxymoron” (Lundström, 2014: 1). Finally, the context of Japan allows us to further contribute to critical expat studies by demonstrating how categorization of the expatriate as a ­Western and particularly Anglophone notion is translated and deployed in other ­contexts (Kunz, 2016). The chapter analyzes some of the specifics of naming practices and representations of Western migrants in Japan, and demonstrates how the categorization of foreign residents is juxtaposed with the notion of a migrant. The chapter starts with an overview of findings from critical expatriate ­studies, and how privileged or expat-like migrants have been discussed in Japan’s case. The empirical part begins with an analysis of media representations of migrants in Japan. In the following section, contemporary European migration and two particular patterns are discussed to demonstrate that a number of Europeans end up working in less skilled sectors of the economy, often side by side with other migrants. 2

Expatriates as Privileged, Invisible and Unproblematic Migrants

The definition of expatriate varies in different disciplines, and the question of who is an expatriate today is an increasingly contested question (Kunz, 2020, 2016). James Farrer (2018) provides an extensive, critical overview of contemporary expatriate studies, and aptly summarizes the important characteristics found in the typical definition of an expatriate as an ideal type : “these definitions form a sociological composite, or ideal type, of the ‘expatriate’: a privileged, credentialed, highly mobile, white businessman”. (Farrer, 2018: 196). Early studies on expatriates focused mainly on those with most of these characteristics, such as Beaverstock’s (2002, 2005) research on British high-skilled workers and managerial elites navigating the global networks of transnational

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corporations (TNC s) across global cities (for an overview, see Findlay and Cranston, 2015; Kunz, 2016). At the same time, the expatriate category came to represent a significantly broader definition in terms of class, forms of mobility, or credentials (Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Findlay and Cranston, 2015; Kunz, 2016). The label expat is often used to describe various forms of migration beyond the international mobility between or inside the TNC s. So-called self-initiated expatriates (Andresen, Al Ariss, and Walther, 2013) occupy various positions within global networks of “talent”, with different skill sets and distinct class positions, as compared, for example, to the managerial elites discussed in Chie Sakai’s chapter in this volume (see also Farrer, 2010, 2019; Kawashima, 2016; Lehmann, 2014; Lehman and Leonard, 2019). Moreover, the expatriates category overlaps with lifestyle migration (Benson and O’Reilly, 2016; Lundström, 2014, 2019; O’Reilly, 2000), marriage migration, trailing migrants1 (Lundström, 2014), or various “refugees” from the Western economic downturn, for example, English teachers (Lan, 2011). It is often used synonymously with, or overlaps, terms such as professional migration, high-skilled, elite migration (Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014), and the overlaps and ambiguities of the expatriate category in recent studies have been discussed extensively in works by Sarah Kunz (2016, 2020), Sophie Cranston (2016, 2017; Findlay and Cranston, 2015) and James Farrer (2018). Recent critical expatriate studies reveal the ambiguities of the category, and at the same time suggest previously overlooked characteristics that are crucial for defining expats in popular as well as academic discourse. Cranston argues that “research on expatriates is characterized overall by one key point – a lack of clarity over who or what an expatriate is” (Cranston, 2017: 2). She points out that one of the reasons for this ambiguity is the highly politicized and racialized character of the category (ibid.). Similarly, Kunz acknowledges that “while there is considerable ambiguity around who is considered an expatriate, the category is firmly linked to the realities of global power relations and inequality” (Kunz, 2016: 92). Despite these ambiguities, it continues to be used as a meaningful category in migration research (Cranston, 2017; Farrer, 2019, 2018; Kunz, 2020), in migrant self-identification (Cranston, 2017; Fechter, 2007; Leonard, 2010a, 2010b; Lundström, 2014, 2019; Walsh, 2010), and in perceptions of different migrant groups in public discourse, as aptly illustrated by an article in The Guardian newspaper (Koutonin, 2015). Many studies quote this 1 The “trailing migrant” makes a reference to the “trailing spouse” as women following their career’s husband. This expression is critically discussed in chapters 4 and 8 because of the lack of recognition of the female agency of this conception.

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now well known commentary in which Mawuna Remarque Koutonin points out the racialized character of the terminology used to describe mobile people crossing borders, and emphasizes that expatriate is a term “axiomatically applied” to white Westerners living abroad (Cranston, 2017: 1). In other words, the expatriate category can be understood to denote white mobile subjects perceived as occupying privileged positions within the receiving societies. Critically engaging with whiteness, postcolonial legacies, and the ways in which the boundaries of expatriates are constructed (Farrer, 2010, 2019; Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Leonard, 2010b, 2010a; Lundström, 2014, 2019; Walsh, 2010), addressing the gendered outcomes of expatriation (Klekowski von ­Koppenfels, 2014; Lundström, 2014; Yeoh and Willis, 2005), or looking at “the intersecting workings of race, class, nationality and gender that lie at the heart of the category” (Kunz, 2016: 90) of expatriates in general are some of the ways in which critical expatriate studies have contributed to revealing how privileges based on whiteness and the colonial past continue to be reproduced. Critical expatriate studies also suggest that such migrants are often seen as an invisible and unproblematic minority, due to their relatively small numbers and perceptions of them as (high-)skilled migrants (Koser and Salt, 1997: 288), as well as their supposed cultural adaptability stemming from cosmopolitanism (Hannerz, 1996). Findlay and Cranston (2015) further identify associations with economic development (rather than economic threat) and the temporary nature of their movement and its limitation to global cities as additional factors that make expatriates a largely invisible group. The conflation of the expatriate with whiteness—which itself arguably represents an invisible identity (Dyer, 1997)—and with skills which signify economic desirability and contribution constructs the socially privileged identity of a “good migrant” (Cranston, 2017). The self-identification of Western migrants as expatriates, and the boundaries they draw against other migrants and the local population, has been addressed in many studies (Coles and Walsh, 2010; Cranston, 2016; Farrer, 2008, 2010, 2019; Fechter, 2007; Leonard, 2010b, 2010a, 2013; Walsh, 2010). But there is less research, for example, on how visa schemes and employment practices particularly affect “middling migrants”, or those whose categorization as expatriate deviates more or less from the ideal type of the high-skilled elites (Farrer, 2018: 198; Kunz, 2016); on how expatriates contribute to receiving societies; or how they are perceived by and interact with the local majority population and other migrants (Farrer, 2018; Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Kunz, 2016). Comparing the expatriate category with other migrants is an important agenda in critical expatriate studies (Cranston, 2017; Findlay and Cranston, 2015; Kunz, 2016, 2020). Expatriates are often perceived as “something-­otherthan-migrants” (Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014: 20), and as “good migrants”

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they are contrasted with the problematic understanding of “other migrants”. Cranston acknowledges that while scholarly work focusing on whiteness and expatriation does account for the “privileges through which expatriate lives are constructed, it tends to miss understandings of ways in which expatriate identities are produced in relation to other migrants” (Cranston, 2017: 3). Similarly, Kunz (2020) has argued that critical research on various forms of expatriation, especially through a postcolonial lens, “contributes to our understanding of how migration categories work in processes of racialization, and vice versa, how race intervenes in the production of categories” (Kunz, 2020: 2158). At the same time, however, she highlights that “less attention has been paid to how the category ‘migrant’ operates in these processes”, and examines “what constructs of the ‘migrant’ operate in relation to the category ‘expatriate’ and how this conceptual work is tacitly or not so tacitly racialised” (2020: 2158–59). She reminds us that the relationship between these two categories is “tense” and they “are joined by a constitutive but not straightforward relationship that is deeply political” (Kunz, 2020: 1370). She discusses how both categories represent polysemic and politicized categories (see also Cranston, 2017) and emphasizes the “ostensibly neutral” character of both migration categories (see also Farrer, 2019: 7). This chapter aims to fill some of the above-mentioned lacunas in critical expatriate studies by focusing on how expatriates are represented in the media and constructed as a different, non-problematic form of migration. In the case of contemporary European migration to Japan, the chapter demonstrates how the increasing “super-diversity” of migration (Vertovec, 2007) brings those who are presumed to be identified as expatriates towards social spaces that were usually occupied by those presumed to be identified as migrants. In this way, it contributes to emerging research addressing the relationship between the categories of expatriate and migrant (Cranston, 2017; Findlay and Cranston, 2015; Kunz, 2016, 2020), and explores how and where the boundaries between the two categories are becoming more blurred – and, on the contrary, how and where these boundaries are reproduced. 3 Westerners in Japan – (High)Skilled Workers and ‘Foreigners’ as Expatriates Despite a continuous growth in migration studies in Japan since the 1990s, research on Westerners in Japan has been minimal. Although the assumption that such migration flows are still very limited in number might seem like a plausible explanation for why they have not been addressed more widely, the

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numbers represent a weak rationalisation (Debnár, 2016: 15). For example, Americans alone still represent the eighth largest national minority in Japan, and Westerners—however defined—easily represent a numerically significant category that can be considered as analytically meaningful at any point in Japan’s modern history. Most of the cases in which Westerners are included in existing studies reveal associations with expatriates, highly skilled, privileged and unproblematic migrants. One of the ways in which the experience of Westerners in Japan has been accounted for in research is in discussions of (high-)skilled migration. Westerners are often included in qualitative (Oishi, 2012; Osanami, Törngren, and Holbrow, 2017; Tsukasaki, 2008) or quantitative (Holbrow and Nagayoshi, 2018) datasets analyzing (high-)skilled migration to Japan. These studies make a valuable contribution to understanding migration into Japan in general, in terms of the internal diversity of skilled migration, and by revealing the politicized and socially constructed character of the skills in visa schemes (Liu-­Farrer, Yeoh, and Baas, 2020; Oishi, 2020). However, the biased practices of inclusion and exclusion of Westerners and non-Western migrants in analyzing different types of migration can be seen as problematic. (High-)skilled migration to Japan is dominated numerically by Asian migrants and thus it is not only Westerners who are associated with this category, as previous studies on migration in Japan acknowledge. H ­ owever, while Asian migrants are part of a wider and substantially more extensive discussion on other forms of migration in general, there is hardly any mention of Western migrants in such discussions.2 Skilled migration is largely ­understood—in public discourse as well as in research—as a desired, unproblematic form of migration (Findlay and Cranston, 2015: 22). Including Westerners in discussions of (high-)skilled migration while excluding them from other discussions suggests that Westerners in Japan are found only in such niches; this inadvertently reproduces associations of the West, expatriates, and unproblematic or “good migrants”. Similarly, a handful of earlier studies explicitly addressing the experience of Westerners in Japan again inadvertently helped to reproduce the image of Westerners as unproblematic expatriates by focusing mainly on highly successful and relatively affluent cases (see Komisarof, 2011, 2012; Willis, 2008). On the other hand, several works have emerged in recent years discussing Western migrants from a critical perspective and suggesting the increasing 2 International marriages are an exemption where Westerners do tend to be mentioned in discussions. However, Westerners tend to be considered as a specific group with different motivations and experiences than other marrying migrants, especially Asian.

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diversity of Western migration to Japan. Appelby (2014) focused on the masculinity of English teachers, addressing a previously largely overlooked but publicly well-known pattern. Hoff’s research (2018, 2019) on the various routes of young, skilled European migrants into the Japanese labor market describes them as middle-class migrants rather than affluent elites, and Takeda (2017) describes ski enthusiasts moving as lifestyle migrants from ­Australia to H ­ okkaido. I have also previously offered an overview of contemporary ­European migration to Japan emphasizing the importance of cultural motivations, international marriages, and less skilled workers in the growth of this migration (Debnár, 2016). These recent works help to deconstruct the image of Westerners as affluent, highly skilled, mobile expatriates. Emerging research covering various forms of migration from the West to Japan suggests a variety of positions that are sometimes closer to, but often farther from, the image of an unequivocally privileged and unproblematic expatriate. This chapter aims to develop these arguments further by including some previously unaddressed patterns of European migration to Japan and, importantly, by drawing attention to similarities with other migration patterns from Asia. The chapter uses for analysis available statistical data on foreign residents in Japan and the results of long-standing fieldwork on European migration to Japan. Throughout the project beginning in 2009, I have conducted about seventy formal and numerous informal interviews with Europeans living in Japan. This chapter further develops some of the previously published results, incorporates new findings from the ongoing fieldwork, and analyses topics and results previously not addressed. 4 Migrants versus High-Skilled Workers in Japan – Racialized Media Representations The following section explores what labels are deployed and what their particular connotations are by analyzing recent media representations of migration. The decision by the Japanese government to establish a new visa scheme in 2018 that would enable de facto low-skilled migrants and open doors for their settlement spurred a boom in media coverage of “Japan as a country of (im)migration”. The new Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) scheme permits more than 340,000 migrant workers annually in thirteen designated sectors of the economy, such as construction, fisheries, or low-skilled service jobs in restaurants, hotels, or building cleaning (Oishi, 2020). Moreover, while the visas are limited to five years, those who can pass skills and Japanese language

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proficiency tests will be eligible for another subtype of the visa that would allow them to stay permanently in Japan (Oishi, 2020: 9). As Nana Oishi argues, this extensive “overhauling of the ‘unskilled’” work ­category and “up-skilling” disrupted the established dichotomy of the unor low-skilled versus skilled in Japan (Oishi, 2020), where the low-skilled ­represented the (im)migrants (i.e., imin) which Japan officially does not accept. Moreover, the fact that the scheme left doors open for possible longterm ­settlement moved the picture even closer to a stereotypical image of the migrant; whereas the expatriate type of highly skilled migrant is often perceived as mobile, the migrant is seen in the popular imagination as the one who settles (Cranston, 2017). Despite unwavering denial by the prime minister Shinzō Abe that these changes in any way allow (im)migrants into Japan, popular media started to increasingly use the word they have largely avoided so far—the “‘I’ word; the ‘I’ standing for ‘imin’” (Roberts, 2018: 1369)—to describe the new situation. Consequently, some of the titles of tabloids and magazines in 2018 and 2019 included “Hidden country of immigration – Japan” (Weekly Tōyō Keizai, ­February 2018), “Preparing for the immigration society” (Sekai, December 2018), “The song of immigrants” (Newsweek, December 2018), or “Lifting the ban on ‘­immigration’ – the crossroads of the rise and fall of the Japanese economy” (Weekly Tōyō Keizai, February 2019). What is of particular interest here are the politics of naming and particularly the differences in naming practices used for different racially marked groups. As already suggested above, until recently both the government and the mainstream media avoided using the word imin, which describes both (im)migrants (noun) and migration (verb), to describe newcomer migrants to Japan. Other terms signifying a particular type of migrant, such as kōdō jinzai (high-skilled human resources), or more general terms such as gaikokujin (foreigners) or gaikokujin rōdōsha (foreign workers) were the preferred choices. The recent changes in legislation in combination with increasing numbers of foreign workers and their visibility brought the word imin into public discourse, yet the naming practices of different migrant groups are highly racialized. One of Japan’s highly influential weekly business magazines, Weekly Tōyō Keizai, used the term imin on its title page twice in less than a year.3 The two special issues on migration aptly illustrate what is meant by the word imin in Japan, and at the same time exemplify who is or who is not regarded as an (im)migrant in Japan. First, the two issues clearly demonstrate how the word 3 The 3 February 2018 edition was titled “Hidden country of immigration – Japan”; the first issue of 2019 (12 January) ran under the headline “Lifting the ban on ‘immigration’ – the crossroads of the rise and fall of the Japanese economy”.

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imin is strongly associated with the long-term settler-type of migrants seeking (low-skilled) work in a foreign country,4 who are often perceived as posing economic, social and cultural threats to Japanese society.5 On the other hand, it is also very clear from the coverage of the topic in these two issues that the word imin is still not used to describe high-skilled or professional migrants, and where the existence of such migrants is acknowledged they are of limited interest.6 When the expatriate type of migrant is actually addressed, different labels are deployed and the implicit message is clear that the high-skilled, expatriate type of migrants are believed to represent a categorically different type. Thus, when the 2018 issue discusses the case of promoting foreign IT workers, it is within a framework of foreign students as a potential source of “global talent” (pp. 49–51); when a popular TV talent Jason Danielson is interviewed on the experience of foreign nationals living in Japan in the 2019 issue (p. 37), the word foreigner(s) (gaikokujin) is used. The word kōdō jinzai was also used twice in the article about Danielson, a white American. Yet it was mentioned only three more times in other articles: twice when referring to the case of ­Singapore, and once when discussing the more general category of skilled professional occupations (senmon/gijutsu shoku). These results clearly demonstrate the political and racial correlations of the various labels used in Japan when discussing migration. (Im)migrant or imin is associated with low-skilled workers coming mainly as technical interns or students, with numbers anticipated to further increase dramatically under the newly established SSW visa scheme. The problems that such migrants can cause are discussed extensively and cases from other countries are introduced to illustrate some more or less successful policies. The coverage of this issue in the Japanese media represents a local iteration of what Zygmunt Bauman (2016) called “migration panic”, which can be seen in many other developed countries in recent years. Although these media representations in Japan are less explicit and more covert, it can be argued that they often present or 4 According to common definitions in Japanese dictionaries (e.g., Daijisen or Meikyō). 5 This is well reflected in the Q&A article on migration in the 2019 issue of the Weekly Tōyō Keizai. The five common questions introduced in this article demonstrate the popular belief that migrants are an economic burden on, rather than contributors to, the country, as well as the belief that they are a burden on the welfare system. 6 Results of word frequency analysis show that the word imin (migration, migrant) appeared 109 times in total, the word representing the newly established category of specified skilled and technical interns (ginō) 146 times, the word for foreign students (ryūgakusei) 104 times, and the general word for a foreign person (gaikokujin) 290 times.

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inadvertently reproduce the image of migrants as “troublesome, annoying, unwanted” or “inadmissible”, as Bauman argued (ibid.). On the other hand, the praised high-skilled migrants (kōdō jinzai) are omitted from such discussions, suggesting that this type of migration is unproblematic. The interview with Jason Danielson addresses issues that “foreigners” and “high-skilled migrants” face in Japan, and discusses problems of Japanese society and culture that lie behind the failure to lure more such migrants or to utilize their potential. Symbolically, a representative of the non-problematic category is a white American male, being the only white subject depicted in the two issues dominated by photographs of Asian “migrants”. It can be argued that the naming policies in these instances draw on global representations of whiteness as being “not of a certain ‘race’ […] just the human race”, allowing it to represent others (Dyer, 1997: 3), while however it does not represent all migrants (including the problematically perceived ones) but only “good migrants” (Cranston, 2017). As John Russell (2017: 39–40) argues, popular representations of whiteness in Japan are constructed in a substantially different way than for other races, with positive connotations associated with cosmopolitanism and transnational mobility. These media representations demonstrate how whiteness is conflated with skills, masculinity and the putatively unproblematic expatriate type of migrant (Kunz, 2016), and how at the same time it is clearly differentiated from problematic perceptions of migrants. In combination with the ways in which white or Western foreign residents in Japan have been covered (or not covered) in previous studies, it illustrates how the boundaries between migrant and expatriate are constructed and racialized in less or more tacit ways (Kunz, 2020: 2159). The following section analyzes some of the patterns in contemporary European migration to Japan that demonstrate how the boundaries between the two categories are becoming increasingly blurred in reality, and ­deconstructs the racialized connotations of these categories. 5 Europeans in Japan – Transnational Elites, English Teachers, or Brokered Wives? European migration to Japan represents a growing while still relatively small segment of overall migration. As the following figure illustrates, the number of registered foreigners from European countries in Japan has been increasing steadily, except for a short period between the global crisis and the t­ riple disaster in the Tohoku region in 2011. In general, the population of Europeans

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Figure 3.1 Number of European nationals registered in Japan by years (1986–2019) Source: Created by the author from Statistics on the Foreigners Registered in Japan by the Immigration Bureau, Ministry of Justice

in Japan has more than tripled since the 1990s, and numbers surged in the five years before the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Although a similar rise in the number of Europeans was recorded in the late 1990s, the main drivers and patterns in the second half of the 2010s differ. More than 60% of the increase in European residents in Japan between 1997– 2002 can be ascribed to just three countries: the UK, Romania, and Russia.7 These are indicative of the two most prominent patterns behind the growth in European migration to Japan in the late 1990s and early 2000s – the migration of women, and of English teachers. The former includes primarily the highly organized migration of female workers into the Japanese nightlife entertainment industry, and brokered wives (Golovina, 2017; Kim, 2011). Coming under a type of (high-)skilled visa in a broad sense, the “Entertainer” visa, female workers, mainly from Russia and Romania, followed the established practice of bringing Filipina women to Japan from the late 1990s until 2005.8 Others 7 Statistics on foreign residents in Japan include Russia and all the ex-Soviet republics in Europe, rather than dividing them according to the actual geographical location of these states. In this chapter, only Russia and ex-Soviet republics located on the European ­continent, such as Ukraine, Latvia and others, are included in the category of Europe. 8 Under heavy international criticism for human trafficking, the issuing of “Entertainer” visas was drastically restricted in 2005.

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were brokered brides for Japanese men, mostly from rural areas, again following the same migration pattern that was established earlier with women from Asia (Piper, 1997). English language teachers represent another important source of the growth in the European and Western resident population in Japan. Opportunities in this field started to emerge in the 1980s, and English-language education provided relatively upmarket employment, particularly for Western men in Japan (Appleby, 2014; Debnár, 2016) and elsewhere in Asia (Lan, 2011; Lehman and Leonard, 2019; Lehmann, 2014). Nevertheless, compared to the previous century, working conditions have deteriorated, and many jobs in this sector have become low-paid and insecure in recent years (Debnár, 2016). Steadily increasing numbers of international students, international marriages in general, and cultural enthusiasts, are among other migrants who have also contributed to this growth (Debnár, 2016, 2015b; Hof, 2018, 2019). Although the role of (high-)skilled migration in this growth cannot be denied, it appears limited compared to other patterns. The professional visa category that most contributed to the growth of Europeans in this period9 was “­Specialist in humanities/International services”, which arguably illustrates the ambiguity of the broader definitions of high skills in the Japanese visa regime (Oishi, 2020; Tsukasaki, 2008). The only requirement is the completion of university education in a broadly defined field of specialization, and this visa is often issued to administrative workers in the broadest sense, in addition to teachers of English or other languages in private language schools. In practice, many holders of these visas engage in various administrative or other jobs which include using their cultural skills; this is distinct from the stereotypical image of a high-skilled expatriate working in finance, research, banking, or as a business manager. Although this category was combined with “Engineer” in 2015 in what can be read as an attempt to redefine it as high(er)-skilled category, it clearly represents a container category for administrative workers with university or college education employed in Japanese companies of different sizes and across various industries. As shown in the analysis below, this category might in practice include even such apparently unrelated occupations as a tourist guide. While we have little statistical information on European migrants in Japan, previous studies suggest that most Europeans living in Japan can be regarded 9 Except for the “Entertainer” category which is also classified as (high-)skilled and accounted for about one fourth of total growth in the number of Europeans living in Japan between 1997–2002. “Specialist in humanities/International services” visa holders increased by 3,200 in this period, which accounts for about 20% of total growth.

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as “middling migrants” (Debnár, 2015a, 2016; Hof, 2018, 2019), which Conradson and Latham define as migrants who are often but not always educated, coming more often from the middle classes rather than wealthy families, and being skilled yet not necessarily affluent (Conradson and Latham, 2005: 229). These characteristics are apparent from the results of my own fieldwork to date, and more recent trends in migration patterns suggest an increase in opportunities for “middling migrants” in particular. 6

Post-2011 and the New Opportunities

As Figure 3.1 indicates, the drop in European residents in Japan following the global financial crisis and the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 turned into a quick recovery with high increase rates. However, we need to look beyond previous explanations in order to account for this increase. English teaching is seen today by many as a rather unappealing option, with too few new opportunities to lure significant numbers of new migrants, while legal openings in the female nightlife entertainment business were effectively curbed. On the other hand, the following two patterns demonstrate how reconfigurations in the visa schemes, heightening demographic pressure on the Japanese labor market, and practices that had been established to accept migrants from other parts of the world—particularly Asia—have arguably led to new opportunities and channels for migration from Europe. 7 Working for a Blue-Chip Company – Blurring Expatriate and Migrant Boundaries One of the increasingly available opportunities for middling migrants in Japan is so-called standard employment. This means early-career employment, preferably on graduation from university; in blue-chip companies this still guarantees lifetime employment contracts and high job security, with career-track and still mainly seniority-based yet relatively lucrative remuneration. Although the hiring of foreign graduates by Japanese companies does not represent a new phenomenon, even for Europeans or Westerners, numbers in the relevant visa categories10 as well as previous research (Hof, 2018, 2019) suggest that more Europeans are finding their way into such employment in Japan. Increasing 10

The number of “Engineer/Specialist in humanities/International services”—representing as much as 63% of all working and about 17% of all visas for Europeans—has increased

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demographic pressure on the labor market leads to an increase in the number of foreigners among recruits in Japanese companies, and economic instability in Europe as well as mobility culture leads many young Europeans to look for opportunities abroad (Hof, 2018, 2019). The first wave of active headhunting for non-Japanese graduates among ­Japanese companies occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s (Kopp, 2019). ­Europeans and Westerners in general were part of this wave, often working for major corporations. The second wave came in the early 2000s, and was ­especially aimed at Japanese university graduates (Liu-Farrer, 2009, 2011). Stephanos, a white male from Greece, was a part of this wave when he arrived to study computer science in the late 1990s; he became employed in a large, well-known Japanese company after finishing his master’s degree and research in the early 2000s. His employment in a highly specialized field as an IT system engineer makes his and similar cases apparently close to the ideal of a high-skilled expatriate. However, there are several points which illustrate the particularities of such cases, as well as certain incongruencies with the expat category that blur the line between the expatriate and the migrant as contrasting types. Firstly, although Stephanos’s case seems non-problematic in terms of his classification as a high-skilled expatriate, the skills utilized by European migrants working for Japanese companies are diverse, and their classification more complex. Numerous studies have already shown that the “equation of the expatriate with the highly skilled migrant is […] troubled” by the actual work they engage in (Kunz, 2016: 92), which can range from being an elite corporate manager to an English teacher (Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014: 6). Becoming an English teacher at least at some point in a career in Japan was a recurring pattern in my sample, and working as a secretary, an in-house translator, as a bilingual workforce, or fulfilling other mainly administrative tasks, were some of the other occupations illustrating the range of skills required to work for Japanese companies as regular employees. In contrast to the image of managers, banking experts or other highly skilled professions for typical expatriates, the skills required to work for Japanese companies very often include language and cultural skills. Particularly in the case of foreign recruits, Japanese language proficiency and cultural skills—such as business etiquette or manners—and the opportunity to further acquire such skills throughout one’s career are crucial (Conrad and Meyer-Ohle, 2017, 2019; Tseng, 2020). Against the widely used notion of global talent, and in by more than a third since the last peak in 2008, and by almost 70% since 2011 (Statistics on Foreign Residents, Ministry of Justice, available at : https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en).

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stark contrast to the idea of expatriates as detached from the local population, applicants are required to be able to internalize local cultural and social norms, rather than bringing foreign elements or even particularly hard skills.11 Indeed, it can be argued that Stephanos’s fluency in Japanese and his knowledge of local cultural practices and manners were important in securing him a job apparently defined by high skills. Secondly, employment contracts further contradict the image of the expatriate. Similarly to Stephanos, almost all interviewees were on local contracts; in some cases, like Stephanos, these were long-term. A shift towards local contracts has been identified in other research as well, and it has been emphasized that such contracts often indicate middle-class rather than affluent workers (Farrer, 2018; Fechter, 2007; Lehmann, 2014; Leonard, 2010b; Oishi, 2012). What is of particular interest in Japan’s case are the ways local contracts are acquired, notably the importance of study abroad (i.e., in Japan) and experience in job-hunting. Study in Japan provides one of the most common gateways for standard employment in Japan, while the recruitment of international students graduating from Japanese universities has been discussed mainly in the case of Asian workers (Conrad and Meyer-Ohle, 2019; Liu-Farrer, 2009, 2011; Tsukasaki, 2008; Sato, 2019). Yet many young Europeans end up in the same companies doing similar jobs to their Asian counterparts. What tends to be easily overlooked in this context are increasing numbers of students coming to Japanese universities from other parts of the world. The number of European students enrolled at Japanese universities reached more than 9,000 in 2019, and has doubled in the past ten years. Stephanos, and most others working for Japanese companies in my s­ ample, had experience of studying in Japan (or studying on Japan elsewhere), and a similar tendency has been reported by Hof (2018: 51). Study in Japan provided many interviewees with the necessary cultural skills required for successful job-hunting. On the other hand, in cases where interviewees lacked such experience and cultural competencies, they often struggled to adapt to the workplace, as well as to make use of their professional skills (Debnár, 2016: 156–58). What cases such as Stephanos’s suggest is the importance of becoming embedded in local society (although often only partially or superficially) through study in Japan, and internalization of local social norms; this evidently increases chances of employment in Japan. This contrasts with the idea of a cosmopolitan expatriate living in the floating world and largely unconnected to local society. 11

A similar emphasis on Japanese cultural skills can also be seen among Japanese returnees from abroad seeking employment in Japan (Kawashima, 2010).

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Finally, the importance of the study-to-work transition, and recent trends in hiring practices by companies, suggest a shift from highly individualized forms of migration leading to careers in Japan to the more institutionalized forms that can be seen among migrants from Asia. Months of looking for some way to get to Japan on their own12 or randomly discovering opportunities to study or do research in Japan, which were common accounts among the “accidental migrants” (Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014) who arrived in the 1990s and early 2000s, have been replaced by accounts of opportunities “coming to their doors” in the form of various study exchange programs, recruiting events, and new opportunities for work in Japan. Transnational hiring practices by Japanese companies, brokers, or universities looking directly to Asian countries for new candidates (Conrad and Meyer-Ohle, 2017, 2019; Tseng, 2020) are appearing in Europe as well. Job fairs that were designed to recruit Japanese students at universities in the US or UK (Conrad and Meyer-Ohle, 2019: 257) are transforming into events where anyone who is bilingual can participate13 and look for local students with Japanese language skills, as in the case of Asian countries. ­Similarly, the practice of brokers who in “recent years increasingly focused on graduates from overseas universities, especially in Asia” (Conrad and Meyer-Ohle, 2019: 256) is spreading to Japanese culture/language departments at European universities as well. Moreover, my data suggests that brokers are making use of the expanding visa schemes, such as working holiday visas, to provide cheap and flexible labor to expanding industries, such as inbound tourism, which until lately had few opportunities for foreign and ­particularly Western workers. 8

Working Holidays and the Tourism Industry

The working holidays visa scheme in Japan has seen a significant expansion in recent years, and European countries have played a crucial role in this expansion. The first bilateral agreement on working holiday visas by Japan was signed with Australia in 1980, and Australia has since become a hugely popular destination for young Japanese adults (Kawashima, 2010). In 2010, 12 13

For example, Sylvaine (Swiss, arrived in 2007) individually contacted numerous design offices in Japan on graduating from university in Switzerland, and even looked for opportunities to work on an organic farm in order to get to Japan. For example, an online advert for such a seminar by Disco : “If bilingual in Japanese and English, anyone can participate” (https://www.facebook.com/soasjapansociety/posts /[a-must-attend]-[ヨーロパ最大級の就活/1571825459565911/, accessed 6 February 2019).

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thirty years from the first agreement, there were only eleven countries participating in this scheme, five of which were European. This indicates that working h ­ oliday visas, which are classified as a non-working visa in Japan, were not of high importance for policymakers. However, from 2013 the number of ­participating countries doubled to twenty-two in just five years (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020), and had increased to twenty-six by 2020. Importantly, this unprecedented expansion included new agreements with another thirteen European countries, increasing their number to eighteen out of twenty-six. Unsurprisingly, most of the working holidaymakers still come from the neighboring countries of South Korea and Taiwan, yet there is a significant number of Europeans entering Japan on working holiday visas. As of 2019, almost 4,000 Europeans stayed in Japan using this scheme, representing about one-fourth of all working holiday visa holders in Japan. Before the Covid-19 ­pandemic travel and visa restrictions were introduced in 2020, the number of working holidaymakers from Europe quadrupled in just ten years; this figure does not include Europeans from the three countries who joined the program most recently (Estonia, Sweden, and the Netherlands). In other words, given the recent expansion of the program and its popularity in countries where it was established earlier,14 there is a strong potential for significant further growth in the numbers of working holidaymakers coming from European countries when visa and travel restrictions have eased.15 The expansion of the working holiday program coincided with the unparalleled growth of inbound tourism in Japan in the few years preceding the global pandemic. Since 2012, Japan has transformed from a minor tourist destination with about eight million annual foreign visitors into a major global ­destination with more than thirty million foreign visitors in 2018 and 2019. Such ­extraordinary growth brought several problems, including a lack of the labor force necessary to cater to foreign tourists (Debnár, 2019). Further research is needed to determine whether it is just a well-timed coincidence, or whether there is a possibility that the working holiday visa scheme was again adapted to alleviate labor shortages in a particular sector of the economy, as 14 15

European countries with most working holiday visa holders in 2017 were France and the UK, which combined represented almost two-thirds of all Europeans on this visa. The bilateral agreements with these two countries were signed in 2000 and 2001 respectively. As of 2020, the maximuml capacity for holiday visas issued for European citizens from the participating countries based on the bilateral agreements is 5,930 visas per annum from thirteen countries with quotas. In addition, there are five European countries with no limit set on the number of working holiday visas issued per year (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020).

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has repeatedly been the case in Japan’s policy since the late 1980s. Nevertheless, the boom in inbound tourism does provide new opportunities for young Europeans, and these opportunities are showing the first signs of being institutionalized by brokers after being explored by the pioneer migrants, as the following case shows. Karl, a white man in his early thirties, came to Japan on a working holiday visa as one of the first Slovaks after the bilateral agreement between the two countries came into effect in 2016. With experience working in the tourism industry in Japan as a foreign student, he landed in this industry again without much effort. Starting at the reception of a hotel in Kyoto, he changed jobs twice before going independent but staying in the same industry. He worked as a tourist guide, and as a tour planner and organizer, and this allowed him to extend his stay and obtain and renew his working visa. Karl saw himself as providing cheap, bilingual labor for the Japanese hotel during the working holidays, and he acknowledged that his economic situation did not improve dramatically with regular employment on skilled visas. Karl describes how he was expected to “have social skills, be responsible, flexible, to be able to work twelve hours a day when needed and be multi-lingual” while, on the other hand, the remuneration was low, bonuses very low if any, and extra work frequently went unpaid by all of his employers. Similarly, Michael, who came to live in Kyoto together with his girlfriend from Germany in 2009, initially found a job as receptionist in a small hotel for backpackers for a minimum hourly wage. His girlfriend landed a slightly better paid job in a restaurant. These cases of young Europeans taking newly available opportunities in the tourism-related industries illustrate the precarity of these jobs. Karl has successively been employed by a Japanese corporation, a foreign tourist agency and its local subsidiary, yet all of them were looking for a cheap and exploitable labor force. At the same time, these cases suggest that the expansion of working holiday visas and the increase in opportunities in the tourism industry might bring a redefinition of the image of a typical foreign worker in this sector as well. While apparently similar, Karl’s and Michael’s experiences are strikingly different in an important way. The hotel where Michael found his first job in the industry eventually turned out to be operating without a license, and he found himself without a job after a police raid one morning. Besides the dimension of precarious working conditions, Michael points out that he was unable to find further employment in this industry. Despite local working experience and being trilingual, he repeatedly failed to get a job, just a few years before Karl’s experience in the same city. His interpretation, which reflects his previous experience as a receptionist and numerous job interviews following it, is

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that it was inappropriate for a white man to work at a hotel reception where the guests at that time were almost exclusively Japanese. Thus, what seems to be the crucial difference between these two cases is the period when they did their job-hunting: while Karl got his first student job in a hotel after the boom in inbound tourism was evident on every corner, Michael was job-hunting at a time when inbound tourism represented a very minor sector with unappealing prospects for growth. Although white workers could be found previously in the more luxurious hotels, in contrast to Michael’s ­experience from just ten years ago it is not uncommon today to see a white European working as a waitress in the traditional quarter in Gion, at the reception of a low-cost business hotel in Kyoto, or as a lift operator in one of the many ski resorts throughout the country. 9

Conclusions—Europeans as Migrants or Expats?

This chapter has argued that the precarious situation of many Europeans is invisible as they are identified as unproblematic expatriates, while they are often variously skilled, middle-class migrants who share similar positions and follow similar pathways to the numerically dominant Asian migrants in Japan. On the one hand, the politics of naming migrants in general, and particularly the practices used for different racially marked groups, still tend to reproduce the view of white Westerners as unproblematic and desirable expatriates, in contrast to the problematic migrant. These current naming practices mean that even a white European working as a lift operator or waitress in a touristy restaurant will hardly ever be labeled imin, while a similarly positioned Chinese worker in agriculture, or even a more skilled construction worker, is depicted as a typical example. Moreover, while its differentiations are more nuanced and less explicit, the mainstream research on growing migration to Japan also tends to inadvertently reproduce rather than challenge such conceptualizations, through the selective inclusion of Westerners in discussions on migration patterns relating to the ideal of a highly skilled, elite and unproblematic expatriate. This chapter has challenged such representations by problematizing the racialized character of these naming policies, and by drawing attention to the complexity and diversity of skills, employment forms and class status among Europeans in Japan. More white Europeans or other Westerners finding employment in various sectors of the Japanese economy indicates that representations and conceptualizations that explicitly or implicitly conflate particular nationality, race or gender with particular skills and occupations and thus with distinct types of

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migration (Cranston, 2017; Kunz, 2016; Lundström, 2014) are being contested and are possibly changing. Analysis of recent developments in European migration to Japan suggests that previously less accessible job opportunities are increasingly available to white Europeans. Two patterns discussed in this chapter demonstrate that these opportunities include variously skilled jobs in Japanese companies and the tourism industry, and emphasize local employment practices that tend to require cultural assimilation rather than encouraging the formation of cosmopolitan enclaves typical of expatriates. Importantly, in both cases these opportunities were developed for and by Asian migrants. The hunt for global talent by Japanese companies, and the staggering growth in inbound tourism in recent years, have increasingly opened opportunities to diverse migrants. Moreover, the means to facilitate further growth that were developed in the case of Asian migrations by the state and the market are being readily applied to European migrations. The broadening of the working holiday visa scheme and the expansion of brokers to non-Asian countries opens doors to Japan for European nationals, while it also provides side-doors for a cheap labor force. Drawing parallels with Asian migrants thus further helps to dismantle the racialized connotations of the expatriates versus migrants dichotomy. Besides the diversity of social positions, the comparison indicates the possibility that Europeans may be found outside the “certain spaces, carved out by colonial and imperial structures and current transnational power relations” (­Lundström, 2014: 172). This suggests the limits of postcolonial approaches to the study of expatriates, Westerners, or white migrants. Of course, this represents only one side of the story; the expatriate is also a social identity. This is where the role of postcolonial legacies and whiteness need to be acknowledged and scrutinized further. While the exploration of self-identification practices is a relatively common approach in critical expatriate studies, the case presented here amplifies calls to explore racial dynamics in workplaces and in other social encounters with locals and non-Western migrants. A “relative loss of status of the former colonies” and “declining currency of whiteness” in Asia (Farrer, 2018: 198), added to the particularities of Japan where host-guest dynamics still tend to negatively affect migrant trajectories “even for the most privileged migrants” (Holbrow and Nagayoshi, 2018: 24; Liu‐Farrer, 2020), necessitates a more nuanced understanding of these dynamics, as well as innovative approaches and frameworks. Adding to emerging studies on Europeans in Japan that have begun to explore some of these issues, this chapter further illustrates the complexity of the situation of white European migrants in Japan, engaging particularly with the question of whether they represent expatriates or migrants. Sarah Kunz has argued

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that “to disambiguate expatriates from (im)migrants is at some level to conceal the fact that expatriates are indeed (im)migrants” (Kunz, 2016: 96). Reflecting this and similar claims, this chapter has argued that ­Europeans or Westerners in Japan should be conceptualized as migrants rather than developing new typologies and labels for such mobile subjects (Croucher, 2012: 4; Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014: 20; Kunz, 2016: 96; ­Lundström, 2014: 6). Inquiring further into whether and to what extent an Asianization of ­European or Western migration to Japan is occurring, how migrants differentiate themselves or are differentiated by others, as well as the role whiteness plays in integration and in social interactions with diverse actors, are just some of the possible ways to further problematize “the figure of ‘the migrant’ as a coherent racially marked subject” (Lundström, 2014: 177). References Andresen, Maike, Al Ariss, Akram, and Walther, Matthias, eds. 2013. Self-Initiated E­ xpatriation: Individual, Organizational and National Perspectives. New York: ­Routledge. Appleby, Roslyn. 2014. Men and Masculinities in Global English Language Teaching. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2016. Strangers at Our Door. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2002. “Transnational Elites in Global Cities: British Expatriates in Singapore’s Financial District.” Geoforum 33(4): 525–38. Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2005. “Transnational Elites in the City: British Highly-Skilled Inter-Company Transferees in New York City’s Financial District”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 245–68. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2016. “From Lifestyle Migration to Lifestyle in Migration: Categories, Concepts and Ways of Thinking”. Migration Studies 4(1): 20–37. Coles, Anne, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “From ‘Trucial State’ to ‘Postcolonial’ City? The Imaginative Geographies of British Expatriates in Dubai”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1317–33. Conrad, Harald, and Meyer-Ohle, Hendrik. 2017. “Brokers and the Organization of Recruitment of ‘Global Talent’ by Japanese Firms – A Migration Perspective”. Social Science Japan Journal 21(1): 67–88. Conrad, Harald, and Meyer-Ohle, Hendrik. 2019. “Transnationalization of a Recruitment Regime: Skilled Migration to Japan”. International Migration 57(3): 250–65. Conradson, David, and Latham, Alan. 2005. “Transnational Urbanism: Attending to Everyday Practices and Mobilities”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 227–33.

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Cranston, Sophie. 2016. “Producing Migrant Encounter: Learning to Be a British ­Expatriate in Singapore through the Global Mobility Industry”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34(4): 655–71. Cranston, Sophie. 2017. “Expatriate as a ‘Good’ Migrant: Thinking Through Skilled International Migrant Categories”. Population, Space and Place 23(6): e2058. Croucher, Sheila. 2012. “Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality”. Societies 2(1): 1–13. Debnár, Miloš. 2015a. “Compétences et ‘Blancheur de La Peau’ Des Immigrés Européens Au Japon (Skills and Whiteness of European Migrants in Japan)”. Migrations Société 27(157): 71–95. Debnár, Miloš. 2015b. “Gurōbaruka Jidai No Imin Genshō Ni Okeru Dōki No Tayōka, Fukuzatsuka, Gūhatsuka – Zainichi Yōroppa-Jin Ijūsha No Keiken Kara (Diversification and Increasing Complexity in Contemporary Migration to Japan: From the Experience of Europeans in Japan)”. Doshisha Review of Sociology 19: 1–14. Debnár, Miloš. 2016. Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Debnár, Miloš. 2019. “Coping with the Inbound Tourism in Gion – Resisting the ­Touristic Gaze”. Intercultural Studies 23: 29–47. Dyer, Richard. 1997. White. New York: Routledge. Farrer, James. 2008. “From ‘Passports’ to ‘Joint Ventures’: Intermarriage between ­Chinese Nationals and Western Expatriates Residing in Shanghai”. Asian Studies Review 32(1): 7–29. Farrer, James. 2010. “‘New Shanghailanders’ or ‘New Shanghainese’: Western ­Expatriates’ Narratives of Emplacement in Shanghai”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1211–28. Farrer, James. 2018. “Critical Expatriate Studies – Changing Expatriate Communities in Asia and the Blurring Boundaries of Expatriate”. In Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations, ed. G. Liu-Farrer and B. S. A. Yeoh, 196–208. New York: Routledge. Farrer, James. 2019. International Migrants in China’s Global City – The New Shanghailanders. New York/London: Routledge. Fechter, Anne-Meike. 2007. Transnational Lives: Expatriates in Indonesia. Aldershot: Ashgate. Fechter, Anne-Meike, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1197–1210. Findlay, Allan M., and Cranston, Sophie. 2015. “What’s in a Research Agenda? An Evaluation of Research Developments in the Arena of Skilled International ­ ­Migration”. International Development Planning Review 37(1): 17–31. Golovina, Ksenia. 2017. Nihon Ni Kurasu Roshia-Jin Josei No Bunka Jinruigaku: Ijū, ­Kokusai Kekkon, Jinsei-Zukuri (Russian Women in Japan: Migration, Marriage, and Life Crafting). Tokyo: Akaishi shoten.

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Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London/ New York: Routledge. https://op.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/webopac/catdbl.do?pkey =BB03028559. Hof, Helena. 2018. “‘Worklife Pathways’ to Singapore and Japan: Gender and Racial Dynamics in Europeans’ Mobility to Asia”. Social Science Japan Journal 21(1): 45–65. Hof, Helena. 2019. “The Eurostars Go Global: Young Europeans’ Migration to Asia for Distinction and Alternative Life Paths”. Mobilities 14(6): 923–39. Holbrow, Hilary J., and Nagayoshi, Kikuko. 2018. “Economic Integration of Skilled Migrants in Japan: The Role of Employment Practices”. International Migration Review 52(2): 458–86. Kawashima, Kumiko. 2010. “Japanese Working Holiday Makers in Australia and Their Relationship to the Japanese Labour Market: Before and After”. Asian Studies Review 34(3): 267–86. Kawashima, Kumiko. 2016. “Service Outsourcing and Labour Mobility in a Digital Age: Transnational Linkages between Japan and Dalian, China”. Global Networks 17 (­January): 483–99. Kim, Viktoriya. 2011. “Conflict and Strategies in Cross-Border Marriages: The Experience of Women from the Former Soviet Union and Japanese Men”. In Proceedings of the 3rd Next-Generation Global Workshop, ed. Wakō Asato and Hideki Nakata, 430–45. Kyoto: Nakanishi printing. Klekowski von Koppenfels, Amanda. 2014. Migrants or Expatriates? Americans in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Komisarof, Adam. 2011. On the Front Lines of Forging a Global Society: Japanese and American Coworkers in Japan. Kashiwa: Reitaku University Press. Komisarof, Adam. 2012. At Home Abroad: The Contemporary Western Experience in Japan. Kashiwa: Reitaku University Press. Kopp, Rochelle. 2019. “Thinking of Working in Japan? It’s Good to Know What You’re in For”. Japan Times, 30 January, 2019. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community /2019/01/30/general/thinking-working-japan-good-know-youre. Koser, Khalid, and Salt, John. 1997. “Research Review: The Geography of Highly Skilled International Migration”. International Journal of Population Geography 3(4): 285–303. Koutonin, Mawuna Remarque. 2015. “Why Are White People Expats When the Rest of Us Are Immigrants?” The Guardian, 13 March, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com /global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/13/white-people-expats -immigrants-migration. Kunz, Sarah. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration ­Scholarship”. Geography Compass 10(3): 89–101. Kunz, Sarah. 2020. “Expatriate, Migrant? The Social Life of Migration Categories and the Polyvalent Mobility of Race”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46(11): 2145–62.

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Lan, Pei-Chia. 2011. “White Privilege, Language Capital and Cultural Ghettoisation: Western High-Skilled Migrants in Taiwan”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37(10): 1669–93. Lehman, Angela, and Leonard, Pauline, eds. 2019. Destination China – Immigration to China in the Post-Reform Era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lehmann, Angela. 2014. Transnational Lives in China: Expatriates in a Globalizing City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Leonard, Pauline. 2010a. Expatriate Identities in Postcolonial Organizations – Working Whiteness. New York/London: Routledge. Leonard, Pauline. 2010b. “Work, Identity and Change? Post/Colonial Encounters in Hong Kong”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1247–63. Leonard, Pauline. 2013. “Landscaping Privilege – Being British in South Afrcia”. In ­Geographies of Privilege, ed. F. W. Twine and B. Gardner, 97–120. New York/London: Routledge. Liu-Farrer, Gracia. 2009. “Educationally Channeled International Labor Mobility: ­Contemporary Student Migration from China to Japan”. International Migration Review 43(1): 178–204. Liu-Farrer, Gracia. 2011. “Making Careers in the Occupational Niche: Chinese Students in Corporate Japan’s Transnational Business”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37(5): 785–803. Liu-Farrer, Gracia, Yeoh, Brenda S., and Baas, Michiel. 2021. “Social Construction of Skill: An Analytical Approach toward the Question of Skill in Cross-Border Labour Mobilities”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies March, 47(10): 2237–2251. Liu‐Farrer, Gracia. 2020. Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-Nationalist Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Lundström, Catrin. 2014. White Migrations: Gender, Whiteness and Privilege in Transnational Migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lundström, Catrin. 2019. “Creating ‘International Communities’ in Southern Spain: Self-Segregation and ‘Institutional Whiteness’ in Swedish Lifestyle Migration”. ­European Journal of Cultural Studies 22(5–6): 799–816. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2020. “The Working Holiday Programmes in Japan”. 2020. https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/toko/visa/working_h.html. O’Reilly, Karen. 2000. The British on The Costa Del Sol. London: Routledge. Oishi, Nana. 2012. “The Limits of Immigration Policies: The Challenges of Highly Skilled Migration in Japan”. American Behavioral Scientist 56(8): 1080–1100. Oishi, Nana. 2021. “Skilled or Unskilled?: The Reconfiguration of Migration Policies in Japan”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies March, 47(10): 2252–69. Osanami Törngren, Sayaka, and Hilary J. Holbrow. 2017. “Comparing the Experiences of Highly Skilled Labor Migrants in Sweden and Japan: Barriers and Doors to LongTerm Settlement”. International Journal of Japanese Sociology 26(1): 67–82.

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Piper, Nicola. 1997. “International Marriage in Japan: ‘Race’ and ‘Gender’ Perspectives”. Gender, Place & Culture 4(3): 321–38. Roberts, Glenda Susan. 2018. “An Immigration Policy by Any Other Name: Semantics of Immigration to Japan”. Social Science Japan Journal 21(1): 89–102. Russell, John G. 2017. “Replicating the White Self and Other: Skin Color, Racelessness, Gynoids, and the Construction of Whiteness in Japan”. Japanese Studies 37(1): 23–48. Sato, Yuriko. 2019. “Asian Students’ Brain Circulation and Japanese Companies”. Asian Education and Development Studies 9(1): 105–16. Takeda, Atsushi. 2017. “Travel Destination as a Global Cosmopolitan Site: Australians in the Japanese Ski Resort Niseko, Hokkaido”. Social Alternatives 36(3): 50–56. Tseng, Yen-Fen. 2021. “Becoming Global Talent? Taiwanese White-Collar Migrants in Japan”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies March, 47(10): 2288–2304. Tsukasaki, Yūko. 2008. Gaikokujin Senmon/Gijutsu-Shoku No Koyō Mondai (Problems of Employment of Foreign Skilled Labor). Tokyo: Akaishi shoten. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications”. Ethnic and Racial ­Studies 30(6): 1024–54. Walsh, Katie. 2010. “Negotiating Migrant Status in the Emerging Global City: Britons in Dubai”. Encounters 2: 235–55. Willis, David Blake. 2008. “Dejima: Creolization and Enclaves of Difference in Transnational Japan”. In Transcultural Japan, ed. D. B. Willis and S. Murphy-Shigematsu, 239–63. London: Routledge. Yeoh, Brenda S., and Willis, Katie. 2005. “Singaporean and British Transmigrants in China and the Cultural Politics of ‘Contact Zones’”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 269–85.

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PART 2 Gender Differentiation within the Categories: Blurring Tradition and Modernity

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CHAPTER 4

Expat Spouses as “Quasi Members”: Inside a Privileged Migration in Kampala, Uganda Julia Büchele 1 Introduction What they [the company] are demanding of me is that I don’t complain, that I set up home as soon as I possibly can and make his life as easy as possible and don’t place demands on him because he has to function. He has to function, that’s what they want from him. And be a sounding board and be in the background. That’s what they want from me. (Audrey) Sitting on the terrace of her spacious house in Kololo, one of the affluent neighborhoods in Uganda’s capital city Kampala, Audrey reflected on her role as an expat spouse and her relationship to her husband’s employer. As a couple, they had been deployed to seven different countries in the past thirty years, her husband now holding a high management position in an international airline. They were going to move again in a few months but did not yet know where to. She enjoyed her time in Kampala, especially the weather, she said, looking over her lush garden where bougainvillea was in full bloom. Kampala is located right at the shore of Lake Victoria; built on nine hills, there is a view onto the lake from many of the residential areas. With approximately 1.5 to 2 million inhabitants, Kampala is not only the biggest city in Uganda today, but one of the fastest growing in Africa (Vermeiren et al., 2012). Like many other capital cities on the continent, Kampala hosts the headquarters of many NGO s, development agencies, embassies, and transnational companies active throughout the country. The influx of expats in the past few decades is visible in the city: coffee shops, restaurants, supermarkets and smaller shops selling wine and cheese have opened up in various districts, ­specifically ­catering to expats.1 1 In the 1990s, Uganda became “Africa’s leading post conflict success story” (Mwenda, 2010: 23) and a “favorite child” of international donors. While the north of Uganda is only slowly recovering from the turmoil caused by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) (Finnström, 2008), the south, including its capital Kampala, has been relatively stable for the past thirty years. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_005 -

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For this study, I interviewed women from all parts of the world who, like Audrey, had moved to Kampala for their husband’s job.2 Strikingly, all of them described their situation with reference to the ideal of an “old-fashioned expat spouse”, that is, a wife who is content to move wherever her husband’s job takes her, is willing to represent the deploying organization, and is primarily responsible for the household and childcare. In reality, many of the women I spoke with grappled to fulfil this role, or outright rejected it. Though this image had become a stereotype which only a few women fully identified with, it ­nevertheless remains a powerful trope against which expat spouses describe the roles they are taking on. Many of my interlocutors felt that their work as unpaid supporters was often taken for granted by their husband’s employer. Even if they had initially embraced “this adventurous lifestyle”, they described their situation as difficult, regretted that they had not been able to further their own careers, or feared that they would not be able to continue with (or advance in) their careers. Some of the older women were no longer willing to pack up their bags and leave ­wherever their husband was sent to. Early in my research it became clear that the employer’s influence on all aspects of life abroad was strongest in shaping the experience of being an expat spouse. In most cases it was the h ­ usband who was employed and sent on an assignment, accompanied by his wife, and often children. Spouses felt supported by the employer, who assisted them in visa application processes, helped to find a house, offered pre-­departure trainings, paid school fees for the children, and often a so-called spouse allowance or monetary compensation for the presumed hardship expats endure while living away from home. Companies put much effort into guaranteeing a similar standard of living for their employees all over the world (cf. Hindman, 2013). Today, many expats travel by themselves, are not married, and women are increasingly deployed as expats. There is a gendered difference however: women who are deployed as expats are far less likely to be married and travel with a (male) expat spouse.3 In this regard, my study on expat spouses’ ­incorporation into the sending organizations is a somewhat anachronistic phenomenon, which represents what Andrea Maihofer (2014: 314) calls “the paradoxical simultaneity of persistence and change”4 in gender relations. Being an expat spouse is in many ways an ambivalent experience. They often become keepers 2 This chapter is based on data I collected during my PhD research, 2012–2014 (Büchele, 2018). 3 Though I only include interviews with women, this is not to suggest that only women accompany their husbands. For instance, Braseby (2010) includes female as well as male expat spouses in her study on the question of adaptation in the host country. 4 Translated from German.

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of the national identity abroad and—as Heather Hindman phrases it—set up “hyper-national homes” (Hindman, 2008: 41–61), while at the same time resisting being seen as merely tagging along, and the stigmatizing gendered ascriptions of being just housewives. Expat spouses are dependent on their husband’s mobility and income, and simultaneously part of a transnational elite of hypermobile and relatively financially secure migrants. In my study I used an ethno-methodological approach to carve out the micro-sociological descriptions of the process of becoming and being an expat spouse. What does it mean? How does one navigate and shape inclusions and exclusions along different lines of belonging? Taking this closer look at the experiences of expat spouses provides rich evidence that complicates the widely assumed “unproblematic” migration experience of expats (Kunz, 2016: 89). Though the term expat is generally used more broadly in academic literature as well as colloquially, I apply the term strictly to refer to employees and their families who are sent abroad by international companies, embassies, or national development agencies. Rather than following the “common-sense” understanding of expats, which most often means highly-skilled professionals from the West, I use expat deployment as a human resources practice, a corporate category as it were.5 As I will show throughout this chapter, the institutional context of the employer is crucial to both the making and understanding of expat spouses. The very premise of expat deployments is the employee’s close ties to the transnational organization6 or nation state on whose behalf they take on assignments abroad (Hindman, 2007: 157). Both the employed expats and their spouses become “boundary spanners” between the parent company and the various subsidiaries they are sent to (Mense-Petermann and Spiegel, 2012a, 2012b: 54–6) and join transnational networks of posts. Rather than merely tagging along, expat spouses play an important role in making the

5 For a discussion of “common-sense” and analytical categories in migration studies, see Dahinden, 2016. 6 I use this term to include transnational companies, development sector organizations, ­missions, and the diplomatic sector – all of which frequently send employees and their families abroad for temporary assignments. I have excluded organizations which send out people for short-term missions, often into war and other disaster zones. These include organizations such as the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, UN missions, and military interventions. These organizations send employees into situations which are seen as dangerous and which rely on extraordinary flexibility from their employees. Spouses and families in these cases are not allowed to accompany them. The UN regularly publishes a list of non-family duty stations: (http://www.un.org/Depts/OHRM/salaries_allowances/allowances/nonfam.htm; accessed 18.12.2016).

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transition from one country to the other, and in making the process of settling into the new place as smooth as possible. In this chapter, I will explore expat spouses’ perspectives on their role, and the expectations they feel from their husband’s employer. Not employed, but supported to join their partners, what is their relationship to their husband’s employer? How do they experience their situation differently from their husband’s, and how do they negotiate their own relationship to other expat spouses? 2

“We Are a Team” – The Quasi-Membership of Expat Spouses

“We are a team”, was how my interview partners described their relationship to emphasize that both spouses were equally invested and involved in the deployment. Regardless of whether they had embarked on their first stay abroad or had been moving regularly for decades, it was important to them to see their mobility as a family project. This traditional understanding of family as a unit deciding and supporting the breadwinner’s professional move is significant for the relationship between employees, accompanying spouses and the organizations sending them; a relationship that is defined by perforated boundaries between work, leisure, and family. Expat spouses are actively included in the deployment process from the very start, thereby becoming important actors among expats in creating a sense of community within “transnational social spaces” (Pries, 2010) as well as for the deploying organizations. Deployment as a family project rests on specific premises, largely informed by human resources literature. It is widely agreed that the failure rates of expat assignments are very high. In this context failure is first and foremost understood as premature returns of expatriate employees (Suutari and Tornikoski, 2001: 390; Mendenhall and Oddou, 1985: 39), and by and large such failure is ascribed to difficulties of adjustment, more specifically to the discontent of expat spouses, family issues and marriage problems (Bielby and Bielby, 1992; Cole, 2011; Gerardo, 1991). The crux of the matter seems to be that premature terminations of contracts significantly increase the already high costs of assignments (Abbott et al., 2006; Kühlmann, 2004; Palmer and Varner, 2002; Punnett, 1997), which makes assignments risky and costly endeavors for transnational organizations. Consequently, it is crucial for employers to ensure that employees (and their families) settle into their new homes quickly and feel comfortable in these temporary homes. Notwithstanding their prevalence, these claims have been challenged and criticized as unwarranted. Anne-Will Harzing (1995, 2002) notes a persistent

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“myth of high failure rates” which, through “empty referencing”, has found its way into nearly all publications on the topic and has become an unquestioned assumption, not sufficiently substantiated by empirical evidence.7 Nevertheless, it continues to inform the deployment practices of transnational organizations. Built on what could be called the discovery of accompanying spouses, employers facilitate the relocation of employees together with their families, promote the co-presence of family members as an important value and asset for the organization, and pay particular attention to the well-being of the spouses (Black and Gregersen, 1991; Punnett, 1997).8 In nearly all cases, expat spouses are encouraged and supported to move with their husbands, but they are not employed by the deploying organizations and therefore cannot be directly mandated. Nevertheless, organizations find ways in which spouses are willing to take on the role of supporters. The heteronormative institution of marriage and the nuclear family provide an important framework. Feminist scholars have long drawn attention to the importance of gendered, unpaid, and reproductive care work for capitalist economies (Duden and Bock, 1977; Federici, 2012), which should not be seen as merely private support, but as an indirect, although close relationship between women as “incorporated wives” (Ardener and Callan, 1984) or “quasi members” (Büchele, 2010) and corporate institutions.9 By supporting spouses to relocate, organizations place implicit and vague but nevertheless strongly felt expectations on them. The influence on the success or failure of deployments ascribed to expat spouses has led to the development of relocation regimes specifically directed 7 Harzing goes so far as to show that failure rates were steadily cited as higher than they were stated in the original study by Tung (1981), to which nearly all studies refer (Harzing, 1995). By “empty referencing”, Harzing means “references that do not contain any original evidence for the phenomenon under investigation, but strictly refer to other studies to substantiate their claim [...] rather than going back to cite the original source” (Harzing, 2002: 130). 8 The dominant trope of deployment, that spouses are crucial to the success or failure of ­foreign assignments, has also made its way into popular self-help literature. Here, the ­difficulties of accompanying spouses are described, and advice on how to deal with them is given, as well as discussion of the effects of expat life on children (so-called TCK, or Third Culture Kids) (Pascoe, 2006; Pollock and Van Reken, 2009). I assume that deployment practices, the exchange of personal reports through blogs, popular literature, etc. has a strong impact on the experiences of accompanying spouses. The idea of a happy family abroad that quickly adapts and guarantees a stable domestic basis, as a prerequisite of productivity for the employed expat, is the postulated ideal of an expat family. 9 I have written elsewhere about the perception of work and acknowledgement (or lack thereof) of the role and practices of expat spouses within the frame of “quasi membership” (Büchele, 2010, 2018).

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at spouses. These may include monetary incentives (pension schemes, so-called spousal allowances, entertainment budgets, travel budgets) and compensation payments (housing allowances, school fees for international schools), as well as pre-departure training sessions which expats and their families attend before they leave for their temporary destination, medical checks, visiting trips to find a suitable house, and relocation consultants.10 Unofficially, but often very actively, spouses become mobility managers, organizing relocations, furnishing the new house, and taking care of bureaucratic errands immediately after arrival (Mense-Peterman, 2016: 24). As part of their reproductive work, they sustain continuity throughout several reallocations. The importance of furnishing a house and providing an everyday life (most importantly for children) was a recurrent imperative in the accounts of expat spouses. One woman vividly recalled that she would always put up the same posters in her children’s bedrooms after they had arrived at their new house so that they had some sense of familiarity. It was an attempt to be at once flexible while holding on to what makes life stable. Women who had moved to different countries with their husbands for many years often stated that agreement to a mobile lifestyle had been either a precondition for their marriage or a necessity to maintain their marriage. So basically, when my husband had serious thoughts about me this was one of the first things he asked, you know, would you be prepared to do this? (Audrey) Consequently, like Audrey, many of my interviewees depicted their decision to relocate as a compromise, or even a concession, towards their husband’s ­professional aspirations and lifestyle. At the same time, a strong trope in the interviews I conducted was the emphasis that the initial point of departure— the decision to embark on a mobile life—was a joint decision between them and their husbands, and sometimes their children. Expat spouses strongly resisted the notion of accompanying or trailing along, and time and again described themselves as a constitutive part of a team in which both partners fulfil their roles equally in order to successfully lead and shape their mobile lives. In this sense, expat spouses perceive themselves as part of their husband’s career. Much emphasis is thus placed on the stability of their relationship:

10

Cf. Hindman (2013) for a detailed discussion on how deploying organizations shape expat spouses’ practices during pre-departure training sessions, especially regarding choices on how and where to buy groceries.

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As far as your relationship is concerned, I think personally you have to have a very good relationship with your husband to sustain this kind of life. Primarily because when you arrive in a country you have nobody that you have a history with. There is not a soul that you can share anything that happened before two weeks ago. (Audrey) The ambivalence described by expat spouses is a direct result of being addressed as an invaluable part of the deployment, if not—following the premise of both academic and popular discourse—the stabilizing factor for the employed expat. At the same time, the fact that they are not employed themselves and thus lack monetary compensation for their support is a ­striking devaluation of their work. Deploying organizations structure mobility and provide a legal and economic framework for their employees but also for the spouses. Rather than a work contract, it is the relation of the spouse to the employee which includes them indirectly in the deploying organization. Thus, expat spouses’ mobility rests on the fact that they are married. At the same time, deploying organizations are an important frame of reference for future plans, meaningful activities, and ways of belonging. Expat spouses’ inclusion into the deploying process is not simply a private decision; rather, because they are included in various ways, they are indirectly part of the deploying organization and become what I call “quasi-members” of the deploying organizations (Büchele, 2010). Expat spouses were aware that they (indirectly) played a pivotal role for the deploying organization by supporting their husbands. Regardless of the devaluation they felt regarding their support, they insisted on the importance of their work. While they claimed that they were part of a team and their husbands appreciated their support, they often felt that their efforts were taken for granted by the sending organizations. Even though they moved as a family, they felt their situation was vastly different from what their husbands experienced. Spouses felt that through employment their husbands were given a sense of belonging and purpose which made their process of settling in much more effortless. 3

“Our Husbands Have a Ready-Made Life”

In contrast to their own efforts to organize relocations and compensate the interruptions caused by mobility, expat spouses emphasized the seamlessness with which their husbands were able to take on their work at a new place. It was a recurrent trope in my data: expat spouses juxtaposed their own situation

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with that of their husbands. The crucial time was right after arrival, when informants felt they had to make a lot of effort, especially to make friends and build meaningful social relations. In Audrey’s portrayal, the easiness of her husband’s arrival was reflected in a worldwide standardized corporate design: My husband starts in the new department at exactly the same company and just everybody is wearing blue, and he walks in and he switches on the computer and he starts his job. You know he just picks up the telephone and talks to somebody and he is into it. He doesn’t even have to think about it. Whereas I have to start all over again, making friends, finding a house that is suitable, getting your head around the town, and buying a car. Because usually my husband takes over the car, and he takes over and you know everything is just offered by the predecessor and everything is set up for him. (Audrey) Not only did expat spouses tell me they had to start all over again when they arrived in a new country, they also felt that their husbands had a completely different perspective, and were unable to comprehend what their situation was like and the effort they put into establishing their everyday lives throughout the first weeks and months after arrival. According to Julie, being provided with a ready-made life prevented her husband from understanding her situation: I think it’s very hard for the person who works to see that cause when you move country for the working partner, they just go into a job. They go into a job, they walk into an office, there are people in the office […] it’s a ready-made life. Whereas for the person who is not working, day one you’re sitting in the house you don’t know anybody. What do you do? You have to get out and meet people you know you have to do it. (Julie) While their husbands enjoyed the social environment which was already provided for them at their offices, expat spouses depicted their house as a proxy for social isolation. The first imperative expat spouses imposed on themselves was to actively go out and meet other people. Isolation was described as the biggest threat to their own well-being and ultimately detrimental to their marriage and their joint expat lives. The everyday is intersubjective (­Soeffner, 2004), thus for my informants, social relationships with significant others were a prerequisite to successfully settling into a new place and organizing everyday life. My informants emphasized the importance of taking particular care of their social lives, and developed an acute sense of the types of people

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they could trust and be around in order to make friends quickly. Knowing how to furnish the house, where to buy groceries and generally finding their way around town was not sufficient to do so. In expat spouses’ accounts, a ready-made life means being part of an ­organization and holding a position in this organization. It means having social ­contacts, and having one’s work acknowledged, both by the everyday experience of interacting with co-workers and by the simple fact of receiving a salary. Most importantly, a ready-made life provides a structured day and meaningful activities, the latent functions of employment (Jahoda, 1981). In addition to what the employer provided, my informants felt that their support was part of what enabled their husbands to enjoy a ready-made life. It is, as Erika said, “of course ten times easier when they go with a woman who plays an active part in one way or another”. Another woman emphasized that she could only adequately support her husband if she herself was content with the situation and felt at least good enough to put on “a smile when he comes home”. Much emotional labor (Hochschild, 1979) goes into supporting husbands. Her emotional work as a supporter included “knowing how to ask the right questions” and to “be a sounding board”. Being dissatisfied was what she had to avoid by all means. My interviews reflect what has long been described as the unwaged and invisible work of reproducing labor power (Federici, 2012: 30). In the case of expat spouses, the need to get oriented and organized in a new place adds to the feared isolation of being supposedly only housewives. Finding their way around Kampala and building their own life time and again was something that they needed to do quickly in order to overcome the liminal phase of packing, moving, finding and furnishing a house. After their new home was set up, they put a great deal of effort into organizing a social life of their own that would support their well-being and their sense of having arrived. 4

Expats in Kampala – Negotiating Belonging

4.1

“Welcome to Uganda” Uganda may literally take your breath away. Famously described by ­Winston Churchill as “The Pearl of Africa”, Uganda’s landscape includes the snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains, the source of the Nile River, half of the world’s population of mountain gorillas, and the beautiful waterfalls of Mt. Elgon. With its interesting juxtaposition of natural beauty and a tumultuous past marred by Dictator Idi Amin and the L.R.A.,

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you’ll begin to discover a country comprised of resilient, culturally rich and warm people who are working to turn their motherland into a safe and ­welcoming country. Upon arrival, you’ll probably have a bunch of questions as you begin to explore what this beautiful country has to offer. So here are a few starting tips to help begin your transition into living in Kampala.11 This excerpt is taken from a website which informs newly arrived expats about what to expect, what to consider, what to look forward to, and what to be ­careful about when moving to Kampala, including descriptions of various residential areas in town, regular events, and reviews of restaurants, cafés, and shops throughout town. In a strikingly colonial rhetoric (Fechter and Walsh, 2012), the beauty of Uganda’s landscape is advertised but juxtaposed with the terrifying man-made history, which reaches well into the present. The people in Uganda are presented as eager to change their country for the better, but it has remained dangerous and hostile (it still needs to become a safe, welcoming country). This colonial language presents Uganda’s people as resilient in the face of adversities, but they are poor and (as they are what the country is “comprised of”) hostile and dangerous. Therefore—as the website implies—expats should seek information on how to navigate the city, or the beauty of “The Pearl of Africa” will not be experienced. The message is that one must actively perceive Uganda as beautiful and search for what it has to offer. This knowledge transfer by expats for expats presents some aspects of how expats perceive the city, as well as their self-understanding of expats vis-à-vis Kampala’s society. Among my informants, the general perception was that expats had to be active in making their experiences anywhere in the world pleasurable: “I feel sorry for anyone who looks at that as a half empty glass”, one woman said, implying the necessity of optimism because no place provided what she could enjoy back home. How newly arrived expats learn to see the place is not least determined by how they are introduced to it by fellow expats. They socialize each other through various formal groups, such as the International Women’s Organization (IWO) in Kampala, which is centered around charity work, but more importantly they organize book clubs, regular lunch meetings, bridge groups, and other social activities for members. Newly arrived expats are also informally welcomed through what I call personal brokers, that 11

http://www.livinginkampala.com/information/new-arrivals/tips-for-new-arrivals-in -kampala/; accessed 13.11.2015. This website was founded on the basis of a similar website for Kigali (www.livinginkigali.com).

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is, expat spouses who invite newcomers to events, show them where to shop, work out, get their hair done, eat out, and who pass on instructions on how to employ domestic staff and what to consider with regards to healthcare and security. Expat groups and information brochures, as well as restaurants, cafés and bars which serve European and US-American-style food and beverages (at the prices of European and US restaurants), create a (loose) sense of a local expat community. International schools play a vital role in establishing a sense of belonging to a transnational community as they guarantee a continuation of curricula throughout the world (Kenway and Fahey, 2014). Expat spouses, whether they had children or not, emphasized that schools were the most important social entry point for meeting new people easily, as parents were often involved in after-school activities, organized birthday parties and sleepovers for their children, and shared common concerns and interests about their children’s well-being. How Kampala was generally presented and perceived among expats ranged from an idealizing and exoticizing “tourist gaze” (Urry and Larsen, 2011) to classifying the city as a “hardship post” (Niedner-Kalthoff, 2005: 31–4). On the one hand, Kampala was rated a third-world or hardship post for expats, and was perceived as a place in which one had to compensate for, or at least endure, inconveniences such as regular power cuts, corruption, heavy traffic jams, and people who tried to take advantage of the “rich Wazungu” in town. On the other hand, expats celebrated Uganda’s moderate climate, and advertised the landscape, opportunities to travel, and amenities (including quality of housing, international schools and availability of consumer goods) that guarantee a comfortable lifestyle for those who earn salaries in foreign currencies. ­Additionally, English as a lingua franca and the relatively low crime rate make Kampala an appreciated expat post.12 In her study on European and US-American expats in Jakarta, Fechter (2007: 151) argues that the lives of expatriates are shaped by boundaries rather than characterized by unlimited mobility and the notion of global flows. In fact, she goes so far as to regard “the existence of boundaries” as “a key feature of expatriates’ lives”, since her informants frequently used the phrase “living in a bubble” as a metaphorical way to describe their feeling of detachment from the local societies they lived in. “Living in a golden cage” is another metaphor 12

InterNations is a commercially organized network for expats, “connecting global minds” as they state on their website (www.internations.org). Recently, they conducted a survey among their members; their latest report stated that Uganda’s reputation had increased significantly in the past few years (Expat Insider. The InterNations Survey Report, 2016).

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she uses to describe the ambivalent simultaneity of restrictions (for example, lack of language skills) on the one hand, and economic privileges on the other (2007: 41–3, 151). Expat spouses do experience their migration as both liberating and restrictive, and often associate it with a sense of loss (ibid.: 38). Filling that void means actively seeking social connections. More often than not, expats demarcate themselves from the local communities in Kampala and negotiate their belonging in groups with other expats. In the following section, I will illustrate how social boundaries and identities are negotiated and established among expats in Kampala. In this example, speaking German marked the boundary that shaped who was invited and who was not welcomed to the party one of my interlocutors organized at her home. This boundary not only demarcates expats from locals but also differentiates between groups of expats, making evident once more that expats are by no means a homogenous group of people. 4.2 “This Is a German Party” Anke, together with her husband and their three children, lived near the shores of Lake Victoria in a gated community of about twenty single-family houses. During the interview, a few days prior to the party, Anke had already told me about her “beautiful house, spacious with a garden”. After the interview, she invited me to join the party the following weekend, “a German ­barbeque party”, she specified. They would have coffee and cake13 at 3 p.m. and a barbeque later on in their garden. For the children, they would have twist bread.14 Sanyu, a Ugandan, married to Karl (an Austrian), had put us in contact. She had been convinced that Anke would be the woman I was looking for to ­interview. Karl had lived in Uganda for a number of years and ran a mid-sized construction company in Kampala. “Are Sanyu and Karl also coming to the party?” I asked Anke. “No”, she replied somewhat hesitantly. “It should be a German party, and unfortunately Sanyu doesn’t speak German.” Even though Anke had learned English fairly well during the two years she had been in Uganda, it was important to her to organize and attend events where everybody spoke German. It was the ease she felt when surrounded by people who understood where she was coming from and being able to speak freely in her

13 14

“Kaffee und Kuchen” is a typical German ritual. The complexity of this ritual is not quite captured in the English translation “coffee and cake”. For an excellent analysis of this ­cultural practice see Macamo, 2010. Dough wrapped around a wooden stick and baked over the campfire or BBQ.

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mother tongue. This premise for the party excluded her Ugandan friend Sanyu, and by association Sanyu’s Austrian husband Karl. As I will show, this celebration of German-ness was an event that—in the context of Kampala—had to be carefully staged. Inclusive claims of group identity always require the exclusion of alterity. There is nothing novel in this statement, but how exactly inclusions and exclusions are accomplished is interesting to analyze with regard to the multiple dimensions of identities these practices encompass (Baumann and Gingrich, 2004). The cohesion of culturally or otherwise defined groups always needs to be negotiated. The ­German party I will describe is a case in point, showing that even though the criterion for inclusion and exclusion seemed simply to be language skills, it turned out to be a rather complex social accomplishment to select the right guests and make the event happen as intended. Much thought and constant boundary work is needed to create seemingly homogeneous events. When I arrived at the compound that day, I had to pass a quick security check at the entrance to the gated community, and sign the visitors’ book. Anke welcomed me warmly, showed me the house, and told me to just help myself to some food in the kitchen. Lemon cake, biscuits, and a flask with coffee were offered on the kitchen counter. Salad was prepared for later. The living room was full of toys, with colored pencils and paper spread out on a low table. Outside, on the terrace, she introduced me to Isabel, another German woman who had come with her two children. Both women’s husbands worked for the same German development organization. Bedrooms, bathrooms, office spaces, and balconies with a view onto the lake were located upstairs. Children were busy running from one room to the next, playing hide-and-seek. Anke’s husband and another German man were engaged in a conversation on one of the balconies, beer bottles in hand. Eric, a man from Burundi who worked for the African Union (AU), had just joined them. He had come to the party with his German wife, Eva. At the time, Eva had worked as a freelance landscape architect in Kampala for seven years. Before they had moved to Kampala, Eric and Eva had lived in another East African country. Anke introduced me to everyone. One of the men joked: “Ah! You are interested in maP15 – the accompanying problem”. I grabbed a beer and joined Eva and Anke for a walk through the premises. A narrow road led us around the compound. All the houses were double-storey buildings in the same style, and every house had a garden surrounded by a hedge. A bit further up the road, children were playing in the swimming pool. 15

maP is the German abbreviation for “Mitausreisende Partnerin” which translates as accompanying spouse.

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These facilities, shared by all residents in the community, included changing rooms, a quiet room, and a gym. Later that day, I noted in my journal: The guests at the party had been carefully selected by their German l­ anguage skills: I myself an Austrian woman, because of my mother tongue, was “German enough” to be part of the event. Also, Eric, a man from Burundi was welcome as he spoke the language fluently (he received his PhD in physics in Germany). On the other hand, Karl, an Austrian man, was excluded from the party because his Ugandan wife did not speak ­German. Another German guest, Martin was accompanied by his ­Ugandan wife Rose and their small children. At first, nobody talked to her. When Eric addressed her in English, Martin insisted that she understood German. Shortly after their arrival, Rose excluded herself from the conversation, left the adults, and went into the house where the smaller children were playing. A German party is a German party. She probably did not speak German, but I didn’t make an attempt to find out. I wasn’t interested in checking her language abilities or to know whether she met the “criteria” for being present. That people questioned her language skills was enough to put her in an uncomfortable position. She was present at the party but obviously not really welcome and did not belong. Later that afternoon, Anke’s daughter came running and asked if her friend from the neighbor’s house may join them. “No”, Anke said, “we are having a German party”. The girl sauntered off. “Maybe some other time”, Anke added. We ate pork chops and sausages; the children barbequed their bread and enjoyed themselves on the big trampoline. (field notes 9.2.2013) As these notes illustrate, creating social coherence is not self-evident. People need to find ways in which they can be recognized as members (Garfinkel, 1967) of particular groups, but also ways in which they demarcate themselves from others. Belonging and exclusion is based on (unspoken) criteria that define who belongs to a group, who can become part of a group, and who does not. Anke had organized the party as a monolingual event; in this case speaking German had become the criterion for inclusion. For this party, the cohesion that was desired was based on a wish for the comfort of speaking one’s mother tongue. The prerequisite of speaking German included some non-Europeans such as Eric, but definitely excluded all the Ugandans Anke knew. Even though the party wasn’t exclusively white or based on German nationality, it was in effect dominated by white Germans. Guests who were not German, or spoke German as a second language, were the ones who needed to adapt and integrate.

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I interpret this event as an example of how the various ways expats demarcated themselves from local communities, as well as each other, crystalized. Two levels were at play: demarcation between German-speakers and the local population, and women amongst each other. German-speaking women who attended the party did not all identify as expat spouses, and negotiated what they thought expat spouses were or ought to be. Being a foreigner did not automatically mean that people identified as expats. Importantly, long-term foreigners, especially women who engaged in full-time professional employment, sought to demarcate themselves from the expats who came to Uganda on a temporary assignment. In conversation, it once again became evident that being an expat spouse was understood as being part of the husband’s job. One ­conversation got heated when Eva, a German freelancer, openly questioned why Andrea, a German expat spouse, claimed to be exhausted and wondered why “all these expat spouses claim that housework is so much more effort here”. Eva worked full-time, emphasized that she simply picked up groceries on her way home, and like everybody else at the party employed maids to do most of the housework. Andrea on the other hand understood her role as an expat spouse and so-called stay-at-home-mom as supporting her husband beyond simply organizing the household: “My husband has told me that he would not be able to do his job here without me”, she emphasized; shortly after, she left the party. “You must understand that she has a lot on her plate right now”, Anke, the host, defended her. “Yes”, Eva conceded, “but it’s her own choice to do everything herself, she could employ a maid more than two afternoons a week”. Expat spouses often said their days were full and the demands on them great, yet they were constantly faced with the stereotype of the idle lady drinking gin and tonic by the pool all day. The disagreement between Eva and Andrea is a case in point, showing how gendered roles of wives and mothers are negotiated among expat women along the lines of how to organize reproductive work. On the other hand, the German party illustrates how the forming of ­homogeneous groups within expat circles was a social construction which took much effort. Demarcating themselves from Ugandan society or from other expats did not come spontaneously, but was a highly conscious act, which— even while the event was already well under way—required constant maintenance, and the exclusion of people’s spouses, as well as friends and neighbors who did not meet the requirements the host had defined. At the same time, many of the conversations during the party centered on what it meant to be an expat, which foreigners were real expats, and what was the appropriate way to be an expat spouse, including what complaints and grievances were legitimate, and what were simply self-inflicted problems. While a sociological micro-analysis brings these ruptures and heterogeneities to the fore, it was still

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a widespread claim among expats that they formed a coherent group despite their diversity in terms of class, nationality, cultural backgrounds, and industries they worked for. 5 Conclusion Transnational organizations assume that attitudes towards relocation and the well-being of expat spouses has an important impact on the decisions and ­performance of employees. Following human resources (HR) literature, a stable marriage is assumed to be a crucial factor, both in its negative and positive consequences (Kraimer et al., 2016: 93). Therefore, organizations try to enable expat spouses to make the relocation process as smooth as possible, equipping them with knowledge about the host country, and more generally about potential challenges to marriage and family life. Attending to expat spouses and families is one way in which the assumed problem of assignment failure is addressed by foreign deployment policies and HR departments.16 The incorporation of expat spouses as quasi members17 of the deploying organizations is an attempt to guarantee stability within this highly mobile lifestyle and the (neo-liberal) imperative to be flexible. Research on expats is strongly influenced by the language and logic of deploying organizations, similar to what Dahinden shows for migration and integration research and the link “to the logic of the modern nation state and its corresponding institutional and categorical effects” (Dahinden, 2016: 2209). Therefore, the goal of this chapter has been to make the underlying ­assumptions of deployment processes explicit, and to explore them from the perspective of expat spouses. I have focused on three aspects that shape expat spouses’ experiences of being mobile. One is that they see their relocation as a joint decision they take with their husbands. They invoke the image of a team to describe the equal effort they put into making their expat lifestyle possible. Secondly, by supporting spouses to relocate with their husbands, deploying 16

17

Other measures include more conventional HR practices. Specifically, for expat deployments, soft skills such as the ability to work in culturally diverse settings have gained significant importance in defining factors for successful expat employment (Kraimer et al., 2016: 90–93). I have written elsewhere (Büchele, 2018: 96–121) about the notion of work in this context. I particularly argue for a distinction between “unemployment” and “not being employed”. The latter applies to expat spouses who are associated with the deploying organization but not employed by it. Though their work is unpaid, this status allows them to frame their various activities so that they fulfil the latent functions of employment (Jahoda, 1981).

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organizations make them quasi members, without employing them or fully compensating them for the work they often put into organizing the move and making sure the employee can take up work as soon as they arrive. Expat spouses describe their husbands’ situation as stepping into a ready-made life, because they are immediately integrated into their new workplace and meet their colleagues right away. Expat spouses on the other hand have to put a great deal of effort into building their everyday life upon arrival, despite their economic and legal privileges as migrants. A third aspect I have described is how the self-understanding of expats, and expat spouses in particular, relies on their demarcation from the local community as well as the negotiation of differences amongst each other. References Abbott, Geoffrey N., Stening, Bruce W., Atkins, Paul, and Grant, Anthony M. 2006. “Coaching Expatriate Managers for Success: Adding Value Beyond Training and Mentoring”. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 44(3): 295–317. Ardener, Audrey, and Callan, Hilary. 1984. The Incorporated Wife. London: Croom Helm. Baumann, Gerd, and Gingrich, Andre, eds. 2004. Grammars of Identity/Alterity. A S­ tructural Approach. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. Bielby, William T., and Bielby, Denise D. 1992. “I Will Follow Him: Family Ties, ­Gender-Role Beliefs, and Reluctance to Relocate for a Better Job”. American Journal of Sociology 97(5): 1241–1267. Black, J. Steward, and Gregersen, Hal. B. 1991. “The Other Half of the Picture: Antecedents of Spouse Cross-Cultural Adjustment”. Journal of International Business Studies 22(3): 461–477. Braseby, Anne. 2010. Adaption of Trailing Spouses: Does Gender Matter? FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 153. Büchele, Julia. 2010. Quasimitgliedschaft in Organisationen: Die Rolle mitausreisender (Ehe-)Partner/innen bei Auslandsentsendungen. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Lucerne. Büchele, Julia. 2018. “Expat spouses in Kampala, Uganda. An Ethnography of migration from the Global North”. PhD thesis, University of Basel. Cole, Nina. 2011. “Managing global talent: solving the spousal adjustment problem”. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 22(7): 1504–1530. Dahinden, Janine. 2016. “A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration”. Ethic and Racial Studies 39(13): 2207–2225. Duden, Barbara, and Bock, Gisela. 1977. “Arbeit aus Liebe – Liebe als Arbeit: Zur ­Entstehung der Hausarbeit im Kapitalismus”. In Frauen und Wissenschaft. Zur

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E­ ntstehung der Hausarbeit im Kapitalismus. Beiträge zur Sommeruniversität für Frauen, ed. Gruppe Berliner Dozentinnen. Berlin: Courage Verlag. Fechter, Anne-Meike. 2007. Transnational Lives. Expatriates in Indonesia. Aldershot: Ashgate. Fechter, Anne-Meike and Walsh, Katie, eds. 2012. The New Expatriates. Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals. London: Routledge. Federici, Silvia. 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland: PM Press. Finnström, Sverker. 2008. Living with Bad Surroundings. War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs (NJ): ­Prentice-Hall. Gerardo, Ofelia S. 1991. “The Expatriate Manager’s Spouse: The Critical Actor Behind the Scenes”. PhD thesis, Governors State University. Harzing, Anne-Will. 1995. “The persistent Myth of high Expatriate Failure Rates”. Human Resource Management 6(2): 457–475. Harzing, Anne-Will. 2002. “Are our referencing errors undermining our scholarship and credibility? The case of expatriate failure rates”. Journal of Organizational Behavior 23(1): 127–148. Hindman, Heather. 2007. “Outsourcing Difference. Expatriate Training and the Disciplining of Culture”. In Deciphering the Global. Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects, ed. S. Sassen, 155–179. New York: Routledge. Hindman, Heather. 2008. “Shopping for a Hypernational Home. How Expatriate Women in Kathmandu Labour to Assuage Fear”. In Gender and Family Among Transnational Professionals, ed. A-M. Fechter and A. Coles, 41–63. London: Routledge. Hindman, Heather. 2013. Mediating the Global. Expatria’s Form and Consequences in Kathmandu. Redwood City: Standford University Press. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1979. “Emotional work, feeling rules, and social structure”. American Journal of Sociology 85(3): 551–575. Jahoda, Marie. 1981. “Work, Employment, and Unemployment. Values, Theories, and Approaches in Social Research”. American Psychologist 36(2): 184–191. Kenway, Jane, and Fahey, Johannah. 2014. “Staying ahead of the game: the ­globalizing practice of elite schools”. Globalisation, Societies and Education 12(2): 177–195. Kraimer, Maria, Bolino, Mark, and Mead, Brandon. 2016. “Themes in Expatriate and Repatriate Research Over Four Decades: What Do We Know and What Do We Still Need To Learn?”. The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 3: 83–109. Kühlmann, Torsten. 2004. Auslandseinsatz von Mitarbeitern. Göttingen: Hogrefe. Kunz, Sarah. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration ­Scholarship”. Geography Compass 10(3): 89–101. -

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Macamo, Elísio. 2010. “Die Begehung der Kontinuität: Kultursoziologische Anmerkungen zu ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ in Oberfranken”. In Nach der kulturalistischen Wende – Festschrift für Arnold Zingerle zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. G. Cappai, W. Lipp, and W. Gebharadt, 251–266. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Maihofer, Andrea. 2014. “Familiale Lebensformen zwischen Wandel und Persistenz. Eine zeitdiagnostische Zwischenbetrachtung”. In Wissen – Methode – Geschlecht: Erfassen des fraglos Gegebenen, ed. C. Behnke, D. Lengersdorf, and S. Scholz, 313–334. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Mendelhall, Mark, and Oddou, Gary. 1985. “The Dimensions of Expatriate Acculturation: A Review”. Academy of Management Review 10(1): 39–47. Mense-Petermann, Ursula, and Spiegel, Anna. 2012a. “‘Bridging the Differences’ – Die Arbeit des ‘boundary spanning’ und ihre Regulierung in transnationalen Unternehmen”. In Vielfalt und Zusammenhalt. Verhandlungen des 36. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bochum und Dortmund, Teil I, ed. M. Löw, 297–311. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Mense-Petermann, Ursula, and Spiegel, Anna. 2012b. “Multinationals, Transnationals, Global Players”. In Handbuch Organisationstypen, ed. M. Apelt and V. Tacke, 43–61. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Mense-Petermann, Ursula, and Spiegel, Anna. 2016. “Verflochtene Mobilitäten und ihr Management. Mobilitätspraktiken von Expatriate-Managern und ihren ‘trailing spouses’ im Ausland”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 41(1): 15–31. Mwenda, Andrew. 2010. “Uganda’s Politics of Foreign Aid and Violent Conflict: The Political Uses of LRA Rebellion”. In The Lord’s Resistance Army. Myth and Reality, ed. T. Allen and K. Vlassenroot, 45–59. London/New York: Zed Books. Niedner-Kalthoff, Ulrike. 2005. Ständige Vertretung. Eine Ethnographie diplomatischer Lebenswelten. Bielefeld: transcript. Palmer, Teresa M., and Varner, Iris I. 2002. “Successful Expatriation and Organizational Strategies”. Review of Business 23(2): 8–11. Pascoe, Robin. 2006. Raising Global Nomads: Parenting abroad in an on-demand world. Vancouver: Expatriate Press. Pollock, David, and Van Reken, Ruth E. 2009. Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Boston/London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Pries, Ludger. 2010. Transnationalisierung. Theorie und Empirie grenzüberschreitender Vergesellschaftung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Punnett, Betty Jane. 1997. “Towards Effective Management of Expatriate Spouses”. ­Journal of World Business 32(3): 243–252. Soeffner, Hans-Georg. 2004. Auslegung des Alltags – Der Alltag der Auslegung. ­Konstanz: UTB. Suutari, Vesa, and Tornikoski, Christelle. 2001. “The challenge of expatriate ­compensation: the sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among expatriates”. International Journal of Human Resource Management 12(3): 389–404. -

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Urry, John, and Larsen, Jonas. 2011. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. London: SAGE Publications. Vermeiren, Karolien, Van Rompaey, Anton, Loopmans, Maarten, Serwajja, Eria, and Mukwaya, Paul. 2012. “Urban growth of Kampala, Uganda: Pattern analysis and ­scenario development”. Landscape and Urban Planning. 106: 199–206.



Blogs and Websites InterNations: www.internations.org Living in Kampala: www.livinginkampala.com UN: www.un.org/Depts/OHRM/salaries_allowances

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CHAPTER 5

Between Lifestyles and Economic Opportunities: The Gendered Expectations of Japanese Expatriates in China’s Global Cities Chie Sakai 1 Introduction The number of Japanese residents living abroad rose from 480,000 in 1985 to 1,410,000 in 2019, a nearly threefold increase in thirty years despite falling by 50,000 in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the experience of those living abroad lacks scholarly attention in Japan to date. Japanese studies on migration have focused primarily on the influx of foreign workers into Japan since the late 1980s. But a decrease in the population and a shortage of labor have become two of the country’s most critical problems, and in 2018 the government hastily amended immigration policy to accept unskilled labor from overseas in addition to professionals and skilled laborers. Conversely, Japan has a long history of emigration since the mid-nineteenth century, to Hawaii and Guam under contracts with recipients, to the west coast of North America, and to South American nations such as Brazil and Peru. After the Second World War and the rapid economic growth of the 1960s, Japan eventually ended its emigration policy; consequently, emigration from Japan is widely considered to comprehend past events. However, the number of ­Japanese residents outside Japan has subsequently increased, although the current outflow of emigrants is considered different from traditional ­migration. Since the 1970s, the strong yen and oil crises have forced Japanese companies to venture into business overseas. Japanese individuals living abroad mainly live in investment-led communities rather than by their own means. Thus they are generally considered to be privileged foreigners who are able to lead secure and isolated lives and maintain relatively high-paying jobs. Furthermore, individuals moving to foreign countries from Japan tend to consider themselves as different from traditional migrants. Japan has not been exempt from the age of globalization. De Haas, Castles, and Miller (2020) observe that contemporary migration displays new patterns and forms. New migration destinations have emerged, former sending countries have started accepting migrants, and globalization has enabled the © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_006 -

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involvement of an increasing number of countries in the migration process. Developed countries remain more likely to receive migrants, but their citizens also venture abroad. Transnational companies, organizations, universities and other educational institutions have become hubs of global migration (de Haas, Miller, and Castles, 2020). People now move more frequently all over the world, and Japanese individuals living abroad have shared their experiences regarding privileged (Kunz, 2016) and lifestyle (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009; O’Reilly and Benson, 2016) migration. Therefore the increase in, and popularity of, global migration from Japan warrants analysis, and comparison with the results of previous studies. The importance of migration from Japan has been particularly underestimated. This is because understanding the migration process of Japanese women is difficult from the perspective of traditional migration theory, although the rate of migration for women is higher than that for men. Moreover, few English language studies have been done on Japanese contemporary migration (Thang, MacLachlan, and Goda, 2002, 2006; Goodman et al., 2003; Ben-Ari, 2003; Fujita, 2009; Nagatomo, 2014; Hamano, 2019). In these studies, women are more visible than men. In fact, women have consistently made up more than half the number of residents in overseas Japanese communities since 1999, especially in Oceania and Europe. However, the motivations underlying women’s migration have been considered personal and temporary compared with those of men. Kofman (1999) has argued that women comprise nearly half of international migrants, while an increasing number of researchers and academics have addressed the migration experiences of women worldwide, but such investigations have rarely exerted an impact on mainstream migration studies. In Japan, representations of women’s migration have mainly depicted them as accompanying family members of male expatriates (­Kurotani, 2005), students, working holidaymakers (Kato, 2013), or incoming foreign women who work in predominately female spheres, such as domestic and care workers and sex trafficking. In addition, the overseas experiences of women are more diverse than those of men. Japanese companies mainly assign male employees to overseas-­ affiliated companies worldwide. In contrast, women have fewer opportunities due to the gendered division of labor in the Japanese workplace. Thus, women venture overseas for multiple reasons, both accompanied by family or by themselves to study and work independently. They may change their status as migrants through milestones in life including marriage and child-rearing. The flexible nature of the migratory process for women should be examined in order to enhance our understanding of the contemporary implications of migration.

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Since the 1990s, reports on the experiences and narratives of contemporary Japanese migrants in Hong Kong and Shanghai have appeared in Japan. In ­contrast to Oceania and Western Europe, men continue to comprise the ­majority of Japanese expatriates in Asian countries. However, the number of women who have opted to live and work in economic sectors connected to Japan in these countries is increasing. These women tend to be considered as temporary residents rather than migrants, but a relatively high number extend their stay due to marriage, child-rearing, and/or job opportunities. Using migration frameworks such as transnationalism, lifestyle migration, and g­ender ­perspectives, this study explores these various experiences of migration. Part one examines the flows of contemporary Japanese migration from the perspectives of gender, transnationalism, and personal lifestyle, updating the studies of the diverse experiences of contemporary migration from Japan, particularly given the existence of assigned expatriates, or managers ­dispatched from head offices in Japan to work in overseas branches or local subsidiaries (White, 1988; Aoyama, 2017). In the following sections of the ­chapter, parts two and three explore contemporary Japanese migration using data collected since the 1990s, from migration studies and public statistics data. Part three specifically explains the data collection method, which covers the period 1996–2018. Part four elucidates the motivations and experiences of migrants through their narratives. Part five discusses changes among Japanese migrants to China since the 2000s. 2

Describing Contemporary Migration in Japan

2.1 The Gender Perspective Since the 1990s, the number of Japanese migrants has rapidly increased, including the proportion of Japanese women migrating to regions such as ­Oceania and Europe. Migration studies have revealed that gender plays a critical role in global migration. Morokvaśic (1984) observed that it has had a powerful impact on ­sending and receiving countries. Following this publication, research focusing on women in relation to migration, for example family reunification, care w ­ orkers’ experiences, and international marriages, began to increase. Other scholars highlighted women’s participation in global industries as highly skilled professionals. Nonetheless, studies on migration have tended to highlight vulnerable groups of female migrants. Mainstream studies on migration have gradually developed an interest in women’s movements across national borders. Castles and Miller (1993)

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reported that the “feminization of international migration” was an important characteristic of modern migration. In contrast, Kofman (1999) argued that studies on migration have paid less attention to the importance of women, pointing out that they have been overlooked because their activities differ from those of men. For example, women accompanied by family members may ­experience difficulties in working in formal sectors because their visa status restricts employment. To compensate, they work in underpaid and informal sectors, such as domestic help. Recently, women migrants have begun playing a critical role in care industries due to the severe labor shortage in other sectors. In Europe, the experiences of women migrants increasingly differ from those of men and have become increasingly diversified. Although Japanese women comprise more than half of Japanese expatriates since 1999 (Figure 5.1), three key reasons underlie the undervaluation of their roles in migration. Firstly, they are perceived as wives accompanying breadwinner husbands on overseas assignments. Kurotani (2005) conducted a study on corporate Japanese wives accompanying their husbands in the United States. The author argued that although these women were unable to obtain paid jobs due to their visa status, they played an important role as homemakers, maintaining comfortable homes and supporting corporate communities. Hamano (2019) argues that marriage migrants to Australia also constitute family-related migration experiences. Secondly, women have left Japan and entered western countries independently as students, working holidaymakers (­Nagatomo, 2014), and young artists (Fujita, 2009). Generally their motivation for leaving has stemmed from personal expectations of a better lifestyle than they could obtain in Japan. Thirdly, women have left to explore the possibility of a ­successful career. Despite the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law for Men and Women, many women remain in subordinate positions in ­Japanese companies. To cope with this law, large companies classified employees into two groups, administrative and clerical. Most administrative workers are male; relatively low numbers of women have been employed as administrative staff in Japanese companies. Most are employed as clerical staff, which limits their opportunities for career advancement. Thus discrimination on the grounds of gender was maintained through differences in corporate ranks and roles. For young women with high aspirations for their career, emigrating emerged as an option. In sum, women have left Japan for more diverse reasons than those posed by men, and classifying their experiences in a single category is difficult. Consequently, their migration experiences have been considered marginal and have been discussed less frequently.

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2.2 Transnationalism and “Lifestyle Migration” Scholars have used the concept of lifestyle migration to describe relatively affluent and privileged migrants (O’Reilly and Benson, 2009; Benson and O’Reilly, 2016). Such migrants are less economically driven. Instead, they intend to experience a better and more comfortable lifestyle away from their native countries of origin. Scholars in Japan have conducted studies and discussed contemporary migration from Japan from the perspective of lifestyle migration due to an increase in individuals without direct connections to Japanese companies moving across borders. Sato (1993) conducted a study in the 1980s demonstrating that Japanese residents in Australia did not consider themselves to be migrants. The author coined the term emotional migration to describe these residents. Eventually, this was translated into lifestyle migrants, in contrast to economic migrants (Sato, 2001). This was one of the earliest examples of Japanese migrants ­distancing themselves from Japanese expatriate communities. About a decade later, Nagatomo (2014) conducted interviews with Japanese migrants in ­Australia and discovered that their motivations for leaving Japan had changed during the 1990s. With the exception of assigned workers from ­Japanese companies and their families, Japanese residents in Australia during the 1980s were mainly wealthy professionals and retirees who could afford to live abroad. However, as the Japanese economy declined in the early 1990s, working conditions in Japan worsened. This revealed economic disparities, despite perceptions of Japan as an equal and homogenous country. Japanese workers, especially those from younger generations, started to believe they would be unable to achieve happy lives even if they worked as hard as their predecessors. These non-elite migrants who struggled to land secure jobs in Japan are distinguished from elite expatriates such as professionals and assigned managers from Japanese companies. For instance, young holidaymakers and students who moved from Japan to Australia mentioned that they expected to have a better life in Australia (Fujioka, 2017). They admired Australians for their daily lives, their enjoyment of hobbies and outdoor activities after work. But if these migrants wanted the same lifestyle, they eventually learned that imagination differs from reality (Nagatomo, 2014). Studies on lifestyle migration have extended to other regions, especially Southeast Asia. Yamashita (1999) and Yoshihara et al. (2016) have reported on Japanese women and older retirees in Bali, Indonesia. They observe that the majority of migrants from Japan are women who traveled to Bali as tourists and eventually preferred its environment, nature, and lifestyle. These women married local men and opened businesses, mainly in the tourism industry.

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From a Japanese perspective, lifestyle migration seems specifically like a gendered notion. Women moved abroad by themselves, whereas men were expected to work in Japan until they were given the chance to be transferred to overseas locations. Previous studies reported that Japanese migrants tend to think that they left Japan for reasons other than economic (Sato, 2001; Fujita, 2009; Nagatomo, 2014). Kelsey (2000) cited a long-standing admiration for the West, observable among Japanese women since the opening of Japan to the West in the nineteenth century, and expressed through an enthusiasm for ­living in foreign countries. However, is there a clear distinction between economic and non-economic motivations? Benson and O’Reilly (2016) propose that lifestyle migration is an analytical concept through which migration can be seen from different ­perspectives. Specifically, lifestyle migration should not be considered as homogenous; it may involve economic vulnerability. In short, the authors assert that lifestyle migration is an identity-claiming process. Thus, the present chapter distinguishes between migrants’ narratives about their motivations for migrating, and the social structures that served as the impetus for their decision. This chapter aims to describe their perception of a better lifestyle through their experience of migration, instead of differentiating lifestyle migrants from economically driven migrants. The argument is related to the transnational characteristics of contemporary migration. Transportation and telecommunication technologies enable migrants to alternate between their country of origin and abroad. Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt (1999) argue that the demand for migrant labor is increasing in transnational and post-national societies, along with newly developed information and transportation technologies. Thus, even lifestyle migrants who are forced to work in low-paying service sectors with minimal chances of career advancement in the host community can make use of the difference in the value of money in their homeland. As such, lifestyle migration is another example of transnational living, migrants earn their living in their homeland and consume it abroad. The separation of the place where a person earns a living separated from the place of consumption reposition the individuals, both in the social and economic order, but not always according to their aspirations. However, the style of living can change over time. Migrants use digital tools, such as social networking services, to connect frequently with friends and relatives in Japan. Moreover, technologies enable people to live in multiple places simultaneously. For example, several migrants use savings from their homeland to meet their needs in the host country in cases where the working conditions of the host country cannot fully support them. Furthermore, individuals who initially left Japan to study or work consequently could marry and change their

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plans. Other could be employed or start their business after years of staying in the host country. These examples demonstrate that the migration process has become increasingly complicated, which warrants an analysis of subjective experiences in the context of social structures, such as immigration laws, economic relations, and gender divisions, of the sending and receiving countries. 3 Methods This study investigated Japanese residents in Hong Kong and Shanghai between 1996 and 2020. Initially, research was conducted in Hong Kong in 1996, where young Japanese women who had moved there to work were interviewed. As the research progressed, I also met a few independent male migrants. I stayed in Hong Kong in March, and for two weeks in September, to interview forty-five individuals. I returned in March 1998, and in January 2003, to meet both past interviewees and newcomers. Subsequently, I met Japanese residents in Shanghai in 2004, because many personnel companies promoting the Japanese job-seeking boom transferred their offices to Shanghai. Overall, I visited Hong Kong and Shanghai in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2017, and 2018, and interviewed in total 119 participants (seventy-nine women and forty men) In addition, I conducted online interviews in 2020 with three former interviewees, two women and one man (Table 5.1). Table 5.1  The number of informants in each research year

Year

Hong Kong

(male)

1996 1998 2003 2004 2009 2011 2012 2014 2017 2018 2020

45 26 6

17 9 3

2

1

3 1

1 1

2 85

1 33

Shanghai

(male)

5 10 6 7

2 5 0 0

8 1 37

1 0 8

Total

(male)

45 26 6 5 10 8 7 3 1 8 3 122

17 9 3 2 5 1 0 1 1 1 1 41

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Before going to Hong Kong in 1996 I collected media reports, and observed a seminar for job seekers in Tokyo. There was a substantial discourse on the job-seeking boom in Asia, and the coverage informed potential job seekers about the details of recruitment for Japanese individuals in Asia. Many interviewees said they became interested in working in Hong Kong because they had seen related adverts in Japan. Many of the media reports were in fact adverts for personnel agencies. They aimed at reaching more applicants for Japanese companies in Asia, and they contained stereotypical stories. These adverts played a critical role in helping migrants identify themselves as part of a phenomenon. Interviews were audio-recorded, and the majority were transcribed for analysis. I examined how individuals discussed their own experiences, as well as those of other residents from Japan. I then analyzed the relationship between media coverage and the narratives of Japanese residents collected through research. 4

The Increase in Japanese Migration to China Since the 1990s

4.1 The Social Structure of the Job-Seeking Boom in Hong Kong In the job-seeking boom of the early 1990s, personnel companies initially recruited Japanese employees to mainly Japanese companies in Hong Kong and other Asian cities. Newspapers and TV programs advertised the boom, while seminars provided information on applying for visas, finding a job, and living a lifestyle similar to the locals. In the mid-1980s Japanese companies had begun a more focused movement to increase both production and their presence in overseas markets, along with the increase in the value of the Japanese yen. One of the countries for relocation was China. At the time, Hong Kong was the financial center for globalized Japanese companies. Hong Kong had been a British colony since the ­nineteenth century, and was one of the most influential business and financial centers in Asia, and many Japanese companies established offices there. During the 1990s Japanese companies experienced difficulties in managing businesses in China, but as China opened up to foreign corporations in the 2000s, the center of international business shifted to Shanghai. Asian countries, especially China, have attracted Japanese companies as well as Japanese individuals, and the experiences of Japanese expatriates in China tend to be related to investment-led business communities. However, Japanese individuals living overseas are diverse and can be broadly classified into three categories, namely, assigned expatriates from global companies,

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Figure 5.1 Survey on the number of overseas residents by gender from 1992 to 2019 Annual Report of Statistics on Japanese Nationals Overseas, (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

accompanying family members of expatriates, and independent migrants. In contrast to the first two groups, members of the third leave Japan with various objectives, such as studying, taking working holidays, and working in overseas companies. In Hong Kong the majority of independent migrants were employed in Japanese-connected companies, compared with those in Oceania and Europe, where most were students and working holidaymakers. Typically, Japanese companies assigned employees to an overseas branch and granted special allowances for working abroad, in addition to a regular salary. To save on labor costs and meet consumer demands, especially in the service industries where the main customers were Japanese, these companies were required to employ Japanese workers using local contracts. They needed to hire as many Japanese employees as possible but they had to consider immigration regulations. In Hong Kong, newly launched Japanese companies interacted with local businesses, but struggled to localize themselves, often preferring to maintain the management style to which they were accustomed in Japan (Imada and Sonoda, 1995). Personnel companies opened offices to assist in hiring local workers with Japanese skills. Several companies opted to hire permanent residents in ­countries with severe immigration control. However, many companies began hiring Japanese employees under local contracts, with the help of the personnel companies and the generous policies for foreign-affiliated companies in Hong Kong. Women were more likely to be hired as local employees, because Japanese companies tended to assign men to overseas branches. As noted

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previously, women who intended to work abroad had to find a job outside Japan independently. During the 1990s, personnel companies noticed the high demand for Japanese employees in Japanese business communities, and held seminars to find applicants to work in Hong Kong as local employees. I interviewed the then-general manager of the Hong Kong branch of one of the largest personnel companies in 1996, who stated that the aim of the seminar was to provide information on the lifestyle in Hong Kong, and on the relatively lower income and fewer benefits available compared with assigned managers from Japan. He mentioned a newspaper report on his company’s seminar; in the early 1990s, weekly magazines featured migration-related narratives of young women, using images to depict them as unprejudiced and brave. Major Japanese companies simultaneously tightened their policies for new employment after the end of the bubble economy in the early 1990s. Female university graduates in particular encountered difficulties in finding employment. By about 1995, the media was reporting that young women were rushing to Hong Kong and other Asian cities, where they received treatment equal to that of men. Their decision to move to Hong Kong was explained as economic motivation, and they were portrayed as victims of the economic depression. However, these media reports did not always agree with the findings of the research I conducted in Hong Kong from 1996 to 1998. The research results indicated that the majority of the interviewees who moved to Hong Kong independently and who were working on local contracts, or as entrepreneurs of small companies, were women aged between 25–39. Moreover, many of the interviewees, except for two, were working as regular employees for relatively stable and large Japanese companies. New graduates from universities were uncommon in my investigation, because work experience was usually required when applying for a visa in Hong Kong. Several interviewees asserted that they were satisfied with their salary and benefits while working in Japan. An exception was Mutsumi, a temporary clerical worker, who disclosed that she was anxious about the future because her full-time colleagues did not understand her precarious situation. Nevertheless, most of the interviewees arrived in Hong Kong before the bubble burst. Consequently, they were optimistic about finding a job despite having plans to return to Japan in the near future. One-third of the interviewees mentioned that Hong Kong was not their priority place of residence. Fifteen interviewees had previously lived in English-speaking countries, such as Canada, United-Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, studying for one to three years before coming to Hong Kong. Their reasons for wanting to remain in their place of study were similar to reasons reported by lifestyle migrants, such as the beauty of nature and the balanced lifestyle. Student visas and working holiday visas were relatively

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easy to obtain. Asuka, who studied English in Canada, had intended to stay in ­Canada for longer. However, she returned to Japan because obtaining a longterm working permit was difficult. She wanted to earn her living independently and spend less money on education, so found a job in Hong Kong. Although the majority of independent migrants were women, several male migrants also worked under local contracts in Hong Kong. Local female employees expressed anxiety regarding their future in Japan, because their career paths were unclear, whereas male employees mainly said that they foresaw a fixed clear future. Yusuke, a male information technology (IT) engineer, said that when he first entered the office in Japan, he envisioned a clear image of his entire working life. The office housed a chief of a department at the back of the room, section managers, group leaders, and young employees. However, he was unable to endure the monotony and resigned after a year. Noriyuki, a colleague of Yusuke, had considered his life fixed in Japan when he bought a house; he thought he had to continue working to pay his mortgage. ­Notably, there is a clear difference between genders: female interviewees expressed anxiety about an uncertain future, whereas male interviewees were convinced their future was determined. Compared to the narratives of lifestyle migration in Australia (Nagatomo, 2014), Japanese individuals living in Hong Kong were uninterested in Hong Kong itself, which was a popular tourist destination at the time. Although ­several interviewees mentioned a frequent repeat visit to Hong Kong before their decision to move, two-thirds of the interviewees traveled to Hong Kong for the first time to attend a job interview. Because Hong Kong was considered a second option, media coverage of the job-seeking boom was a primary source of important information. Asuka, who was in her late twenties and working in a small personnel company, revealed that she applied for a position she found in an English-speaking newspaper before coming to Hong Kong. However, she failed to get this job and was offered another job. She said she fortunately noticed some reports on the boom and the increasing number of Japanese women moving to Hong Kong. Moreover, she cited the importance of job offers for English-speaking Japanese individuals. 4.2 Comfortable Lifestyles and Financial Dissatisfaction Labor market tensions and gender divisions in the workplace were not the only reasons why interviewees left Japan for Hong Kong. Most of the interviewees explained that their motivation in moving to Hong Kong was the aim of achieving a happier lifestyle, not increasing their salary. Nevertheless, the majority reported that their salary had fallen. Others admitted to using s­ avings from previous job salaries to subsist. They shared similar characteristics with

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people who intend to consume their earnings before moving out of their homeland by lifestyle. Several female interviewees said they left Japan due to differences in ­women’s employment conditions compared with those for male colleagues and managers in Japan. These women expected to receive equal and respectful treatment in Hong Kong. Minako, an entrepreneur of a small trading company, said that Hong Kong favored fair competition without gender or age discrimination. However, the majority were employed in the overseas branches of Japanese companies, where assigned employees from Japanese headquarters received salaries higher than those of local employees. Additionally, although assigned employees could move to a branch in another city or return to the headquarters in Japan, local employees were required to quit their position if they wanted to move to other positions in other branches. Assigned employees were responsible for managing the company, but typically remained in a country for a few years only before transferring to another country to advance their career. Occasionally, assigned employees would refrain from informing colleagues that they had learned Cantonese or M ­ andarin in order to avoid remaining in the post longer. Therefore, local employees tended to spend more time in their jobs and gained more experience than their assigned superiors. Although the local employees contributed similarly, their salaries and compensation lagged behind those of assigned managers. These differences between assigned and local employees led to conflicts. Chikako, a local employee at a bank, expressed disappointment with the attitude of her male superior, because he tended to treat her like a young girl. She also complained that her tasks differed from those described in the job interview., Nevertheless, other local employees accepted such differences between them and the assigned employees due to their decision to move to Hong Kong. However, interviewees were dissatisfied with their salaries and contracts, due to the expense of living in Hong Kong. The cost of renting an apartment was so high that daily outgoings had to be reduced. Several interviewees mentioned that they took a pragmatic approach to their job, for example not working overtime even if assigned employees stayed late. However, their salaries increased slightly over years of working, and once they became accustomed to living in Hong Kong they found cheaper but comfortable apartments, and were proud of earning a living by themselves. As noted, Japanese companies tend to assign men to overseas branches. Thus, differences in contracts corresponded to gender divisions. Rumiko, who lived in the United States as a child, worked in the international section of a stock brokerage firm when she was first employed in Japan. She was never assigned to an overseas branch, but said she frequently saw male colleagues -

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being sent out. Recognizing that women were expected to be assistants in Japanese companies, Rumiko decided to go abroad by herself, which was apparently the only option, because obtaining a secure and promising job in Japan was and remains difficult for women. In Japanese companies, women were expected to support male colleagues by providing photocopies and serving tea. Further, they were required to quit their job on marriage or childbirth. Other interviewees, including several male independent migrants, noted that Japanese companies tend to assign tasks according to age. Ichiro, an employee at a trading company and a recent graduate of a New York university, noted that Japanese companies did not employ talented and motivated entry-level employees efficiently. Another male interviewee said he was able to learn on the job in Hong Kong. Orie, a fashion designer in her twenties, said she had broadened her experience in Hong Kong compared with friends who worked in the same industry in Japan. Overall, interviewees explained their motivation as a choice related to ­lifestyle and values. The independent migrants, mainly women, reported that they left Japan because they could not enjoy the life they hoped to lead there. They had become weary of unequal treatment; most had not expected ­promotion in Japan but had assumed responsibilities based on gender. Female interviewees also enjoyed living as foreigners who were not obliged to be involved in close relationships with local communities. In Japan, they felt substantial pressure to lead a lifestyle that followed the status quo, in that they be married before the age of thirty (before “it was too late” or they were considered old and unattractive), raise a baby, and live for the family. In Hong Kong, they were considered differently because they were newly arrived residents, and they were less worried about deviating from the norm. Many interviewees expressed empathy with the instability at the time in Hong Kong in the 1990s. Hitomi, who was working part-time while studying Cantonese, said she had been anxious in Japan due to indecision about the future and the apparently fixed roles of individuals in their community. In Hong Kong she experienced relief, because she believed other people were also anxious about their roles in the future. 5

Changing Attitudes of Japanese Residents in China and Hong Kong

5.1  The Decline of Japanese Economic Progress and Rapid Economic Growth in China In 1999, I stayed in Beijing for a month and found that living conditions differed from those in Japan and Hong Kong. In Beijing, foreigners were not permitted to rent an apartment in the same way as local citizens. The local -

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government had only begun to loosen regulations for foreign corporations to open ­businesses, and the city’s infrastructure lagged behind those of Hong Kong and Tokyo. The tendency of Japanese people to move to Asian cities continued through the 2000s. However, the details of Japanese migration have changed due to changes in economic relations. In 1998, the Asian financial crisis hit Hong Kong, where many Japanese companies, especially financial firms, declared bankruptcy or closed branches. During my research in 1998, I talked with Ryoko, a local employee of a Japanese personnel company in Hong Kong. She had recently returned from a business trip to Shanghai to prepare for the opening of a new branch. In other words, the center of the Asian economy had begun to move to mainland China. In comparison to the decline of the Japanese economy, China has experienced rapid development during the twenty-first century. Japan has depended heavily on China, and many Japanese companies have established branches in large cities, including Shanghai and other coastal locations. Accordingly, the number of Japanese companies and their employees have increased rapidly. By 2010, the number of Japanese residents in Shanghai reached more than 70,000, three times more than the number in Hong Kong. After moving to Hong Kong in the 1990s, voluntary Japanese migrants favored Hong Kong’s urban lifestyle for its convenience and the freedom to go anywhere at any time in an efficient manner. Nevertheless, interviewees frequently mentioned what they perceived as Hong Kong’s faults: the side streets were filthy, and clerks lacked good manners. Nearly all interviewees, including those discontented with working in Japan, said Japan was superior to Hong Kong in these respects. They also mentioned that Hong Kong locals admired Japan, which increased the comfort of their lives in Hong Kong. China’s rapid economic growth changed the perceptions of Japanese residents living in China during the 2010s. These interviewees admitted that big Chinese cities like Shanghai had changed substantially in contrast with the economic stagnation of Japan. In the 2010s, the majority of interviewees admired new technologies in Chinese society, such as electronic payment systems, bike-sharing, and food delivery systems. In 2009, I met Kenji, a local employee in Shanghai, who said his friend in Japan failed to understand his decision to move to China, because Japanese people mainly received their information from the Japanese media, which displayed negative attitudes towards China. The prolonged depression in Japan changed attitudes toward migration. Individuals who moved to Shanghai in the 2000s were younger than the interviewees of the 1990s. They suffered considerable losses after the bubble economy burst in the early 1990s. By the mid-1990s, Japanese companies had

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decreased their number of employees. Interviewees aged 20–39 in the 2000s experienced difficulties in finding employment. Those in work found themselves overworked until they were injured, or until their health was compromised. Aya, an employee at a personnel company in her twenties, revealed that she had to consider working even on holidays, and that she was unable to rest sufficiently. After becoming ill from overwork, she went to China to study Chinese. She had initially studied Chinese at a Japanese university, and had a good impression of studying in China. As Oishi and Hamada (2019) indicated in their research in Australia in the 2010s, some interviewees insisted that it seemed risky for them to continue living and working in Japan. I met Akira in 2014 in Hong Kong. He resigned as an IT engineer in 2007 to earn a master’s in business administration (MBA) degree in Hong Kong. He opted for a career change to avoid being tied to Japan. After graduating, he worked in a Japanese company in Hong Kong, then shifted to an American company. He was satisfied with the performance-based assessment in Hong Kong. Arisa, a friend of Akira who also gained an MBA, expressed anxiety about continuing to live in Japan because she witnessed the struggles of the manufacturing industry in her hometown after the Lehman financial crash of 2008. Arisa believed that similar events might occur again in Japan in the near future. 5.2 Language, Visa Status and a Sense of Belonging One difference between voluntary migrants in the 1990s and the 2000s was ­language acquisition. In Shanghai, the majority of interviewees studied ­Chinese in Beijing or Shanghai for one to two years, compared with ­Japanese individuals in Hong Kong who could not speak Cantonese or Mandarin. Despite differences in their levels of proficiency, they had a certain level of interest in Chinese culture and society. English was the standard business language in Hong Kong in the 1990s before the 1997 handover to China, and Japanese workers rarely felt the need to use Cantonese or Mandarin. In the 2000s, I interviewed local employees in Shanghai and found that Chinese language skills were common among them. One reason for learning Chinese was to meet the visa requirements for entering and living in China. Japanese nationals can stay for three months in Hong Kong without applying for a visa. However, before 2004, a visa was a necessity for living in China. For this reason, many interviewees took language courses at universities before finding employment. Their attendance varied from several months to two years to achieve proficiency. In China, voluntary migrants spoke Chinese to varying degrees, but most interviewees worked in Japanese companies and so often used Japanese.

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Another difference between migrants in Hong Kong and Shanghai was the status of foreigners. Obtaining a working visa is relatively easy for both cities. Foreigners in Hong Kong can obtain permanent residency after years of residence and paying taxes. China also establishes a permanent resident (or green card) system, but only a few are eligible. I interviewed Midori in 2012. She had lived in Shanghai for more than ten years and had married a Chinese citizen. She applied for a permanent residency visa to enable negotiations with her employer. In contrast, another interviewee, Kimiko, who had been in China for ten years and had also married a Chinese national, gave up applying for permanent residency because her husband did not originate from Shanghai. She was required to apply for a visa in his registered region, where foreigners were uncommon. In my study, only two interviewees obtained permanent residency status. In contrast to Shanghai, Hong Kong has a more approachable system for foreigners. Foreign nationals can apply for permanent residency after more than seven years of residence, and interviewees who had lived in Hong Kong for several years mentioned permanent residency as a goal. After obtaining permanent residency, individuals are allowed to retain it even after quitting their jobs. Daisuke has been an entrepreneur since 1995, but closed his company during the late 2000s after being granted permanent residency. After leaving from there for another destination, he returned to Hong Kong a few years later. Obtaining permanent residency did not indicate that interviewees had ­chosen China as their permanent homeland. For those who married C ­ hinese partners, marriage did not necessarily determine the place of residence. ­Kimiko married a Chinese national and worked in a Chinese company. She is fluent in Chinese. Because she continued working after marriage, she hired a Chinese babysitter, and consequently her younger daughter can also speak fluent Chinese. Nonetheless Kimiko preferred a Japanese elementary school for her children. When their husbands disapproved of their children receiving a Japanese education, the Japanese women maintained their children’s Japanese language skills by enrolling them in Japanese cram schools, or by sending them to Japanese schools during the summer holidays in China. In my research, only three men married local women in Hong Kong. However, gender differences persist. When Japanese women married Chinese men, they tended to prioritize their husbands’ careers. In contrast, Japanese men who married Chinese women from Hong Kong are still free to move from place or job as much as willing. Akira married a Chinese woman, prefers to work in Hong Kong, and wants to raise his son in Hong Kong, because he considers the education better. He added that he could return to Japan any time. This self-­ confidence was characteristic of male voluntary migrants. Women remained

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unsure whether they could land a job if they went back to Japan. Aya had lived in Shanghai for more than ten years and had been looking for employment in Japan for a long time, but was unable to find a ­satisfying job. She found a position at an international office of the university from which she graduated, but it offered restricted terms and no guarantees for the future. She became aware that her career in China lacked recognition. The Japanese community remains important for Japanese residents in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Young people, whether assigned or voluntary migrants, were not typically active members of Japanese clubs, which tend to be organized with a focus on the Japanese embassy and large companies. However, they enjoyed participating in groups such as the alumni associations of their universities, sports clubs, music bands, and other hobby circles. Masaki, whom I interviewed in 2018, was working on a local community paper in ­Shanghai. He was a member of an association of people from the same prefecture (­kenjinkai), and a circle of history lovers. He had gained more Japanese friends than he expected before moving to Shanghai, although he had previously held a negative impression of Japanese individuals who moved abroad and socialized with other Japanese people. He originally intended to gain more ­Chinese friends than Japanese friends, but after living in Shanghai he realized he enjoyed having Japanese friends due to their similar experiences. He said that being assigned employees was not an issue in terms of his friends. 5.3 Marginal Members of the Community The research demonstrates that Japanese residents in Hong Kong and ­Shanghai found a position on the boundaries between Japan and the places where they lived. Moreover, they worked in Japanese-connected business communities, and used the Japanese language and customs. However, they considered themselves to be different from the core Japanese expatriate community, which was made up of assigned male managers and their families. In particular, contact with the locals became increasingly important for individuals who married local partners and who used local languages as tools for working and living. As discussed, they tended to use the local language more. Typically, the interviewees felt comfortable living in Hong Kong and ­Shanghai. The reason for this was that the people in these cities had good impressions of Japan and the Japanese people. Indeed, the dynamic relationship between their country of origin and place of residence exerts a large influence on foreign residents. Yet, among Asian countries, Japan has a long history of military invasion and colonization before 1945. Hong Kong in particular was invaded by the Japanese army in 1941 and occupied from 1941–1945, a harsh period which destroyed the local economy. Compared with China, Hong Kong

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remained a British colony until 1997. The Hong Kong government has not protested noticeably against the Japanese government, although civilian protests occur occasionally, demanding compensation for the Japanese occupation. Finally, in the 1990s, Japan sought reconciliation with Asian countries, especially South Korea and China, and the prime minister and other politicians issued formal apologies on behalf of Japan. Recently, Hong Kong citizens have become increasingly dissatisfied with the Chinese government, which have given to Japanese people an opportunity to move on from this colonial memory. Nevertheless, China and South Korea have clearly protested against the denial of Japanese militarism. In the 2010s, the Chinese and Japanese governments engaged in a serious conflict over small islands (i.e., the Diaoyu Islands in China and the Senkaku Islands in Japan). Large demonstrations were held against Japanese embassies and major companies in Shanghai and other Chinese cities. Many ­Japanese companies in Beijing and Shanghai were attacked. The media in Japan reported that the Chinese demonstrators destroyed Japanese supermarkets. Tensions between the two countries had increased, with the populations of each country displaying antipathy toward each other. I conducted research in September 2012, when territorial concerns became severe. September 18 was the Memorial Day commemorating the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Historical footage of the Japanese army invading China was repeatedly broadcast to enable audiences to recognize the resemblance. The interviewees became concerned that speaking Japanese in public might lead to undesirable consequences. As a result, a few proposed changes in the meeting places and dates for the interviews. Fortunately, no serious incidents were reported in Shanghai, although the Japanese media reported terrible attacks on a daily basis. The interviewees expressed their perception of a gap between them and their family and friends in Japan. Through this conflict, several interviewees realized that a divide existed between expatriates and independent migrants. Firstly, large Japanese companies distinguished between assigned expatriates and local employees. In the 2012 conflict between Japan and China, assigned managers avoided hostility from Chinese society and decided to protect their community and its members. Asako had been a local employee at a Japanese bank in Shanghai since the early 2000s. When conflict arose between Japanese companies and local residents, her company decided that assigned workers should be picked up and dropped off, instead of commuting to work. However, she was unable to use the service because she was employed as a local employee. She argued that the decision was unfair, because potential attackers would be unable to distinguish her from assigned Japanese workers. She was extremely disappointed

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by the distinction made. Subsequently, her Chinese superior drove her home on condition that the company charter a bus. This episode illustrates how the Japanese corporate community was comprised of expatriate male managers who shared a sense of belonging with Japan, but who failed to include local contract workers even when they were Japanese nationals. Consequently, Asako realized that she was not a regular member of the Japanese corporate system. Secondly, the interviewees realized that their understanding of, and feelings towards, Shanghai differed from those of people living in Japan. The interviewees lived, worked, and engaged in social interactions in Shanghai for the present, although their future plans were varied. 6 Discussions In summary, I present three points for discussion. Firstly, Japanese individuals move abroad because they expect better economic opportunities and enhanced lifestyles in the host country compared with conditions in their native country. Notably, these two factors, economic and lifestyle opportunities, are not contradictory. The majority of voluntary migrants from Japan are women, because the gender division of labor in Japan makes the search for satisfying and rewarding jobs difficult for women. Consequently, Japanese women venture overseas. Secondly, the constituency of the Japanese community overseas is more diverse than previously, while the gender perspective makes it clear that the stereotypes of Japanese expatriates are not universally applicable. The experiences of Japanese migrants vary with gender, age, contract type, and future prospects. Women and young employees tend to go abroad independently and choose destinations taking into account their chances of obtaining a proper visa and decent employment. Japanese women’s flexibility gives them greater freedom to venture abroad. However, large companies take advantage of their relatively low wages and instability. In addition, women tend to change their plans in line with life events. Thirdly, the experiences and narratives of these groups reveal aspects of the post-war relationship between Japan and China. In Hong Kong, many interviewees reported that Hong Kong society was pro-Japanese, despite Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945. Additionally, expatriates in Japanese business-oriented communities did not connect their current lives to the colonized past. Instead, they reported that Japan was the most progressive nation in Asia. In contrast, Japanese individuals living in Shanghai referred to an “anti-Japanese policy” in China, and warned that the policy could harm

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relations between the two countries. This situation was especially acute in 2012, when Chinese citizens demonstrated against the Japanese government’s decision to nationalize disputed islands. Many interviewees expressed disappointment in the Japanese government’s actions, and in the demonstrations against Japanese companies. Several residents of Japanese communities in China even published a book highlighting their reasons for living and working in China, and the relationships of trust they had established with Chinese ­citizens (108 Japanese Citizens Living in China Project, 2013). International relations are typically discussed by and between g­ overnments. However, societies should attach great importance to the experiences of individuals who cross national borders. Japanese society, which is considered homogeneous and aloof from other countries, has recently e­ xperienced extensive global migration, especially within the Asia-Pacific region. Through the ­stories and experiences of migration among these countries, global and regional realities can be understood. Furthermore, from the late twentieth century migrants have crossed national borders more frequently and with increased flexibility. The interviews reveal that the rate of women migrating increased substantially, because their sense of belonging to Japanese society was weaker than that of men. Thus I infer that women responded to their ­marginality by living in expatriate Japanese business communities. References 108 Japanese Citizens Living in China Project. 2013. The reasons why we live in China (in Japanese). Tokio: CCC Media House. Aoyama, Reijirou. 2017. Japanese artisans overseas: Asian countries welcome Japanese good services (in Japanese). Tokyo: Chikuma Publishing. Ben-Ari, Eyal. 2003. “The Japanese in Singapore: The dynamics of an expatriate community”. In Global Japan. The Experience of Japan’s New Immigrant and Overseas Communities, ed. R. Goodman, C. Peach, A. Takenaka, and P. White, 128–142. New York: Routledge. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2009. “Migration and the search for a better way of life: A critical exploration of lifestyle migration”. The Sociological Review 57(4): 608–625. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2016. “From lifestyle migration to lifestyle in migration: Categories, concepts and ways of thinking”. Migration Studies 4(1): 20–37. Fujioka, Nobuaki. 2017. Young non-elites and the globalization of the employment-labor system: Ethnography on Japanese working holidaymakers in Australia (in Japanese). Tokyo: Fukumura Publishing.

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Fujita, Yuiko. 2009. Cultural migrants from Japan: Youth, media, and migration in New York and London. Lanham: Lexington Books. Goodman, Roger, Peach, Ceri, and Takenaka, Ayumi. 2003. Global Japan: The experience of Japan’s new immigrant and overseas communities. New York: Routledge. de Haas, Hein, Miller, Mark. J., and Castles, Stephen. 2020. The age of migration: ­International population movements in the modern world. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hamano, Takeshi. 2019. Marriage migrants of Japanese women in Australia: Remoulding gendered selves in suburban community. Singapore: Springer. Imada, Takatoshi, and Shigeto, Sonoda. 1995. The gaze from Asia: Japan from the ­viewpoints of 10 thousand employees working in Japanese affiliated companies (in Japanese). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Kato, Etsuko. 2013. “Self-searching migrants: youth and adulthood, work and ­holiday in the lives of Japanese temporary residents in Canada and Australia”. Asian a­ nthropology 12(1): 20–34. Kofman, Eleonore. 1999. “Female ‘birds of passage’ a decade later: Gender and immigration in the European Union”. The International Migration Review 33(2): 269–299. Kunz, Sarah. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration Scholarship”. Geography Compass 10(3): 89–101. Kurotani, Sara. 2005. Home away from home: Japanese corporate wives in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press. Morokvaśic, Mirjana. 1984. “Birds of passage are also women”. The International M ­ igration Review 18(4): 886–907. Nagatomo, Jun. 2014. Migration as transnational leisure: The Japanese lifestyle migrants in Australia. Boston/Leiden: Brill. O’Reilly, Karen, and Benson, Michaela 2009. “Lifestyle migration: escaping to the good life?”. In Lifestyle Migration. Expectations, aspirations and experiences ed. M. Benson, and K. O’Reilly, 11–24. Farnham: Ashgate. Oishi, Nana, and Hamada, Iori. 2019. “Silent Exits: Risk and Post-3.11 Skilled Migration from Japan to Australia”. Social Science Japan Journal 22(1): 109–125. Portes, Alejandro, Guarnizo, Luis E., and Landolt, Patricia. 1999. “The study of ­transnationalism: Pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2): 217–237. Sato, Machiko. 2001. Farewell to Nippon: Japanese lifestyle migrants in Australia. ­Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Translation from the Japanese edition published in 1993 from Tokyo: Shincho-sha. Thang, Leng Leng, MacLachlan, Elizabeth, and Goda, Miho. 2002. “Expatriates on the margins – a study of Japanese women working in Singapore”. Geoforum 33(4): 539–551. Thang, Leng Leng, MacLachlan, Elizabeth, and Goda, Miho. 2006. Japanese women working in Singapore. Singapore: McGraw-Hill.

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White, Merry E. 1988. The Japanese overseas: Can they go home again? Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Yamashita, Shinji. 1999. Bali: Lessons of the anthropology of tourism (in Japanese). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Yoshihara, Naoki., et al. 2016. Japanese community overseas and the media network: J­ apanese community in Bali. Tokyo: Toshindo Press.

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PART 3 Beyond the Privilege: The Expatriate as a Symbol of Modernity

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CHAPTER 6

Enjoying the Advantages of Freedom: Multi-Local Practices of US “Pleasant Expats” in Northwest Mexico Omar Lizárraga 1 Introduction Movement from United States to Mexico is a growing phenomenon in the era of globalization. Economic, geographical, and social factors have ­influenced the mobility of people—mostly retired—who seek a location that offers some kind of personal satisfaction on the south side of the national border. Generally, when we think about the concept of the migrant, what come to mind is people who “have to spend a large part of their savings; they have to make long lines of people to apply for a visa that is often denied. Some pay much money to traffickers who help them cross the border. Others swim rivers, climb mountains, jump up and down from moving trains, and walk long distances in desert areas to cross the border in search of a better life. ­Sometimes they have success and sometimes they find death” (Croucher, 2009: 37). When they achieve their dream of being in a highly developed country, they often suffer from xenophobic attitudes and unfair labor conditions. However, another group of people who migrate to developing countries do so without legal difficulties, traveling between their country of origin and their destination smoothly without any kind of legal restriction. They are welcome in their destination thanks to their economic power; they live in the best residential areas, and they enjoy the use of advanced technology. American and European literature on this type of mobility has adopted the term lifestyle migration (Benson y O’Reilly, 2009; Sato, 2001; Stone & Stubbs, 2007). I start from this term to develop our own concept that I have coined in this paper as pleasant expatriation. In the second decade of the twenty-first century this movement to Mexico, comprising mainly US citizens, has been increasing. These expats are characterized by being at an age that allows them to enjoy free time, and to use their economic resources to live outside their homeland in relative comfort (Lizárraga, 2012). Their mobility does not correspond to the classic economic criteria observed in other migrations, namely, economic circumstances or political © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_007 -

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reasons that force people to leave their country of origin. Although the economic factor is significant, they break the stereotype of immigrant because they do not compete for jobs, they are not targets for xenophobia, their displacement is not always permanent, and it is difficult to differentiate it from tourism – hence the limited current conceptualization of the phenomenon in migration studies. According to Almada (2006), migration in general is one of the central forces of the modern world, because it moves the working population of some nations towards the sectors and spaces reserved for the lower classes in relatively wealthy societies. But it also moves mature age groups from wealthy societies to developing economies that offer comparative advantages. These are migrants who seek a better lifestyle: a less stressful pace of life, a tranquil location and scenic beauty. Movement from the United States to Mexico is becoming more significant as we witness the retirement of the baby boom generation.1 This generation gained the benefit of retirement through Social Security since 2011, and a good number of them are enjoying their pensions or savings in Mexican territory. The aim of this chapter is to explain the transnational practices of US pleasant expats in México, as well as to analyze their socioeconomic and demographic profile in three coastal destinations in northwestern Mexico: Mazatlan, Sinaloa; Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, and Puerto Peñasco in Sonora. 2

Lifestyle and Pleasant Expats

The concept of lifestyle migration has developed as a way of thinking about some forms of migration, most often that of the relatively affluent and relatively privileged. As a conceptual framework it focuses specifically on the motivations behind such migrations, broadly described as the search for a better way of life. The term lifestyle is meant to indicate how the apparent ‘free choice’ to pursue a particular way of living through migration identifies these migrations as central to identity-making projects. These particular migrants can approach migration as a form of consumption, in contrast to the productiveness to most other (economic) migration flows (Benson and O’Reilly, 2016). Migrants who are privileged by citizenship, class, or so-called race are now being studied in migration research and theory (Kunz, 2016; Benson, 2014; Lundstrum, 2017; Fechter and Walsh, 2010), all with reference to lifestyle 1 The baby boom generation is relevant because this segment of population, born in the ­postwar period 1946–1964, currently represents two-thirds of the world population; in ­America alone it comprises 76 million citizens (Dailey, 2005).

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migrants from the global north to the south, where racial hierarchies and power inequalities persist. In Latin America, see, for example Hayes (2018, 2020) in Ecuador; Lizárraga (2012) and Croucher (2009) in Mexico; or Benson and O´Reilly (2018) in Panamá. US expats who migrate to Mexico seek a quality of life that is better not just economically, but which also improves negative life circumstances such as loneliness, routine, or limited physical exercise. Participants may be ­seeking  adventure, a new start, or an escape from monotony. The act of migrating has an apparently positive impact on their lives, namely self-realization (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009). Lifestyle in this reading is understood as a motivation, an explanation of why people want to move, and what they expect from their migration. What is clear is that for the relatively affluent migrants who are often the focus of research on lifestyle migration, the possession of assets and resources (for example, financial capital from incomes, pensions, savings, and property ownership), alongside ease of movement resulting from relative ­privilege (for example, the possession of passports from relatively powerful countries) provides opportunities to realize these aspirations (Benson and O’Reilly, 2016). As Americans who migrate to Ecuador (Hayes, 2015: 946), the expats in Mexico have higher incomes and savings than the average local population. They are officially welcomed by municipal and national institutions, and given advantages such as seniors discounts and access to public services that are subsidized by the state. The expats discussed in this chapter are privileged not just because of the asymmetry of power between them and local residents, but because the main reason for their migration does not rest on performing paid work in their destination. Rather, their motivations are recreation, leisure, holidays, medical treatment, or enjoying the beaches, while maintaining an acceptable quality of life; features that characterize tourists visiting a resort for short periods (Wishiteni, Masila and Boniface, 2009). It is a movement that is not forced, but voluntary and bi-directional, that is, they live a constant transnational migration between the two countries, taking advantage of the best of the two regions during the year. This is why it is referred to in this chapter as pleasant. The definition of being expatriated, or an expat, is still academically unclear. Castree, Kitchen and Rogers (2013), in their dictionary of human geography, define it as a person who, temporarily or permanently, lives in a country different from the country in which he/she was born. The term comes from ex (outside of) and patria (one’s native country). There is no established and unchangeable definition. Thus, a person who is seen as an expatriate from the perspective of their own country can be perceived as an immigrant in the host

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country. However, a retiree from a developed economy who lives in a developing country is usually considered to be an expat. Colloquially, mobile professionals are often referred to as expatriates, and many authors on the topic previously cited found that their participants used this terminology to define their migration. Yet academic use of the term is acknowledged to be controversial. While the broad meaning derived from Latin describes a person who lives outside their native country, the majority of contemporary migrants are not typically referred to as expatriates, and the term tends to be reserved for white Western migrants (Fechter and Walsh, 2010). Expats are usually understood to be people who have been sent by their employers to work at a foreign branch of their company for a certain length of time (Van der Knaap, 2017). They expect to leave the location once the purpose of their stay has been achieved. This definition applies only to highly skilled technicians, professionals and managers. Koch-Schulte (2008), however, has used the term expat when referring to retired migrants who engage in permanent or semi-permanent international mobility. For Green (2009), the word expatriation, or loss of citizenship, is sometimes coterminous with emigration, the physical change of domicile, and emigration and legal expatriation are often linked, but it is possible to move without losing one’s citizenship of origin, just as it has been possible to lose one’s citizenship without ever leaving home. The meaning of expatriation also varies depending on who initiates the act, the state or the individual, and whether or not it is voluntary. The state banishes; the subject can choose to leave. But the value given to assignment or consent has changed over time. Whereas exile used to be the first definition of expatriation, the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary2 has explicitly decided to list voluntary departure first and expulsion second, ­evidence of a transformation in the meaning of such a departure. Green (2009: 308) argues that “expatriation has also been largely absent from migration studies. Immigration history, written primarily in the ­countries of arrival, has most often focused on the problematic policies and experiences of entry, acceptance, rejection, and/or settlement of newcomers. Yet ­emigration and expatriation provide reverse mirrors of immigration and are connected to it both in theory and in practice”. In American literature the expatriate has been defined as someone leaving America, whether for love (American women marrying foreign men) or money (naturalized businessmen staying away too long); most recently, dual 2 Oxford University Press, The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 2007.

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nationals have been considered as significative for embodying the new discourse on g­lobalization. The colloquial abbreviation expat seems to have arisen in the British colonial context in the 1960s, and has been frequently used in the United States and elsewhere to mean a new class of citizens abroad. In business circles, expat commonly designates someone sent abroad to represent a multinational firm. International companies offer assistance, advice, and benefits to those they send overseas, and the expat’s status is generally a privileged one, complete with expense accounts and tax adjustments. It could not be further from the idea of loss of citizenship (Green, 2009). 3

Transnationality within Pleasant Expatriation

The economic circumstances of these expats allows them to maintain social and political ties, and to make regular return trips to their places of origin. These multi-local practices are conceptualized in academic discourse as transnational (Basch, Schiller and Blanc, 1994). As I found during fieldwork, many of them do not make return trips to the United States, but live permanently in Mexico. However, they still keep up social, economic, or political ties with their places of origin. This means that even when expats do not migrate personally, they maintain permanent transnational or multi-local practices. These two elements, expatriation and transnationality, are intimately linked. According to Sassen (2007: 31), “The existing theories do not manage to map the multiplicity of practices and actors that today contribute to the reformulation of the scales. Among them is a variety of non-state agencies and cross-­ border forms of cooperation and conflict, such as global business networks, the new cosmopolitanism, NGO s, diasporas and spaces”. The conceptualization of transnationalism in the context of migration began in the early 1990s, when a group of American anthropologists (Basch, Schiller and Blanc, 1994) found that the groups of migrants with whom they were ­conducting studies developed practices that were inadequately explained by conventional theories of migration. They argued that traditional ­theories studied migrants as individuals who left (migrants) or arrived in (immigrants) a nation state. As a critique of this dichotomy, they proposed to study migrants as part of two or more interconnected communities, analyzing the sending and receiving societies as a single transnational space. They define transnationalism as “a process by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of residence” (Basch, Schiller and Blanc, 1994: 1). The resulting analysis constructs a paradigm that rejects the old notion that society and the nation-state are oneself. As a result, basic institutions such as

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the family, citizenship, and the nation must be reviewed (Levitt and Schiller, 2004). Parallel to this process, researchers began to speak of “transnational communities” (Kearney, 1995), “transnational social spaces” (Pries, 2000), and “transnational social fields” (Levitt, 2001). The concept of transnational communities refers to the ways in which migrants can identify with more than one nation-state, and actively participate in the social, economic, political and cultural life of more than one place (Kearney, 1995). Levitt and Schiller (2004) define transnational social spaces as a set of networks people maintain with their communities of origin. Thanks to these networks, individuals share ideas and economic resources. National borders do not necessarily limit this space; the participants connect through ­relationships that cross the border barriers. By transnational social fields, L­ evitt (2001) understands those realities of everyday life that arise in the context of international migration processes, which are geographically and spatially diffuse or “de-territorialized” and that, at the same time, constitute a social space that determines the praxis of everyday life. The transnational social field also reveals a difference between ways of being in social fields, and ways of belonging. Ways of being refers to current relationships and social practices, transformed into organizations and institutions which the individual or the group chooses as part of their identity. The group or individual may be physically in a social field, but not identified with any political or cultural pattern. Ways of belonging refers to practices that have a connection and identification with a specific group. These actions are not symbolic but concrete: visible actions that demonstrate belonging to a group, such as using a Christian cross or a Jewish star, waving a flag, or eating a certain food, including outwith of their places of origin (Levitt and Schiller, 2004). Individuals in a transnational social field combine ways of being and belonging differently in specific contexts. A person can have multiple relationships with people in their place of origin, but not identify as belonging to that place or community (Levitt and Schiller, 2004). Some authors have identified several types of transnational communities. The first is what Peggy Levitt (2001) calls a transnational rural-urban village. As an example, take the transnational social field between Miraflores in the Dominican Republic and the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The rural migration from Miraflores to Boston that began in the 1960s produced a transnational social group. In 1994, around 65% of Miraflores households had relatives in the greater Boston metropolitan area. This dynamic had an effect on the life of the Dominican people. Many of the houses were remodeled with remittances. People dressed, ate and played with products brought by migrants. Almost all the inhabitants of Miraflores can talk about Mozart Street Park

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or Center Street; two characteristic locations in the city of Boston. When an inhabitant of Miraflores is ill in Boston, or is cheating on his wife, or finally obtains an American visa, the news spreads faster in Miraflores than in Boston, according to Levitt. The second transnational field develops between urban areas of sending and receiving countries (urban-urban transnational fields, Levitt, 2000). Migration between the city of Governador Valadares, Brazil, and Framingham, Massachussets, produced another transnational space. The first is a city of approximately 270,000 inhabitants, located in Minas Gerais, one of the largest states in Brazil. As in the case of the town of Miraflores, in this city nearly all homes have a relative in the city of Framingham. In this field, migrants and non-migrants depend on each other socially and economically in ways that have changed the urban space of the Brazilian city. A third transnational field is what Peggy Levitt calls the “normative transnational community”, developed informally among individuals who share identities from the same region, and who have over time matured and organized themselves through institutions in the place of destination. For example, Turkish immigrants in different European regions have created transnational groups to defend their religious freedom (Kastoryano in Levitt, 2001). These individuals may have different origins, but their shared traditions and norms provide the basis for the formation of a transnational community. For Brettell (2000), the concept of transnationalism arises from the observation that migrants maintain relationships with their communities of origin, making the two places, origin and destination, a single space for a social action of continuous movements to both places, with transnational social relations as a form of social capital. Transnationality is a process of construction of a social space through the union of two types of societies, that of the country of origin and that of the destination; its participants become transmigrants, that is, persons (and communities) that live through a process of constant migration (Canales and Zlolniski, 2000). The concept can also refer to groups of people who spend most of their time in a receiving country, and yet maintain ties with their communities of origin. The establishment of transmigrants in their new homes allows the development of multiple social, economic and political ties that extend beyond borders (Appadurai, 1996). A central argument in the literature on transnationalism is that migration should not be seen as a permanent movement, but a continuous process. A desire to maintain contact with the sending country in case of eventual return, social obligations, emotional ties, and political or economic activities are factors that increase the meaning of transnationalism (Gustafson, 2008).

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Among the most important considerations are: Although transnational migration involves the crossing of national ­borders, migrants are important in the development of their c­ ommunities of origin, and play important roles in them. b Transmigrants, through their associations, clubs, and social networks, are able to function as social and political agents, which transforms social realities on both sides of the border (Schiller, Bash and Blanc-Szanton, 1992). Thus far the term expats has not been theoretically connected with transmigrants, but from the theories discussed above we see that they are intimately linked. Empirically, as the following sections demonstrate, US pleasant expats in Mexico are to some degree transmigrants, in the sense that they live permanently or temporarily outside their homeland, but maintain permanent ties with their communities of origin through social networks that cross national borders. More than ten years ago, Smith (2005) pointed out that a new form of transnational life could develop in Mexico, referring to US expats, since some regions offered high quality medical care, affordable housing, domestic help, recreational activities, and other pleasures of retirement; this was increasing the number of Americans and Mexican-Americans in those destinations. a

4

Data and Method

To achieve our research objectives, I reviewed the main theoretical approaches outlined in social sciences to explain residential mobility. Subsequently, we carried out a review and analysis of bibliographic, documentary and hemerographic material in the three locations studied: Mazatlán, Los Cabos and Puerto Peñasco. To understand the demographic quantification of expats from the United States in these three locations, we reviewed the data provided by the National Institute of Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración - INM) of Mexico. To measure and analyze multi-local practices, we used a quantitative methodology based on surveys. We took a sample of 200 questionnaires in each place, during the 2014–2016 period. The criteria for selecting people for the survey were: having US nationality, and living for long periods in any of these three places. The face-to-face survey of US citizens of all ages was carried out between December and March in 2014, 2015 and 2016. The survey was conducted in: 1. the meeting places of their organizations, 2. in their churches, 3. in supermarkets, and in their homes. The main ethnicity of US citizens in the three locations was Anglo-Saxon. Most of the interviewees were highly

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educated, and held either professional or managerial jobs, or were business entrepreneurs. In this sense, our interviewees belonged, in words of Yeoh and Willis (2005) to the elite strata of society. Transnationalism research originates in the interpretive tradition of qualitative and ethnographic research, focusing on human practices. Lifestyle migration has also been studied by qualitative methods, since is an inductive concept difficult to operationalize for use in quantitative research (­Benson and O’Reilly, 2016). Lifestyle expats in Ecuador have also been studied by ­ethnographic means (Hayes, 2015). However, a quantitative methodology is useful for measuring the extent of transnational practices. This method has already been successfully tested in previous research in Mexico and Spain (­Lizárraga, Mantecón and Huete, 2014; Lizárraga, 2019). Multi-local practices were operationalized and quantified in three categories: 1. circular mobility, 2. international communication, and 3. transterritorial electoral participation. In the first category, interviewees were asked about the number of trips they made to their country of origin per year. In the second, they were asked about the frequency of communication with their social networks in the United States, and the means of communication most used. Finally, transterritorial electoral participation was measured by asking about their interest in voting in United States elections, and how they cast that vote. The information gathered was introduced and processed in the SPSS statistical program. 5 Contemporary US Pleasant Expats in Mexico The official statistics for the US population in Mexico are very divergent, so quantification is a difficult task. Based on data provided by the INM, with offices in each of the regional delegations, we found that up to December 2016, 64,585 US citizens were officially registered. The following year 14,491 new ­residents were registered, and up to October 2018 there were 10,111 Americans registered, giving a total of 89,187 US citizens up to the end of 2018 (INM, 2018). It should be noted that this figure comprises only those registered through the immigration forms to live in the country as permanent residents and ­temporary residents. US citizens legally settled in Mexico can do so under one of these ­categories, or through a tourist migration form. Entrants using this form are not included in the residential statistics, but any foreigner can remain in Mexican ­territory for up to six months, and tourists can legally acquire real estate, like any ­resident. This highlights the problem of sub-registration.

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Although quantification is difficult, it is clear that these figures represent the most important immigration to Mexico; if we accept the INM statistics, this immigration is increasing. 6

The Cases of Mazatlán, Los Cabos and Puerto Peñasco

To analyze more deeply the multi-local practices of US pleasant expats in ­Mexico, we present below the results of the survey conducted in each of these three locations in northwestern Mexico. The survey was geographically ­confined to these locations because they are the most important in the three states that, according to the National Institute of Migration, are among the most populated by US citizens in Mexico’s northwest. These three coastal destinations have particular characteristics. Mazatlán is a traditional destination that grew economically and demographically in the seventies. Although currently in a phase of slow growth compared to other tourist destinations, it is preferred by US expats, especially retirees, as a permanent and semi-permanent residence. Los Cabos is a relatively new and strategically planned tourist destination which, due to its urban planning, geographical characteristics, and promotion, is the most visited by US tourists in Mexico. Puerto Peñasco is a tourist destination near the United States border (100 km); its location has attracted US citizens seeking a second home in Mexico. 7

Mazatlán, Sinaloa

The city of Mazatlán is the second largest in the state of Sinaloa. Tourism and fishing are the main economic activities. The INM registered, up to the end of 2018, 3,848 US citizens living in Sinaloa as permanent or temporary residents, of which 90% lived in Mazatlan (INM, 2018). Table 6.1  US citizens resident in Sinaloa

US citizens in Sinaloa

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

605

1,888

2,050

2,126

2,088

3,068

3,848

Source: INM, 2018

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According to the data provided by our survey in this city, in terms of age, the majority (57%) was born before 1946, that is, in 2018 they were aged seventy-two or older. Most (75%) arrived married, although some had made the move alone, whether divorced (11%), single (9%), or widowed (5%). They usually had a high level of education: 79% had a university degree, 12% had a master’s degree, and 8% had a doctorate. Only 1% of our sample had not studied. Most were North American middle class: professionals in management positions, teachers, civil engineers, doctors, sales personnel, or g­ overnment employees, with an average income between 1,600 and 3,500 dollars per month. According to the survey, they lived in a medium-high socioeconomic area north of the city. We found that 47% visited their home country once a year, mainly to see their family; 29% traveled twice a year. By maintaining this transmigration, expats were able to enjoy the best of both countries: in the United States their family, friends, and nice summer weather; in Mexico, the winter weather, new friends, rest, better health, and low costs. From April to November, more temporal residents remain in the United States. The high frequency of return trips to their places of origin is thanks to the fact that they have the free time and the economic resources to make these trips. In addition, the flexible migration policy of the Mexican state allows relative ease of entering the territory. Another social practice within transnational spaces is intense and constant international communication, which is possible thanks to new communication technologies (Garcia, 2007). The US pleasant expats in Mazatlán maintained communication mainly through the internet. In our survey we found that the majority (51%) communicated with family and friends in the United States via internet or telephone once or twice a week; 36% did so every day. Modern satellite communications allowed them to keep track of what was happening in their places of origin; respondents said they mostly watched ­American programs. Another transnational social practice is political participation. Transterritorial electoral participation is not something new for US ­citizens. In 1976, expats were granted the right to vote by mail in the presidential and legislative elections. We do not know the number of US expat voters who voted from Mazatlán in United States elections, but 74% of our respondents said they voted in their national elections. By post and in person appeared to be the two main ways of voting. Pleasant expats abroad have great political power, due to the demographic numbers they currently represent, and due to the leisure they enjoy, since people who do not work have more time than working citizens to demand their political rights. In addition, Americans who enjoy a retirement pension particpate more in politics, since state policies have a direct impact on them personally, given their situation. They are the ones who, for Ruth Rubio-Marín,

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“form a new elite that lives abroad, but that act in their country of origin, and who generally stand out from immigrant groups; those who have the time and resources to participate in transnational politics” (Rubio-Marín, 2006). 8

Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur

Cabo San Lucas is a town in the municipality of Los Cabos, located in the south of the state of Baja California Sur. In this state, the INM registered 10,555 US citizens in the same period (INM, 2018). According to the institute, 88% of US expats in the state were concentrated in Los Cabos. According to our survey, demographically the highest proportion of US pleasant expats (45%) were aged between fifty-six and seventy-five years old; born between 1945 and 1964, they are baby boomers. A further 34% were over seventy-five, and 21% were under fifty-six years old. The majority (64%) e­ migrated as married, although again some were divorced (18%), single (12%), or widowed (6%). Here too they had a high level of education: 53% had a university degree, 11% a master’s degree, and 5% had a doctorate. As in Mazatlan, only 1% of our sample had not studied. However, 30% did not want to answer this question. The dominant social class is medium-high and high: entrepreneurs, sales personnel, business managers, and real estate agents. But there were also middle-class professionals: teachers, doctors, and military personnel. Their average income in Los Cabos was 3,500 dollars per month. However, we found a good number of people who received more than 6,000 dollars per month. Their residences were located mainly in the high socioeconomic areas of Cabo San Lucas, private and located near the beaches. Transmigration is engaged in by the majority of US expats in Cabo San Lucas. According to the survey, 49% travel twice a year to the United States, and 25% once a year. Communication with relatives in their places of origin is continuous and permanent; 57% of respondents said they communicated Table 6.2  US citizens residents in the state of Baja California Sur

2012 US citizens residents in Baja California Sur

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

3,722 6,402 6,767 6,899 6,865 8,964 10,555

Source: INM, 2018

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with their family or friends every day of the year; a further 40% said they communicated once or twice a week, and the rest (3%), once a month. The most common means of keeping informed about what was happening in the United States was the internet (50%), followed by television (33%), local newspapers (10%), and the rest through friends who lived in Cabo San Lucas. Political participation was by voting in local and presidential elections in the United States, as the vast majority of respondents (83%) confirmed. The main forms of voting were in person in the United States, and by mail from Cabo San Lucas. 9

Puerto Peñasco, Sonora

The city of Puerto Peñasco in the state of Sonora is another destination in which the most important economic sector is related to real estate and services. In recent years tourism has developed as an important activity, changing a community and economy dedicated to fishing into one of the fastest growing cities in northwest Mexico. National and state public policy and private investment have focused on making Puerto Peñasco a residential destination for expats from the southwest of the United States (Enríquez, 2008). The state of Sonora has a record of 6,705 US citizens, of which 32% is located in the municipality of Puerto Peñasco (INM, 2018). In terms of age, the highest proportion (62%) is in the range between fifty-six and seventy-four years old, that is, they are baby boomers. A further 25% are over seventy-four years old, and 13% are under fifty-six years old. Most (73%) emigrated as married, while 11% were divorced, 8% single, and 8% widowed. They too had a high level of education: 46% had a university degree, 24% had high school studies, 13% had a master’s degree, and 4% had a doctorate. Only 1% of our sample had not studied, although 12% did not respond. Their average monthly income was 2,000 dollars (43% of respondents), and their residences were located, as in Mazatlan and Los Cabos, in the high socioeconomic areas near the sea. Table 6.3  US citizens residents in the state of Sonora

US citizen resident in Sonora

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

1,478

3,613

4,123 4,231

4,166

5,625 6,705

Source: INM, 2018

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Transmigration was engaged in by the majority: 68% traveled to the United States once a month. According to the survey 71% live in their own homes in the north, these moved more frequently and lived in Puerto Peñasco mainly in the winter season. Others made trips to the United States only for holidays, living for those periods in family homes (12%). Communication with relatives in their places of origin was continuous and permanent: 40% said they communicated with family or friends every day of the year, while 51% say they did so once or twice a week, and the rest (9%) once a month. Regarding ways of staying informed about events in the United States, the most common was American television (55%), followed by the internet (27%), with a further 12% through friendships, and the rest through printed newspapers in English. Political participation was by voting in local and presidential elections in the United States; the vast majority of respondents (90%) confirmed this. The main forms of voting were in person in the United States (62%) and by mail from Puerto Peñasco. 10 Conclusion We can conclude that contemporary pleasant expatriation to Mexico from the United States is a movement that rests on a combination of various economic, social, cultural, climatic and geographical factors that together create ideal conditions for a group of people to find a better quality of life compared to their places of origin. Economically, the pleasant expats discussed in this chapter do not transmigrate seeking paid work in their destinations—as seen in other international migrations—but a revenue on their incomes from their country of origin. It is a circular migration, mainly composed of people of retirement age. United States migration to Mexico has been a historical constant, but if we analyze the behavior of this population registered in the last five years, we can observe that in 2013 it grew exponentially compared to 2012 in the three locations surveyed. Precise quantification is complicated, given that many do not register as residents in the National Institute of Migration. A good number live in Mexican territory only for the periods allowed by a tourist visa, and enter again in the same way. In all three locations they make return trips to their places of origin. These trips allow them to take advantage of the optimal climate of the two countries. It must be said that in Puerto Peñasco there is more circular return movement than in the other two destinations.

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Transnational communication with friends and relatives in the United States is quite high. In all three locations respondents reported watching American television, by which means they kept informed of what was happening in the United States. To keep up awareness of local news, they used the internet and local newspapers printed in English. Pleasant expats practice transnational political participation by voting in elections in their places of origin. Given the circumstances of retirees, state decisions impact on them even when living in another country. Participation was slightly higher in Puerto Peñasco (90%), followed by Mazatlán (74%) and Cabo San Lucas (71%). As for the method of voting, the preference was for in person in the United States, and secondly by mail. We can point out some similarities and differences in the socioeconomic profiles of US pleasant expats in the three destinations analyzed. In the municipality of Los Cabos we find a population with greater monthly economic income (3,500 dollars per month), compared to Mazatlán (1,600 dollars per month) and Puerto Peñasco (2,000 dollars per month). In this context it can be understood that members of the baby boom generation have better incomes than their predecessors, and the latter look for places where their pensions yield more. In all three cases, these were people who migrated mainly as married (75% in Mazatlan, 64% in Los Cabos, and 73% in Puerto Peñasco). And in all three cases they were relatively well educated, with university studies (79% in Mazatlan, 53% in Los Cabos, and 46% in Puerto Peñasco), including some with postgraduate studies (20% in Mazatlan, 16% in Los Cabos, and 17% in Puerto Peñasco). Despite intermittent waves of violence in Mexico, trends indicate that the number of pleasant expats of US origin will continue to grow in Mexico in the years ahead, particularly in the northwestern region, due to: (a) the massive retirement of baby boomers, since this generation will retire with social security starting in 2011, and a good number of them will look for places of residence other than their birthplace; (b) geographic, economic, social, and cultural factors of attraction existing in the Mexican northwest compared to their localities of origin; (c) previous contact with compatriots, which emphasises the importance of social networks, which in turn causes a permanent increase in immigration, due to the spiral of social networks–migration–social networks; (d) a beneficial image of the region from previous tourist trips; they do not perceive the degrading transformation of the area and are satisfied with what they find in Mexico.

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The data collected in this research shows that US citizens in Mexico, even when they do not make return trips to their places of origin in the United States, are not fully expatriated in the basic sense of being outside their patria. Rather, transnational and multi-local practices appear to show that expatriation is not an empirical descriptive term as people may be physically “in” or “out” the patria at the same time through these social and political practices. Pleasant expats in Mazatlán, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Peñasco are ­physically in Mexican territory, but at the same time they belong to another nation-state, since most of them participate politically in their places of origin. These transnational practices generally allow them to maintain their cultural patterns and to reproduce them in the receiving locality in Mexico. The term expats has not been theoretically connected with that of transmigrants, but after this theoretical research we can see that they are intimately linked. Empirically the US pleasant expats in Mexico are in some ways transmigrants, in the sense that they are permanently or temporarily outside their homeland, but they maintain permanent ties with their communities of origin through transnational social networks. Thus we can establish a conceptual model of the pleasant expat: they are generally relatively wealthy and privileged individuals compared with the average for the Mexican population, and they engage in a continuous process of transmigration between the two countries for leisure and pleasure. They are usually elderly people, who keep up a continuous and permanent communication with their social networks in both countries. They are people who enjoy recreational activities and the geographical and economic benefits offered by the two transnational social fields. References Almada, Roxanna. 2006. Juntos, pero no revueltos. Multiculturalidad e identidad en Todos Santos, La Paz: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en ­Antropologia Social (CIESAS)/Universidad Autonoma de Baja California Sur (UABCS). Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. ­Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Basch, Linda, Glick-Schiller, Nina, and Szanton-Blanc, Cristina. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Post-Colonial Predicaments, and De-Territorialized NationStates. London: Routledge.

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Benson, Michaela. 2014. “Negotiating Privilege in and through Lifestyle Migration”. In Understanding Lifestyle Migration. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series, ed. M. Benson and N. Osbaldiston, 47–68. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2009. Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, ­Aspirations and experiences. London: Ashgate. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2016. “From lifestyle migration to lifestyle in migration: Categories, concepts and ways of thinking”. Migration Studies 4(1): 20–37. Benson, Michaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2018. Lifestyle migration and colonial traces in Malaysia and Panamá. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. Brettell, Caroline. 2000. “Theorizing migration in anthropology”. In Migration ­theory: talking across disciplines, ed. C. Brettell and J. Hollifield, 97–135. New York: ­Routledge. Canales, Alejandro, and Zlolniski, Christin. 2000. “Comunidades transnacionales y migración en la era de la globalización”. In Simposio sobre migración internacional en las Américas (4–6 September, San José, Costa Rica). Available at: www.cepal.org /celade/proyectos/migracion/canales.doc Castree, Noel, Kitchin, Rob, and Rogers, Alisdair. 2013. A Dictionary of Human G ­ eography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Croucher, Sheila. 2009. The other side of the fence. American migrants in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press. Dailey, Nancy. 2005. When Baby Boom women retire. Connecticut: Praeger. Enríquez, Jesus. 2008. “Segregación y fragmentación en las nuevas ciudades para el turismo. Caso Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, México”. Topofilia Revista de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Ciencias Sociales I(1): 113–128. Fechter, Anne-Meike, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1197–1210. García, Ismael. 2007. Vidas Compartidas. Formación de una red migratoria transnacional, Aguacaliente Grande Sinaloa y Victor Valley California. Culiacán: Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa. Green, Nancy. 2009. “Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept”. American Historical Review 114(2): 307–328. Gustafson, Per. 2008. “Transnationalism in retirement migration: The case of north European retirees in Spain”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31(3): 451–475. Hayes, Matthew. 2015. “‘It is hard being the different one all the time’: gringos and racialized identity in lifestyle migration to Ecuador”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(6): 943–958. Hayes, Matthew. 2018. “The gringos of Cuenca: How retirement migrants perceive their impact on lower income communities”. Area 50(4): 467–475.

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Hayes, Matthew. 2020. “The coloniality of UNESCO’s heritage urban landscapes: ­Heritage process and transnational gentrification in Cuenca, Ecuador”. Urban S­ tudies 57(15): 3060–3077. INM. 2018. “Población estadounidense en México”. Instituto Federal de Acceso a la I­ nformación Pública (IFAI, Folio No. 0411100066016). Kearney, Michael. 1995. “The local and the global: the anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism”. Annual review of anthropology 24: 547–565. Koch-Schulte, John. 2008. “Planning for International Retirement Migration and Expats: A case study of Udon Thani, Thailand”. MA dissertation, University of ­Manitoba. Kunz, Sarah. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration Scholarship”. Geography Compass 10(3): 89–101. Levitt, Peggy. 2000. “Migrants participate across borders: towards an understanding of its forms and consequences”. In Immigration research for a new century: m ­ ultidisciplinary perspectives, ed. N. Foner, R. Runbaut, and S. Gold, 459–480. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Levitt, Peggy, and Schiller, Nina. 2004. “Conceptualizing simultaneity: a transnational social field perspective on society”. International Migration Review 38: 1002–1039. Lizárraga, Omar. 2012. La transmigración placentera. Movilidad de estadounidenses a México. Culiacán: Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN)/Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa (UAS). Lizárraga, Omar. 2019. “Seeking the Endless Summer. Push and Pull Factors in the Pleasant Transmigration Process in Spain and Mexico”. Migraciones Internacionales 10: 1–19. Lundstrum, Catrin. 2017. “The White side of migration”. Nordic Journal of Migration Research 7(2): 79–87. Pries, Ludger. 2000. “Una nueva cara de la migración globalizada: el surgimiento de nuevos espacios sociales transnacionales y plurilocales”. Revista trabajo 2(3): 51–78. Rubio–Marín, Ruth. 2006. “Transnational politics and the democratic nation–state: normative challenges of expatriate voting and nationality retention of emigrants”. New York University Law Review 81: 101–131. Sassen, Saskia. 2007. Una sociología de la globalización. Buenos Aires: Kratz. Sato, Machiko. 2001. Farewell to Nippon: Japanese lifestyle migrants in Australia. ­Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Schiller, Nina, Basch, Linda, and -Szanton- Blanc, Cristina. 1992. Towards a Transnational perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism reconsidered. New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Smith, Robert. 2005. Mexican New York: Transnational lives of new immigrants. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Stone, Ian, and Stubbs, Cherrie. 2007. “Enterprising Expatriates: Lifestyle Migration and Entrepreneurship in Rural Southern Europe”. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 19(5): 433–450. Van der Knaap, Daphne. 2017. “Expat life: experiences of expats living in the Netherlands. An exploration of the experiences of expats in terms of culture shock and adjustment”. Unpublished MA thesisMaster’s thesis, University of Utrecht. Wishiteni, Bob, Masila, Peter, and Boniface, Odiara. 2009. “Turismo residencial: La experiencia de Africa”. In Turismo, Urbanización y estilos de vida. Las nuevas ­formas de movilidad residencial, ed. T. Mazón, R. Huete, and A. Mantecon, 235–245. ­Barcelona: Icaria. Yeoh, Brenda, and Willis, Katie. 2005. “Singaporean and British Transmigrants in China and the Cultural Politics of ‘Contact Zones’”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 269–285.

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CHAPTER 7

Privilege in Migration: The Benefits of Nationality for Northern Migrants in the Middle East Clio Chaveneau 1 Introduction North to South migrations have recently attracted significant attention from social scientists studying international migration.1 While these movements must be read from an historical perspective (European conquests and settler colonialism), they result from international economic and political relations, as well as technological changes, that have contributed to the mobility of global Northern citizens, and allowed diverse actors to engage in international migration. Currently, several millions of Europeans and North Americans are living outside their home countries, and these numbers are increasing every year. Among them are entrepreneurs, students, adventure seekers, families, highly-qualified and specialized workers, and retirees, who settle for years—or decades—in another western country,2 or in South ­America, Asia or Africa. Often labelled as expatriates rather than migrants, they are generally considered as a particular type of mobile individual. If the term expatriate refers to a specific administrative status in most organizations, it is also used more broadly to name mobile individuals who do not always fit the common representation of migrants. Thus, expatriate and its shorter version expat are used to implicitly designate privileged individuals living abroad for a short or longer period. The nature of the privilege can vary: being (relatively) wealthy, being white, or having a Western (or East Asian) passport. For a long time, the terms expatriate/expat helped researchers to differentiate their study population from other types of migrants. The 1 In 2016 Sarah Kunz summarized the existing literature on expatriates and privileged groups in migration studies. While there is regrettably no mention of works published in another language than English, her article provides a clear and good review of the existing British and North-American literature. 2 In this article, I use the term Western not in opposition to a supposed Eastern, but as a ­succinct way to designate European, Australian and North American countries. Westerners will refer to citizens of these countries. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_008 -

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vocabulary, concepts and theories used in the literature of migration studies did not seem to apply to them. However, the motives, process and implications connected to their migrations may be similar to other migratory categories and situations, including South to North migrations. While some social scientists use this vocabulary without questioning it, recent works have adopted a more critical perspective towards this vocabulary (Fechter, 2007; Green, 2009; Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Koppenfels, 2014; Beck, 2018; Kunz, 2016, 2020). Questioning this use was necessary, firstly to pinpoint a (post)colonial bias that social sciences can perpetuate, and secondly to extend and enrich this emerging field of research. An article published by Sheila Croucher in 2012 contributed to the emergence of a critical approach to migrants’ discourses and representation by discussing the exceptionality entailed in the term expatriates and its social and political meanings. Croucher emphasized that North to South migrations are largely a product of economic and social power imbalances that structure the migration itself (freedom of movement, visa conditions, ability to go back to the home country), as well as living conditions (salaries, housing conditions, community support) and inter-ethnic and inter-class relationships (among the migrants, with locals, with other migrant groups) (Leonard, 2010; Lan, 2011; Benson, 2013; Kunz, 2018). To overcome the opposition between the two terms, expatriates and migrants, while taking into account the need to differentiate between different types of international mobility, some authors began using the term privileged migration (Croucher 2012). While keeping the topic within the scope of migration studies, the notion of privilege allows researchers to question the social ­status and structural advantages which benefit citizens of hegemonic countries. ­Privilege, defined generally as unearned benefits that accrue to particular groups based on their location within a social hierarchy, is used at different levels by social researchers working on North to South migration. Among English-speaking authors, the term privilege is frequently used to question the whiteness or eliteness of the studied population, often reinforced in specific migratory contexts (Leonard, 2010; Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Lan, 2011; Andrucki, 2013; Karkabi, 2013). Interestingly, some of these works show that the region or country of installation plays a major role in neutralizing or reinforcing the privileges of Northern citizens. Literature on North to South migration has addressed privilege from two distinct perspectives: as a possession, or as a production and practice. Privileges are possessed by individuals in specific social and geographical spaces (Lan, 2011; Croucher, 2012; Benson, 2013; Glick-Schiller and Salazar, 2013). Thus, privileges are at the intersection between what a person possesses (gender,

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race, class, capital, ability) and their social and political context. On the other hand, researchers have examined privileges which are (re)produced and practiced by individuals in a particular space in which social hierarchy is at play (Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Leonard, 2013; Botterill, 2017). In this chapter, I will examine the roles that nationality plays in the migratory experiences and living conditions of Northern migrants living in a specific region, the Middle East. Thus I will approach privileges as a possession rather than a practice, as I will not discuss here the various ways individuals put their privileges into practice.3 Between 2011 and 2016, I focused my research on Western migrants living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories4 (OPT) and, in 2017, I conducted a study on French migrants in the United Arab Emirates5 (UAE). While these two countries offer two distinct migratory contexts, Western foreigners living there hold very privileged positions that I would like to analyze in the chapter. Discussing privilege in different contexts reveals interesting c­ ommon dynamics. Drawing on my fieldwork in the OPT and in Abu Dhabi, I will focus on two types of privilege—freedom of movement, and access and position in the local job market—which are central components of Westerners’ privileged positions in the Middle East. 2 Western Migration to the Middle East: Structural Inequalities and Embedded Privileges In North to South migration studies, the Middle East takes up a marginal place in empirical research. While numerous studies have focused on Central and South America, Africa (North and sub-Saharan), or Asia (China, Hong Kong or India), there are fewer works on Northern migrants living in Middle Eastern countries. Notable exceptions are the contributions of Katie Walsh (2007, 2010, 2014), Amelie Le Renard (2016, 2017, 2019) on Dubai, Claire Cosquer on Abu Dhabi (2018),6 and a few articles on Cairo and South Sinai in Egypt (Karkabi, 3 I addressed these questions in my PhD (Chaveneau, 2016), and in Les Internationaux en P­ alestine (2018). 4 In-depth interviews with eighty foreigners (fifteen Western nationalities) living in the OPT for at least a year, and informal conversations and participant observations during ­twenty-three months of fieldwork in the West Bank between 2010–2015. 5 Several in-depth interviews with French migrants living in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, and participant observations (including online) conducted from 2017–2020. 6 Economic and human development levels in the UAE raise the question of whether this country belongs to the global North or South. If it is a legitimate question, I would argue that,

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2013; Kunz, 2018). Westerners in the UAE, and more specifically Dubai, have attracted greater attention from researchers due to the country’s image abroad, in which wealthy citizens and residents are opposed to exploited workers, and described without acknowledging a more complex social and economic spectrum which includes a lot of middling people (Assaf, 2017). The situation of Westerners living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is mostly unknown to researchers working in migration studies. In this section, I will briefly present the migratory contexts of these two destinations, drawing specific attention to a common feature: structural inequalities which work to the advantage of Western migrants. 2.1 The UAE: A Diverse but Hierarchical Society The exploitation of oil and gas reserves in the Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s had a major impact on urban development and the demographic make-up of countries in this region. The newly independent United Arab Emirates, founded in 1971 with 180,000 inhabitants, reached one million inhabitants in only twenty years. The greatest number of migrants came from the Middle East and South Asia, but Westerners (mostly British and Americans at the beginning) also settled in this fast developing country. Since then, many more have joined them, especially in the 2000s, to experience the Gulf dream of very high salaries, advantageous living conditions, and interesting job opportunities. Today, almost nine out of ten inhabitants of the UAE are foreign residents, making it one of the most diverse countries in the world. While official data by nationality is not published by the UAE National Bureau of Statistics, BQ magazine gathered embassies’ estimations and press quotes to produce, in 2015, an estimate of the foreign population living in the UAE by nationality.7 According to these figures, 4% of UAE inhabitants came from a Northern country: 237,900 Europeans, 90,000 North Americans, and 16,000 Australians. It should be noted that the greatest majority of the 350,000 Westerners lives in the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Inspite being a numerical minority, Westerners hold a privileged social position in the country. Indeed, the UAE society is based on strong divisions between, firstly, Emirati citizens and foreigners, and secondly, among foreigners themselves. The UAE has been widely criticized for the ethnic separation of spaces of consumption and residence, where wealthy Emiratis as a large majority of the actual population of the UAE are citizens of Southern countries, it is relevant to examine the studied migration sociologically from a North/South perspective. 7 Source: http://www.bq-magazine.com/economy/socioeconomics/2015/04/uae-population-by -nationality.

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and transnational elites live separately from working-class (and Southern) migrants (Walsh, 2007). This social hierarchy8 based on nationality and region of origin is commonly expressed by migrants themselves, especially those at the top, who appear to have easily internalized this hierarchy, participating and r­eproducing it in their professional and private lives (Coles and Walsh, 2010; Cosquer, 2018; Renard, 2019). Thus, in this particularly divided society, citizens from Western countries find themselves in a very comfortable situation, p ­ ossessing economic as well as symbolic advantages, based on structural inequalities and global power imbalance. 2.2 The OPT: Privileged Migrants and Underprivileged Locals The internationally supported peace process and the Oslo Agreements signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization had ­multiple consequences in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). In a fiveyear period, Israelis and Palestinians were supposed to find a solution to the main issues, while in the meantime a hybrid entity, the Palestinian National Authority, would administratively rule the main cities of the Palestinian Territories remaining under Israeli military control. To support this peace process, the international community agreed to provide major financial support to the Palestinians in order to develop the economy and the administrative institutions of the future state. Two and half billion dollars were promised by more than forty countries participating at a donor conference organized by the USA. Over time, and despite the failure of the peace negotiations at the end of the 1990s, donors (especially the European, North American and Gulf countries) pursued their policies and raised year after year the amount of their contributions, especially after the start of the second Intifada in September 2000. Many researchers have extensively and successfully explained the various political and economic consequences of international aid to the OPT (Roy, 1995; Brynen, 1996; Keating, Le More and Lowe 2005; More, 2008). However, little attention has been paid to the demographic and sociocultural changes that have occurred since the beginning of the 1990s. Resulting from a new political era in Palestinian society and the massive international aid flows, there was the establishment of a new Palestinian economic and political elite, the return of certain Palestinian members of the diaspora, and the arrival of hundreds of foreigners from Northern countries. Before 1993, only a few Westerners 8 This social hierarchy positions Westerners as the most privileged migrants, followed by Middle Easterners (Arab nationals), then South-East Asians (Philippines, Indonesia, ­ ­Thailand), South Asians (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal) and, lastly, Africans (Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia).

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lived among the Palestinians, and they were mostly ecclesiastics, laypersons or religious volunteers, spouses of Palestinians and, in very rare cases, internationalists.9 In the mid-1990s, numerous international governmental and non-governmental organizations opened offices and missions in the OPT, creating job opportunities for qualified Westerners willing to relocate there. Thanks to the international funds, job positions requiring specific international competences were also created inside local organizations (universities, NGO s) or at the Palestinian Authority. Settling in East Jerusalem (or sometimes West, while working in the East), Ramallah, Gaza city, or Bethlehem, these individuals constitute a significant change in the population of these cities. As inhabitants and consumers of goods and services, they contribute, along with the returnees,10 to the development of new places (notably coffee shops, restaurants, or bars) and the dynamism of cultural institutions (theatre, cinema, music centers). However, the presence and socioeconomic input of these immigrants should not conceal the major power imbalances existing between them and the locals. Firstly, they are citizens of hegemonic countries and possess a c­ rucial freedom of mobility at a global level. Secondly, a large majority are socially and economically privileged individuals, both in their home countries and in the OPT, having access to better jobs and salaries than the locals (­Chaveneau, 2016). Thirdly, they witness the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, but are not subject to it. The occupation is a multi-layered system in which the lives of the occupied are controlled by the rules and constraints imposed by the occupier. A key aspect of the Israeli occupation is the separation and mobility regime:11 separation walls and barriers, restricted areas, closures, permits, and authorizations determine all movement into and in/out of the Palestinian territories. The “bantoustanisation” of the OPT (Le More, 2005) affects only the occupied 9

10 11

I refer here to the leftist internationalism ideology that contributed in the seventies to some North to South migrations in South America, Cuba and Nicaragua especially. In ­Palestine, no equivalent movement happened, but a few individuals joined the ­Palestinians, based on their political beliefs. See Heacock, Roger (2005), “Internationaliste En ­Palestine” Confluences Méditerranée 55(4): 131–46. This term defines Palestinians in exile who were allowed to come back to West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the Oslo Agreements in 1993. As shown by Abu Zahra (2013), Israeli restrictions on the movement of Palestinians started as early as 1950, but it was after the first Intifada (late 1980s–early 1990s) that the Israeli authorities established a more complex and organized system to limit and control movement, particularly for certain categories (males, Muslims, refugee camps or villages, youths).

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population. Inhabitants of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem (as well as Palestinian Israeli citizens) are all subject to different rules, which regulate or prevent their movement to other spaces. Their lack of freedom of movement is aggravated by the existence of alternative roads and additional steps (for example, checkpoints) which make their movements longer and more difficult than would be the case for any non-Palestinian traveler. As stated by Cedric Parizot, since the 1990s and 2000s, “the movement of the Palestinians has been considerably impeded while Israelis are moving around more and more rapidly. In this context, the confinement of the Palestinians is both spatial and temporal” (2009: 10). Most foreigners experience privileged mobility, moving freely between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, going to places forbidden to Palestinians even inside the OPT (such as East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, lands between the Wall and the Green line, Israeli settlements, or the Gaza Strip).12 In the two following sections, I will address these privileges and their effects on interactions between different groups of migrants in the case of the UAE, and between locals and migrants in the case of the OPT. Based on my two research fields, I will interrogate two major areas of privilege and advantage: physical mobility, and social and professional status. 3

Freedom of Movement as Privilege

Georg Simmel wrote in 1903 than “the boundary is not a spatial fact with ­sociological consequences, but a sociological fact that forms itself spatially” (Simmel, 1997: 142). When talking about Northern and Southern countries, social scientists aim to reveal political, socioeconomic and symbolic divisions of the world, rather than geographical ones. In migration studies, this dichotomy allows researchers to emphasize the consequences of belonging to one or the other in connection with individual and collective movements. 3.1 Mobility on a Global Scale: A Common Feature of Northern Migrants Social theorists of mobility have argued that mobility and immobility are caught up in power geometries in which unequal power structures exist in time–space and divide two groups of countries and their citizens (Massey, 12

Access to the Gaza Strip has been very complicated since 2006 due to the Israeli b­ lockage. However, foreigners working for diplomatic missions or some humanitarian organizations can be granted a short- or long-stay permit for Gaza. For Palestinian workers, it is almost impossible to get such authorization.

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1999; Shamir, 2005; Glick-Schiller and Salazar, 2013). If one benefits from structural advantages in its mobility, the other group is largely disadvantaged, and restricted in its freedom of movement on regional and global scales. The mobility of wealthy countries’ citizens is promoted, welcomed, and protected, while, on the contrary, the mobility of citizens of poor or politically unstable countries is restricted, stigmatized, and risky. As Etienne Balibar (1994) states, the borders are polysemic, meaning that they have differentiated settings and effects on individuals depending on their nationality and/or their ethnicity. If the physical crossing of a border is one aspect of the mobility regime, visas represent a dematerialized border, representing state control over the traveler or migrant. In a world in which movement from Southern to Northern countries is more and more scrutinized and controlled (Shamir, 2005; Neumayer, 2006), visas open or close doors, deeply affecting each individual’s right to movement. A citizen of a European or North American country is not required to fill a fivepage application, submit the flight booking, insurance, hotel confirmation, pay a fee of 100 or 300 euros, and then wait for a month to find out if the travel request has been approved by the destination country. An illustration of this complex mobility regime can be found in the yearly Henley Passport Index. Initiated in 2005 by Henley & Partners, a citizenship and residence advisory firm, the index is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom of their citizens. The number of countries that a ­specific passport can access becomes its visa-free score.13 In 2019, the top ten was comprised of Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, France, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Sweden, and Luxembourg, with access to more than 186 countries, while the lowest ten countries were Yemen, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territory, Eritrea, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and finally Afghanistan and Iraq, with a score between 39–30.14 If the index does not reflect the full complexity of visa policies, it offers an illustration of the power imbalance between Northern and Southern countries, free visas being a direct result of political and economic negotiations between countries (visa-waiver programs). Thus, the freedom to travel and settle anywhere is one aspect of the inequalities between citizens of these two groups. Another major inequality is the privilege of Northern countries to dictate the 13

14

Each of the 199 passports is checked against the 227 possible travel destinations for which travel restriction information exists in the IATA database. The passport scores 1 if: (a) no visa is required for passport holders from a particular country or territory to enter the destination, or (b) if a visa on arrival, a visitor’s permit, or an electronic travel authority (no government approval required) is delivered. It will score 0 if visas are needed, or if passport holders have to get government-approved electronic visas (e-visas) before departure. https://www.henleypassportindex.com/passport-index.

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rules of movement. Indeed, the dominant group has the power to stigmatize, control, and regulate the mobility and immobility of the other group. The dominated group of people are deprived of their mobility rights and are subject to the scrutiny and surveillance of the other group (Shamir, 2005; Aas, 2011). Migrants from Northern countries, wherever they are going to settle, benefit from a powerful mobility privilege on a global scale: “for passport holders from OECD countries the world appears in easy reach, with relatively few restrictions imposed” (Neumayer, 2006: 81). My study populations, in both the UAE and the OPT, experience on a regular basis the benefit of being a citizen of a Northern country. Even if they do not always acknowledge it, they are aware of their ease of travel and settlement in any country, due to the passport they hold. In practical terms it means they need to request a visa before arrival, but although they need a residence visa, they do not worry about being refused one. For most migrants from Southern countries, a visa is a precious door opener that will deeply affect their migratory and personal trajectories. If we refer to the Henley Passport Index, Westerners living in the Middle East are in an unquestionably privileged situation, as the region’s countries are predominantly at the bottom of the index. Five out of the last ten in the index are Middle East passports. The UAE, which claimed the top spot in the Middle East region in 2019, has progressed greatly over the years thanks to visa-waiver deals: from 62nd place in 2006 to 21st place in 2019. But I should also consider the privilege of my population with regard to other migrants living in the UAE, most of whom hold passports and possess nationalities that place them in the last third of the index. Westerners benefit from easy entry into the UAE, and are rarely worried about being refused their visa by the UAE or neighbor countries. That said, it should be noted that in the UAE, where immigration is mostly viewed as an economic parameter and a demographic necessity, long-term settlement is not encouraged.15 Visa policy in the UAE has its roots in a traditional tribal sponsorship system called Kafala. Under this system, every foreigner willing to work and settle in the Gulf must obtain a sponsor (kafil), who will be their legal guarantor for visas, compliance with local laws, and so on (Beaugé, 1986; Lori, 2012). The migrant’s visa is based on the work contract (fixed-term for one, two, or three years, possibly renewable), so a person’s residency (and that of their family) is bound to the job market and the economic situation. While in recent years the rules have been changed slightly to ease the system, 15

Recently, the UAE government introduced “golden visas” to provide 5- or 10-year residencies for specific categories of migrants (investors and some highly-qualified professionals).

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the reality remains unchanged: you (or a close relative) need a work contract in order to have the right to live in the UAE. That situation triggers stress and anxiety for all migrants, including (perhaps surprisingly) Northern migrants, who also suffer from the feelings of instability and “vulnerability” created by these policies (Renard, 2019; Walsh, 2014). The discomfort and anxiety the Kafala system causes for many Westerners is probably reinforced by the privilege of movement they possess worldwide. They are accustomed to move from one country to another for leisure or ­business and, as explained by Sarah Kunz regarding Westerners in Cairo, their “personal geographies spanned a seemingly accessible globe” across which their migration was narrated as “a haphazard, almost accidental decision”, an effortless movement across the world (2018: 112). Interestingly, individuals whom I studied in the OPT gave similar descriptions of their international movements (Palestine is almost never the first country of travel or migration). However, it is in the OPT that they are confronted for the first time with difficulties in obtaining a residence or work visa, finding an obstacle to their “free” settlement (Chaveneau, 2018). The Palestinian National Authority does not exert any control over civil registration and the entry and exit of foreign individuals in the territories, meaning there is no Palestinian visa or entry permit. The need to have an Israeli visa to live and/or work makes it complicated for foreigners to stay for years in the West Bank, and very difficult for them to be in the Gaza Strip.16 This situation is unusual in migration studies, and should be seen as an exception to the rule. This exception is due to the political situation, and the will of the Israeli state to prevent the presence of foreigners among Palestinians. If this situation has a major influence on foreign actors (­Chaveneau, 2015), it emphasizes even more that the general rule for these individuals is privilege of mobility at local and global levels, thanks to their Western passports. 3.2 Mobile in the Country of Settlement: The Specific Case of the OPT In their country of settlement, Western passport holders enjoy a large range of benefits that contributes to their freedom of movement inside and outside the 16

Israel has imposed movement restrictions on the Gaza Strip since the early 1990s; these intensified drastically in 2007. Imposing a land, sea and air blockade, access to the Gaza Strip is restricted to foreigners who need a specific permit delivered by the Israelis for professional purposes to certain organizations only (United Nations agencies, diplomatic bodies, and some international NGO s). It should be noted that some foreigners, activists or spouses of Palestinians are living in the Gaza Strip, and they usually crossed through the rarely opening Egyptian/Gazan border (Rafah).

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national borders. Daily commuting, and exploring the countryside and neighboring countries, are eased by economic resources (something I will develop in the next section), but also by everyday advantages linking Western nationalities and mobility, such as the easy and cost-free conversion of a foreign driving license to a local one.17 In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, mobility privileges held by foreigners are even more significant and visible to the local population than in other contexts. Palestinians live under Israeli control of their movements between the different parts of the OPT—the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—and inside each part. Access to East Jerusalem is very difficult for any West Bankers living beyond the Separation Wall, and even rarer for Gazawis. The division of the West Bank into three areas (A, B and C),18 the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and restricted roads create a fragmented and broken up territory in which Palestinian movements are constrained and even forbidden.19 Israeli citizens, living inside Israel’s territory or in its settlements,20 are not subject to these obstacles, using primary and direct routes to reach their destinations, and traveling without fear of being checked and denied the right to move. Foreigners living in the Palestinian Territories benefit from the same mobility privileges as the Israelis, thanks to their passports. Thus, employees of diplomatic bodies or NGO s, journalists, teachers or researchers working in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus or East Jerusalem live among Palestinians but without sharing their living conditions. As Parizot relevantly emphasized, “their ability to routinize their journeys across the ensemble of enclaves enables them to preserve a global vision of the Palestinian space extending between the West 17 18

19

20

Only thirty-five nationalities can convert their driving licenses to an Emirati one. Having a local driving license is mandatory when a resident wants to drive in the country, whether private or rental. Based on the Oslo Agreement, the Israeli-occupied West Bank was divided into three administrative divisions with different status. Area A is exclusively administered by the Palestinian Authority; Area B is administered by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel; and Area C, which contains the Israeli settlements, is administered by Israel. On Israeli control of Palestinian mobility, see: Abu-Zahra, Nadia. Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction. London: Pluto Press, 2013. ­ Latte Abdallah, Stéphanie, and Parizot, Cedric. Israelis and Palestinians in the Shadows of the Wall: Spaces of Separation and Occupation. London: Routledge, 2015. Bontemps, ­Véronique. “Entre Cisjordanie et Jordanie, l’épreuve du passage frontalier au pont Allenby.” Revue européenne des migrations internationales 30, no. 2 (2014): 69–90. From 1967 to the end of 2017, more than 200 Israeli settlements were established in the West Bank. More than 620,000 Israeli citizens currently live in settlements: 210,000 live in the annexed parts of Jerusalem, and 410,000 live throughout the rest of the West Bank. Source: www.btselem.org/settlements.

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Bank and the Gaza Strip, a spatial perspective which has no tangible basis in the daily lives of the Palestinians” (2009: 22). Free to travel between and into the OPT and Israel, foreigners can explore historical Palestine and enjoy natural leisure spaces (the Mediterranean Sea, natural reserves and parks) and historical Palestinian cities (Jerusalem, Yafa, Haifa, Nazareth, Akka) to which Palestinians are denied access, although originally from these areas (­Chaveneau, 2016). This particular case shows to what extent the privilege of holding a foreign passport—especially a Western one—will affect the migratory experience, as well as the symbolic domination of privileged migrants on underprivileged locals. This discrepancy of rights creates frustrations and tensions between locals and migrants, especially as the latter use these mobility privileges extensively without acknowledging them for what they are. Palestinians, especially the younger generations, frequently criticize or use sarcasm to point out foreigners’ privileges and the resulting comforts of life. For example, access to the old Arab cities (Yaffa, Akka and Haifa especially) and to the Mediterranean Sea are a recurrent theme in criticisms addressed to “ajaneb” (foreigners): all these places are now inaccessible to most Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I will raise the point that more than freedom of movement, it is lack of political consciousness or political support on the part of foreigners which is pointed out by Palestinian critics. As an example, in 2014 a satirical leaflet circulated on social media addressing this issue.21 ­Created by a Palestinian artist, Omarius Ioseph Filius Dinae, it imitated an official document, with a letterhead stating “Consistory for the Regulation of Foreign Bodies in Occupied Palestine”, and a fake official stamp and signature with the eagle, national symbol of the Palestinian Authority. The text addresses the daily situation in which foreigners (both tourists and migrants) use Palestinian public transport to reach Jerusalem. At most checkpoints, the (Palestinian) passengers are forced to leave the bus to go through a physical check at military checkpoints, while foreign passport holders can remain seated. The leaflet demands that foreigners not take part in apartheid, and get down from the bus even if the driver or passengers tell them it is ok to stay sitting. It concludes: “This note is a courtesy and a reminder. It is your responsibility, as a visitor in Occupied Palestine, to know that your privileges here are a part and product of Israel’s system of injustice, apartheid and oppression”. This satirical leaflet, widely circulated online in 2014, shows that both the passport privilege, and lack of acknowledgment of this privilege, have strained relations between local Palestinians and “internationals”. 21

https://omarivs.tumblr.com/post/75419749267/signed-and-stamped-crfbop142-p-form.

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4 Nationality and International Skills as Privileges in the Labor Market Freedom of movement is ensured by a set of rights and possibilities available to Western migrants in the Middle East by reason of their nationality. ­Economic resources play an important role in an individual’s capacity to use this ­freedom. Rooted in the wealth of their own countries and their social class, most Westerners living in the Middle East can be described as economically privileged compared to the inhabitants of the countries they have migrated to. Only the Gulf States offer a singular example of a local indigenous population which is wealthier, but they often represent a minority of the actual population. In the UAE for example, while holding great privileges, Emirati citizens represent less than 10% of the residents. The economic advantages of Western migrants should be analyzed with regard to the majority inhabitants of this country, that is, other migratory groups and not the local population. In this section, I will demonstrate how Northern migrants benefit from structural and informal advantages in labor markets in the UAE and in the OPT. After presenting the particulars of both labor markets, I will explore how their positions in the job markets, as well as financial and working conditions, are mostly defined by their nationalities, their Western knowledge and cultural capital. 4.1 The Dual Labor Market in an Internationalized Palestine Since the mid-1990s, financial and material aid (humanitarian and development) has continued every year, increasing significantly since the beginning of the second Intifada (September 2000): $656 million per year between 1993–2003, to $1.9 billion since 2004 (Wildeman and Tartir, 2013). Currently, the OPT ranks fourth by country in the world receiving the most humanitarian help, after Syria, Yemen and Iraq.22 While serving different political and economic purposes (Brynen, 1996; Turner, 2006; Bocco and Mansouri, 2008), the international aid has also contributed to the internationalization of the labor market in the Palestinian territories. In East Jerusalem, Ramallah, B ­ ethlehem, or even Gaza city, you can find embassies and representative offices of foreign countries, multilateral and bilateral institutions, international NGO s and local organizations needing international(-ized) staff. English has become a key language in the OPT and global competencies and skills are more and more appreciated by these types of employers. The concept of flexible cultural 22

More information is available here: http://devinit.org/post/global-humanitarian-assis tance-report-2018.

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capital conversion—used by Pei-Chia Lan to describe how “Western migrants, given their linguistic habitus and privileged locations in the global geography of power, are able to convert their English-language capital into economic and social capital and status privilege” (2011: 1672)—is particularly helpful in understanding this phenomenon as a global trend. While mastery of English and linguistic habitus are important in the labor market, this capital is not limited to native English speakers; other European nationalities can also benefit from it. Degrees from prestigious universities and/or professional experience in Western institutions are part of this cultural and symbolic capital that privileged individuals can easily convert in the Palestinian labor market, due to the importance of international funding in many sectors. As Alberto, a Spanish consultant for a local NGO who at the time of the interview had lived for three years in the West Bank, stated: My organization hired me because I know the European ‘blah blah’ [rhetoric]. It is what they need [to get funding]. I was in Brussels for two years, I know the vocabulary that they love: Good governance, sustainability, gender empowerment or capacity building! Palestinians see us as people who know how to use these words properly and can bring funding to their organization. Foreigners, mostly Westerners, and Palestinians from the local upper class who have studied abroad, benefit from this internationalization of specific sectors of the Palestinian economy. I isolated two levels in the aid-related labor ­market: one level exclusively reserved to foreigners, and another in which foreigners compete with locals. Within international organizations (governmental or not), a certain number of positions are reserved for foreigners and, sometimes, nationals of specific countries. The job offers circulate on international or national networks, not local ones, and they will usually request mastery of a specific language or a precise nationality to restrict the positions to their own citizens. If in some cases, especially in diplomatic circles, the imperative of neutrality or representation of one country motivates these national preference choices, these limitations are also in place for positions without such stakes. For example, the job of coordinator of French language courses at the French Institute in Ramallah can be given only to a French national recruited through a specific program for French youth. Far from being an isolated example, this type of human resources management contributes to the influx of foreign nationals into the OPT, when competent Palestinian workers could be hired. Thus, while these jobs are located in the OPT, they are indexed on an international salary grid (usually paid in dollars or euros), and they are not accessible to locals.

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However, not all foreigners work in such positions. At the second level of the labor market, Westerners and Palestinians are in competition. Specific sectors of the local market are particularly internationalized, such as education, culture and the arts, public relations and communication, international law and human rights, or consultancy and research. Numerous foreigners hold a position in one of these sectors in the main cities of the OPT. Among my sample, they mostly found work quickly after their arrival, or easily when they wanted to change employer. Several recruitment criteria contribute to this privileged professional situation: linguistic and technical competencies, thematic expertise over regional and local expertise, belonging to small but dense social networks, and freedom of movement (Chaveneau, 2018). Here I would like to emphasize the latter, showing the articulation of national and professional privileges in a specific context. Numerous organizations and government institutions have their main office in East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel. Thus, many employers require the ability to travel freely in or to the West Bank. If some organizations are ready to ask for permits from the Israeli authorities for their Palestinian employees, not all are willing or able to do so. In addition, these permits might be refused for a large number of reasons, out of the control of the employee or employer. Freedom of movement gives a significant advantage to foreign workers when applying for a position, while Palestinians are at the mercy of Israeli goodwill (or lack of it). Although most of the time this criterion is unspoken, some organizations mention it in the job advert. For example, the Bard College of Abu Dis (Al-Quds) University posted in 2014 the position of Recruitment and Study Abroad Officer, stating that applicants should be able to travel with ease through the West Bank and Jerusalem, even in the evenings. The ease of travel demanded, particularly the requirement related to timings, excluded the large majority of Palestinians, who have difficulty in getting permits, which are mostly restricted to the daytime. Thus, only Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and foreigners could meet this requirement. 4.2 Segmentation and Privileges in the UAE Labor Market In the UAE, the labor market is also divided and segmented, separating foreigners and locals,23 and foreigners from other foreigners; this has been called the “ethnonational stratification” of the labor market (Louer, 2012). An individual’s nationality plays a major role in access to the market, and to job opportunities 23

In the Gulf region, in the last decade, governments have tried to increase the job market participation and hiring of their nationals through quotas and financial incentives aimed at semi-governmental or private sector companies. This is called Emiratisation in the UAE, Saudization in KSA, and Kuwaitization in Kuwait.

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at various levels. As Ewers and Dicce demonstrate, the concept of nationality is a defining feature of someone’s identity in countries in which occupation is correlated with nationality (2016: 14). For example, in a ladies’ beauty salon (a very common business in the UAE), the beauticians will be from the Philippines, the masseuses from Thailand or the Philippines, and the hairdressers will be from the Maghreb or Lebanon. Far from being a caricature, these international labor divisions in global cities are based on cross-border networks (Sassen, 2001) and professional specializations (Percot, 2005; Parreñas, 2015), as well as the social hierarchization of nationalities (mentioned above) and racial and ethnic stereotypes.24 Jobs in hospitality, food services, healthcare, IT, domestic work (gardeners, drivers, cleaners, and nannies) or the construction industry employ specific nationalities and ethnic groups on those grounds. It should be noted that those at a higher level in the hierarchy also perpetuate this social structure. For example, Western families will often look for house cleaners or nannies of a specific nationality to work for them (the Philippines), arguing a cultural preference or skills25 rather than acknowledging the social mechanisms behind it. Meanwhile, free from structural job hierarchies and negative stereotypes, Westerners are highly privileged regarding the type of jobs they can apply for, and the consideration they will receive when they do so. South Asians or even Arab citizens26 (Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians or Egyptians) experience discrimination or lack of trust/interest compared to their French, American or British counterparts. The latter’s degrees and professional skills are often considered more substantial and trustworthy. During my fieldwork, I heard numerous testimonies of originally Arab individuals displaying their Western nationality (rather than their Syrian, Tunisian, or Moroccan ones) for a job application or interview, to strengthen their chance of being selected. We can see here, as in the case of Western migrants from non-white origins, that whiteness seems less at play than the passport (from a hegemonic country).

24 25 26

By example, a Filipina beautician told me that even though she would prefer to be a hairdresser, she knew that she would be unable to do so in the UAE, as clients did not like to have their hair done by Filipinas or Asians in general, and requested Arab workers only. It is common to hear Westerners saying aloud that Filipinas are “very good with children” and “really love babies”, that Ethiopians are “hard workers but difficult to deal with”, or “not educated enough”. Laure Assaf (2017) explored the discriminations faced by Arab youth in the UAE due to their ethnic background or nationality.

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Citizenship, and to some extent the country in which a degree was obtained,27 matters a lot in the UAE job market. Regardless of the individual quality of each candidate, Westerners’ privileges in the professional sphere are embedded in series of measures which alleviate potential obstacles for them when arriving to work: recognition of higher education degrees from certain countries, free visas granted on arrival, English as a primary language in the country, etc. Different features allow Westerners to work in the sectors they like or are qualified for, and they often benefit from job opportunities and positions they would not have access to in their home countries, due to stronger competition or higher requirements. Additionally, Westerners are able to showcase their nationality or ethnic origin as a distinctive asset in the job market, especially as entrepreneurs or freelancers. “Drawing on the symbolic capital of being” French, British or A ­ merican (Kunz, 2018: 112), some migrants actively use their national identity and the positive image attached to it for professional purposes: opening a French bakery in Abu Dhabi, starting a French fashion brand in Dubai, or displaying American degrees and nationality as a medical practitioner in order to be recruited by the best hospitals in the country.28 This privileged situation is particularly striking as migrants from Southern countries often experience an occupational downgrading, even if qualified. While this phenomenon has been studied in other countries (Chamozzi, 2009; Mahut, 2018), in the UAE, the segmentation of the labor market combined with social hierarchization of nationalities prevents qualified migrants from Southern countries getting jobs or rising in the hierarchy. 4.3  Financial Inequalities: Advantageous Salaries and Packages, and the ‘Privilege of Precarity’ Regardless of their job position and sector, Western workers living in the Middle East often benefit from advantageous conditions, especially financially. Prior to their migration, they often possess economic resources and savings that place them in a privileged situation compared to most other migrants 27

28

Having a degree from a prestigious (or even less prestigious) university in Europe, ­ ustralia or North America (while not a citizen of a Western country) is an asset in the job A market, and puts an individual in a more privileged position than a Southern worker with a degree from a Southern country. Thus, the nationality of the degree (and the reputation of the education system) benefits the degree holder and puts them in a middle position in this social hierarchy. An individual’s nationality and the place they studied will then be displayed by the ­institution that hired them. The medical sector, largely private in the UAE, offers ­numerous examples of this practice.

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in the UAE, or the locals in the OPT. This gives them a significant cushion— material and psychological—to deal with the move and its various expenses (security deposits, yearly or bi-yearly rent, car rental). This financial situation allows some to work without pay, or at a low salary, for local or non-governmental organizations. Most Palestinians (in the OPT) or migrants coming from Southern countries (in the UAE) are not able to accept such working conditions. Thus, it raises the question of the impact of such privilege—that I call here the “privilege of precarity”—on the local job market, and the access to paid work for locals. While I witness several times Palestinians joking about a situation that “only ‘ajaneb’ [foreigners]” could accept, they are not fooled by this precarity and modesty, which is only temporary. Westerners’ ability to volunteer or freelance in the OPT is, in fact, a direct result of their economic and social privileges.29 Financially supported by their families or spouses, or with their own savings, many people in my sample were volunteering (as a main activity) in refugee camps or in Nablus and Hebron, accepting low salaries to work for cultural and political NGO s (mainly in Ramallah and Bethlehem) or working as freelance journalists, photographers, or consultants. Other researchers have reflected on similar dynamics, such as unpaid internships in Western education systems (Waller, Ingram, and Ward, 2017), or volunteer farm work (Guthman, 2017). In other organizations, foreigners benefit from higher salaries than local employees, due to higher degrees, experience, or a different salary grid for the two categories. In the OPT, international NGO s or United Nations agencies, like United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are regularly accused by Palestinians of not paying their employees equally regardless of nationality. Several times, Palestinian employees of such organizations raised the issue after I mentioned the subject of my research. While the situation varies between employers, in some workplaces there was a real difference in salaries between employees occupying similar positions – but it is something employers are comfortable with. However, in the UAE, the existence of different salary grids depending on the worker’s nationality is far from being taboo, and is actually official in some sectors such as domestic or care services. Indeed, the salary is also the result of the minimum wage set by each country’s embassy in the UAE. These grids by nationality are displayed officially on specialized websites (agencies), or by

29

The links between political activism, volunteering, and belonging to economically and socially privileged groups and families have been developed by Doug McAdam in his work about the Mississippi Freedom Summer participants of 1964 (McAdam, 1990).

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government offices monitoring the domestic work sector.30 On Facebook, in groups of mothers or parents (organized by city or subtopics), or groups seeking staff (maids or nannies), it is common to read adverts asking for specific nationalities, and indicating a salary accordingly. While these differences are clearly stated in professional fields in which only Southern migrants are working (as seen in Figure 2), it is more implicit with highly qualified employees and sectors in which Arab nationals, Westerners and Indians might be in competition (Renard, 2019). Although implicit, it is commonly stated that the “the prevailing wage structure in the region is based on nationality” and firms have a strong preference for “Western workers for highly skilled or senior positions despite the high salaries they command” (Ewers and Dicce, 2016: 15). This difference in salary based on nationality, even though not officially stated in a grid, is often stated and normalized by Western workers (Renard, 2019). During my fieldwork, I met several individuals who held or had recently acquired a second nationality from a Northern country. Each told me that they would always display the Northern passport during the hiring process rather than the other (if originally from a Southern country), in order to get a higher salary. Of course, various practices exist between private and public organizations, but the tendency to pay-by-passport contributes actively to putting Westerners in a privileged position in the UAE job market. It seems to be even more true for “white westerners” and Westerners with “western names”, as stressed by Ewers and Dicce (2016). In addition to salary, Northern migrants may benefit from an expat package aimed at covering the expenses of relocation, distance from the home country, and various other benefits that contribute to the attractiveness of the job and the company. The content varies but includes all or several of the following, in cash and/or in kind: housing, daily transport, moving costs, flight tickets to the home country (yearly or bi-yearly), schooling, health insurance coverage, (unemployed) spouse and dependents’ allowance, and perhaps mobile phone and communications allowances. The principle of the expat package (and their variety) contributes to blurring the financial situations of so-called expats, and creates a significant discrepancy between workers, inside the same company as well as in a similar field. In that respect, benefiting from a package (in addition to salary), and the quality of the package (for example, “platinum” health coverage, business tickets to return home, a high schooling allowance), puts the foreign worker in a very privileged position compared to his/her co-workers (from other nationalities or in lower positions in the hierarchy) and compared 30

See, for example, the price grid for maids by nationality on a website like www.maids.cc.

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to other migrants he/she might encounter. Thus, there are significant divisions in a group that seems homogeneous in terms of supposed race or nationality. However, it should be noted that in the past decade in the UAE, international and local companies and institutions have been reducing the packages (in housing allowance or health insurance coverage, for example) or have stopped some benefits completely (such as reimbursement of flight tickets). This growing trend raises the question of the reliability of these advantages. Such privileges are circumstantial, even though linked to an individudal’s core social identifiers (nationality, gender, level of education), and the status of temporary worker in the UAE contributes to the fragile position of migrants, even the most privileged. Le Renard analyzed this unpredictability as a way of managing and policing foreign residents, discouraging them from formally complaining against their employers or claiming (more) rights (2019: 37). In the OPT, only international and government organizations (embassies, aid agencies, major NGO s) offer such packages. They are usually attached to a specific professional status (where the employee is sent by the employer to the OPT), and they represent a major financial privilege in a country in which salaries are relatively low and benefits (health insurance for example) non-existent, even for foreign employees. These packages are often perceived by Palestinians as symbolic of unjust differences in treatment between foreign workers and local staff. Although the packages divide foreigners, creating two categories, the expats and the others, they also contribute to the creation of a heterogeneous and blurry category of internationals in the eyes of the Palestinians. 5 Conclusion Drawing on two distinct countries, the United Arab Emirates and the ­Occupied Palestinian Territories, this chapter has examined Western migrants’ ­privileges at global and local scales. The concept of expatriation, contested but ­commonly used in Northern migration studies, encompasses the idea that Westerners are not average migrants, or not migrants at all. As pointed out by many researchers, the use of expatriates to name these individuals tends to dismiss or repress any discussion of their racial and class privileges. In line with the postcolonial approach, many works highlight the privileges linked to whiteness, and the economic resources possessed by these migrants (Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Leonard, 2010; Lan, 2011; Le Renard, 2016; Cosquer, 2018). However, it is necessary to pay equal attention to privileges linked to an individual’s nationality, and not just to their supposed race or class, even though these are often intertwined. Thus, this chapter explored first the freedom of movement of

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Western migrants globally and regionally, given that the passport one holds is decisive in migratory trajectories, choices, and experiences abroad. Indeed, freedom of movement is determined by citizenship more than by whiteness, and needs to be connected to other types of privileges. As Glick-Schiller and Salazar emphasize, a long-standing definition of class in historical anthropology spoke of class differences being based on differential access to a range of resources. A regimes-of-mobility approach can challenge us to expand this understanding so that the ability and legal right to travel become one of the criteria by which class is defined and class privilege upheld. (2013: 196) The second type of privileges I have explored here are the structural and informal advantages that Westerners benefit from in the labor market of the country of settlement. The OPT and the UAE, although they have different economic and social contexts, offer interesting illustrations of the ways in which Westerners benefit from the cultural and symbolic capital attached to their belonging to Western countries: language(s), education, professional experiences, and cultural imaginaries can be mobilized by individuals to find (or create) job opportunities, often with significant financial advantages. Thus, when looking at the migration of Western citizens, I argue that nationality plays a crucial role in the conditions of both the migration, and the residency, as it is a key feature of social and professional relationships with underprivileged migrants and locals. While privileges of race or class have been well integrated into migration studies, researchers would benefit from a better articulation of the analysis of nationality—or groups of particular nationalities—as a major privilege at various levels of the migratory experience. References Aas, Katja Franko. 2011. “‘Crimmigrant’ Bodies and Bona Fide Travelers: S­ urveillance, Citizenship and Global Governance”. Theoretical Criminology 15(3): 331–46. ­Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480610396643. Andrucki, Max. 2013. “The Visa Whiteness Machine: Transnational Mobility in Post-Apartheid South Africa”. In Geographies of Privilege, ed. F. W. Twine and B. ­Gardener, 121–135. London: Routledge. Assaf, Laure. 2017. “Jeunesses Arabes d’Abou Dhabi (Émirats Arabes Unis): Catégories Statutaires, Sociabilités Urbaines et Modes de Subjectivation”. PhD thesis, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La défense. Available at: http://www.theses.fr/221536388.

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Balibar, Etienne. 1994. “Qu’est-ce qu’une ‘frontière’?” In Asile, Violence, Exclusion En Europe. Histoire, Analyse, Prospective, ed. M. C. Caloz-Tschopp and A. Clevenot, 335–43. Genève: Université de Genève et Groupe de Genève. Beaugé, Gilbert. 1986. “La kafala: un système de gestion transitoire de la main-d’œuvre et du capital dans les pays du Golfe”. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 2(1): 109–22. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3406/remi.1986.998. Beck, Sylvain. 2018. “Déconstruire l’expatriation à la lumière de la diversité des statuts professionnels et des profils sociologiques des enseignants français au Maroc”. Migrations Societe 174(4): 105–21. Benson, Michaela. 2013. “Postcoloniality and Privilege in New Lifestyle Flows: The Case of North Americans in Panama”. Mobilities 8(3): 313–30. Available at: https://doi.org /10.1080/17450101.2013.810403. Bocco, Riccardo, and Mansouri, Wassila. 2008. “Aide internationale et processus de paix: le cas palestinien, 1994–2006”. A contrario 5(1): 6–22. Botterill, Kate. 2017. “Discordant Lifestyle Mobilities in East Asia: Privilege and ­Precarity of British Retirement in Thailand”. Population, Space and Place 23(5): e2011. ­Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2011. Brynen, Rex. 1996. “Buying Peace? A Critical Assessment of International Aid to the West Bank and Gaza”. Journal of Palestine Studies 25(3): 79–92. Available at: https:// doi.org/10.2307/2538261. Chamozzi, Françoise. 2009. “Risques de l’immigration et déclassement professionnel”. Hommes & migrations. Revue française de référence sur les dynamiques migratoires 1281 (September): 112–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4000/hommesmigrations.391. Chaveneau, Clio. 2015. “‘It all depends on Ben Gourion!’ Contrôles des mobilités étrangères vers les Territoires Palestiniens Occupés”. L’Espace Politique. Revue en ligne de géographie politique et de géopolitique 3(27): 1–18. Available at: http:// espacepolitique.revues.org/3601. Chaveneau, Clio. 2016. “Les ‘Internationaux’ Dans Les Territoires Palestiniens Occupés: Trajectoires, Expériences Migratoires et Engagements Sociopolitiques”. PhD thesis, Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne. Chaveneau, Clio. 2018. Les Internationaux En Palestine: Portrait d’une Migration S­ ingulière. Paris: L’Harmattan. Coles, Anne, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “From ‘Trucial State’ to ‘Postcolonial’ City? The ­Imaginative Geographies of British Expatriates in Dubai”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1317–33. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080 /13691831003687733. Cosquer, Claire. 2018. “‘Expat à Abu Dhabi: Blanchité et Construction du Groupe National chez les Migrant.e.s Français.e.s.”. PhD thesis, Sciences Po Paris. Croucher, Sheila. 2012. “Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality”. Societies 2(4): 1–13. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/soc2010001.

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Ewers, Michael C., and Dicce, Ryan. 2016. “Expatriate Labor Markets in Rapidly Globalising Cities: Reproducing the Migrant Division of Labor in Abu Dhabi and Dubai”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42(15): 2448–67. Available at: https://doi.org /10.1080/1369183X.2016.1175926. Fechter, Anne-Meike. 2007. Transnational Lives: Expatriates in Indonesia. Farnham: Ashgate. Fechter, Anne-Meike, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: ­Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals”. Journal of Ethnic and M ­ igration  Studies 36(8): 1197–1210. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13691831003 687667. Glick-Schiller, Nina, and Salazar, Noel B. 2013. “Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(2): 183–200. Available at: https://doi.org /10.1080/1369183X.2013.723253. Green, Nancy L. 2009. “Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept”. The American Historical Review 114(2): 307–28. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.2.307. Guthman, Julie. 2017. “Willing (White) Workers on Organic Farms? Reflections on ­Volunteer Farm Labor and the Politics of Precarity”. Gastronomica 17(1): 15–19. ­Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2017.17.1.15. Karkabi, Nadeem. 2013. “Lifestyle Migration in South Sinai, Egypt: Nationalisation, Privileged Citizenship and Indigenous Rights”. International Review of Social Research 3(1): 49–66. Keating, Michael, Le More, Anne, and Lowe, Robert, eds. 2005. Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: The Case of Palestine. London: Chatham House. Koppenfels, Amanda Klekowski von. 2014. Migrants Or Expatriates? Americans in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kunz, Sarah. 2016. “Privileged Mobilities: Locating the Expatriate in Migration Scholarship”. Geography Compass 10(3): 89–101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111 /gec3.12253. Kunz, Sarah. 2018. “‘Making Space’ in Cairo: Expatriate Movements and Spatial P ­ ractices”. Geoforum 88(January): 109–17. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum .2017.11.014. Kunz, Sarah. 2020. “Expatriate, Migrant? The Social Life of Migration Categories and the Polyvalent Mobility of Race”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46(11): 2145–62. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1584525. Lan, Pei-Chia. 2011. “White Privilege, Language Capital and Cultural Ghettoisation: Western High-Skilled Migrants in Taiwan”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37(10): 1669–93. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2011.613337. Le More, Anne. 2005. “Killing with Kindness: Funding the Demise of a Palestinian State”. International Affairs (Oxford) 5: 981.

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Le More, Anne. 2008. International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt, Wasted Money. Abingdon-on-Thames: Taylor & Francis. Le Renard, Amélie. 2016. “‘Ici, il y a les Français français et les Français avec origines’: reconfigurations raciales autour d’expériences de Dubaï”. Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines 30(April): 55–78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4000/traces.6414. Le Renard, Amélie. 2017. “Petits arrangements avec l’égalitarisme”. Geneses 109(4): 118–38. Le Renard, Amélie. 2019. Le privilège occidental. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Available at: https://www.cairn.info/le-privilege-occidental--9782724624304.htm. Leonard, Pauline. 2010. Expatriate Identities in Postcolonial Organizations: Working Whiteness. Farnham: Ashgate. Leonard, Pauline. 2013. “Landscaping Privilege: Being British in South Africa”. In Geographies of Privilege, ed. F. W. Twine and B. Gardener, 97–121. London: Routledge. Available at: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/348468/. Lori, Noora. 2012. “Temporary Workers or Permanent Migrants? The Kafala System and Contestations over Residency in the Arab Gulf States”. Institut Français des Relations Internationales (Ifri) Notes de l’Ifri. Louer, Laurence. 2012. “Les enjeux des réformes des politiques de l’emploi dans les monarchies du Golfe.” Etudes du CERI 185: 1–31. Massey, Doreen. 1999. “Imagining Globalization: Power-Geometries of Time-Space”. In A. Brah, M. J. Hickman and M. Mac Ghaill, 27–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McAdam, Doug. 1990. Freedom Summer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mahut, David. 2018. Le déclassement dans la migration: Ethnographie d’une petite bourgeoisie bamakoise installée à Paris. Paris: L’Harmattan. Neumayer, Eric. 2006. “Unequal Access to Foreign Spaces: How States Use Visa Restrictions to Regulate Mobility in a Globalized World”. Transactions of the ­Institute of British Geographers 31(1): 72–84. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661 .2006.00194.x. Parizot, Cedric. 2009. “Temporalities and Perceptions of the Separation between Israelis and Palestinians”. Bulletin Du Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem (20). Available at: https://journals.openedition.org/bcrfj/6319#quotation. Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2015. Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press. Percot, Marie. 2005. “Les infirmières indiennes émigrées dans les pays du Golfe: de l’opportunité à la stratégie”. Revue européenne des migrations internationales 21(1): 29–54. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.2340. Roy, Sara. 1995. The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of de-Development. Washington (DC): Institute for Palestine Studies. Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton (NJ): P ­ rinceton University Press.

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Shamir, Ronen. 2005. “Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility Regime”. Sociological Theory 23(2): 197–217. Simmel, Georg. 1997. “Sociology of Space”. In Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, ed. D. Frisby and M. Featherstone, 27:137–70. London: Sage. Turner, Mandy. 2006. “Building Democracy in Palestine: Liberal Peace Theory and the Election of Hamas”. Democratization 13(5): 739–55. Available at: https://doi .org/10.1080/13510340601010628. Waller, Richard, Ingram, Nicola, and Ward, Michael R. M. 2017. Higher Education and Social Inequalities: University Admissions, Experiences, and Outcomes. London: Routledge. Walsh, Katie. 2007. “‘It Got Very Debauched, Very Dubai!’ Heterosexual Intimacy amongst Single British Expatriates”. Social & Cultural Geography 8(4): 507–33. ­Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360701529774. Walsh, Katie. 2014. “Placing Transnational Migrants through Comparative Research: British Migrant Belonging in Five GCC Cities: Placing Transnational Migrants through Comparative Research.” Population, Space and Place 20(1): 1–17. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1798. Wildeman, Jeremy, and Tartir, Alaa. 2013. “Can Oslo’s failed aid model be laid to rest?” (Al Shabaka policy brief). Ramallah, oPt: Al-Shabaka. Available at: http://www .aidwatch.ps/sites/default/files/resource-field_media/TartirWildeman_PolicyBrief _En_Sep_2013_1.pdf.

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CHAPTER 8

The Expatriate as Heroic Figure of Globalization? Privileged Migration and Neoliberal Ideology in Luxembourg Karine Duplan 1 Introduction Emerging scholarship in expatriate studies since the early 2000s has begun to scrutinize the power relations that shape highly skilled migration (Fechter and Walsh, 2010). Scholars have started to look at mobile professionals and other privileged subjects as migrants like any others in order to understand their everyday lives and subjectivities in relation to transnational mobility (Croucher, 2012). They highlight numerous similarities between mobile professionals and other migrants, from trigger factors of transnational mobility to lived experiences of migration (Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2014). However, despite efforts to deconstruct what still appears as a non-permeable world of a happy few (Glick-Schiller, 2015), the term expatriate continues to convey images of a cosmopolitan elite free to move around the world, representing the top echelon in a hierarchy of global mobility. In colloquial terms, expatriates refers to skilled migrants, often sent abroad by an employer, who live abroad for a defined temporary period. They are thereby supposedly distinguished from immigrants, as they are expected to return to their home country, and because they appear to be embracing transnational mobility as a personal choice, in opposition to immigrants who are associated with forced mobility due to economic factors. The category does not, however, apply to all highly skilled migrants who move abroad for a temporary period of time, and not all expatriates return to their country of origin after their assignment abroad (Cranston, 2017; Kunz, 2016). Moreover, other immigrants do not always settle in their destination country, nor do all move for economic reasons. Migrant and expatriate categories thus cannot be analyzed as discrete categories of mobility but rather as part of a continuum of relational forms of mobility (Massey, 2005). Such hierarchical imaginaries are embedded in representations of these two categories. A quick internet search illustrates how these common imaginaries are infused and spread in our daily lives through the media and institutional and political discourses. The term expatriate gathers images related © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004529526_009 -

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to the network society, airports, mobile professionals and global capitalism, as well as keywords such as competence, skills, project manager, superhero, cosmopolitan, and transnational capitalist. On the other hand, a search for the term immigrant summons images of refugees, boats, families, laborers, and keywords such as integration, crisis, refugee, and illegality. Moreover, internet images of expatriates are largely abstract, favoring men carrying briefcases and wearing dark blue and gray suits. Images of immigrants show everyday people facing the difficulties of everyday life, some of them intimately portrayed – and usually as poor, disadvantaged, non-white subjects. As such, the migrant, “imagined as the embodiment of suffering caused by economic, environmental and political exposure” (Lundström, 2017: 79) remains a discursive category filled in with pre-constituted meanings, while the expatriate “embodies (quite literally) the values of the entrepreneurial market society” (Mitchell, 2016: 121) in a world of border crossings and unfettered mobilities. This differential treatment of two forms of mobility deserves further inquiry. It reveals how migration is shaped by situated imaginaries of mobility and power relations in many forms that contribute to promote an idealized image of the expatriate as hero of our globalized era. This chapter contributes to recent discussions on the definition, use, and limits of the term expatriate. I argue for more deeply integrating the study of privileged migration into migration scholarship. Recent research has indeed focused on unpacking the category of expatriate to avoid further reification (Fechter and Walsh, 2010). Following Brubaker and Cooper’s (2000) discussion on scholarly categories, Kunz (2016) more specifically invites migration studies to retain it as a category of practice. While these works explore the expatriate as a research category from a theoretical perspective, I provide an empirical account based on an ethnographic study among expatriate women in ­Luxembourg that highlights the category of expatriate as a category of identity formation. The expatriate as a category of analysis in migration research has been scrutinized from an intersectional perspective that highlights the intertwining of (post-)colonial, racist, and patriarchal webs of power in the framing of such hierarchies in the experience of transnational mobility. I propose to complement these approaches by scrutinizing further the power relations in relation to neoliberal accounts of globalization. While post- and de-colonial and racial lenses of analysis provide a useful understanding of power dynamics in privileged migration in the Global South, they might be less relevant for analyzing expatriate subjectivities in the making in the context of the mobile North. I argue in this chapter that the figure of the expatriate is produced in everyday

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discursive and embodied practices by migrants themselves as a category of global/neoliberal citizenship formation. This paper provides insights into the following research question: How do transnational migrants produce themselves as ideal neoliberal subjects of globalization in their everyday practices? The answer allows me argue that the category of expatriate remains useful when defined as a category of the everyday practice of globalization. 2

A Malleable Term …

The term expatriate has recently attracted the attention of scholars working on privileged migration, who underline it as a controversial one, notably since its etymology does not reflect its everyday use. While its Latin roots refer to someone living outside of his or her country of origin, it is mostly used to mark a skilled professional who lives abroad for a temporary period before returning to his or her home country, unlike a low-skilled economic worker who is assumed to migrate permanently to a foreign country (Green, 2009). Although migration has existed in various forms and configurations throughout times and spaces, expatriation has become more prominent since the rise of globalization in the late 1980s, characterized as a post-Fordist system that relies on multinational companies sending qualified mobile professionals around the world (Beaverstock, 2002). The term expatriate is used in everyday contexts by various individuals and institutions. Multinational companies refer to their employees on assignments abroad as intra-company transfers or expatriates, the latter also referring to the legal type of contract covering these specific employment situations (­Salamin and Hanappi, 2014; Davoine et al., 2013). Political figures, be they those of the sending or receiving countries, also use this term to differentiate expatriates as non-permanent skilled residents, according to their rights or duties. In addition, the term is used by local people to differentiate themselves from those privileged mobile individuals. It may be used to underline those individuals’ lack of integration in the host country, or their remoteness from or lack of engagement in their country of origin; this contributes to a definition of the expatriate as being uprooted from both countries. Moreover, those referred to as expatriates use the term to self-identify distinctively in an attempt to incorporate their mobile experience in the formation of their selves (Duplan, 2021a; Findlay et al., 2013; Walsh, 2011). As a result, the term expatriate often remains the one used by those privileged while on the move. Finally, the media emphasizes the privileges of a small handful of successful professionals who are granted such movement abroad, conflating the selected character of this

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type of mobility with lifestyle mobility (Benson and O’ Reilly, 2009, 2016). Ideas of success and privilege associated with what has been labeled as expatriation spread and are perpetually reproduced by institutional, corporate, and media discourses, and at the individual level of discourse formation. One can nevertheless question the changing meaning of such a term, and whether its use remains appropriate. Scholars have themselves contributed to the credit of the term expatriate. Indeed, to desacralize privileged migration and include it in mainstream migration research, studies on those labeled as expatriates, or as mobile professionals, migrant professionals, privileged migrants, or highly skilled migrants (among others) have flourished since the 2000s (Fechter and Walsh, 2010). Mostly drawing on established transnationalism or gender migration ­frameworks (Brickell and Datta, 2011; Kofman, 2000; Yeoh and Ramdas, 2014), this work has contributed to scrutinizing further this privileged sphere of migration. However, while bringing fresh and innovative insights into e­ veryday transnational lives, it has also contributed to maintaining the uncertainties that surround those terms. The term’s lack of clarity nevertheless also has to do with its multidisciplinary aspects. As such, discussions continue around its different definitions, from migration and transnational literature to human resources management. 3

… Imbued with Power Relations

Feminist migration scholars (Brickell and Datta, 2011; Kofman, 2000; Kofman and Raghuram, 2005) have demonstrated that highly skilled migration or expatriation is highly gendered. Early migration scholars focused on male executives working for multinational companies (Scott, 2006; Beaverstock, 2002). This gendered bias in research has been analyzed as a prolongation of the gendered biases in the corporate work environment. Indeed, due to the still-operating glass ceiling, expatriation opportunities are mostly offered to males rather than females (Collet and Dauber, 2008). Because early studies were mostly data-led, they relied on work permits, more commonly held by men than women. Kofman (2000) has notably demonstrated how this methodological bias has relegated women to the role of “trailing spouse”. She argues that the methodological individualism that ignores women’s roles in highly skilled migration fails to acknowledge their agency and contributes to the perception of women as non-skilled migrants. Expatriation is criticized as “a pervasively masculine construction where women participate not as economic agents but as moral guardians and preservers of the family” (Yeoh and

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Willis, 1999). Such androcentric views have been challenged by studies dedicated more specifically to family migration (Coles and Fechter, 2008), or to accompanying spouses (Duplan, 2021; Fechter, 2007). They highlight how the lived experiences of expatriation are gendered in this context, as it “bolsters male migrants’ corporate and career trajectories […] prioritis[ing] a particular kind of femininity, in which the spouse withdraws from the labour market and is re-domesticated” (Kofman and Raghuram, 2005: 51). Besides gender, heteronormativity has also been highlighted by queer scholars working on migration, for its role in structuring migration policies, as well as lived experiences of expatriates. Manalansan (2006) has pointed to the role of “implicit normative assumptions around family, heterosexual reproduction and marriage” while researching migrant lives. I (Duplan, 2021a) investigated how female expatriates convey heteronormative sets of practices in their “becoming expats.” Oswin (2012) has analyzed the heteronormative frame that underpins migration policies in Singapore. She also argues that “not simply heterosexuals, but white, middle-class, heterosexual couples with children [constitute] the societal standard in migration studies” (Oswin, 2014: 91). Hence there is still a crucial need for scholars to engage reflexively when working on expatriation, and a need to challenge sexual bias in migration studies that portrays the migrant subject as normatively (cis‑)heterosexual. Following feminist and queer scholars, critical migration studies have recently brought to the fore the need for reflexivity in research practice. Fechter and Walsh (2010) have deplored how migration studies contributes to renewing the implied power relations that initially forged it. Similarly, Kunz (2016) addresses the need for scholars to be more critical and self-reflexive, and to be aware of what assumptions they accept, implicitly or explicitly. Cranston (2017: 2) underlines that the “term remains ambiguous as an analytical category”. As argued by recent works that mostly draw on postcolonial and critical race theories, the expatriate tends “to be reserved to white Western migrants” (Fechter and Walsh, 2010: 1199) who move mostly for professional reasons to a postcolonial world. Leonard (2010) has demonstrated how expatriate communities rely on performances of whiteness. This working whiteness, or learning to be white, has also to do with class position, as Lundström (2010) demonstrates in her study of low-middle-class Swedish female expatriates in the United States. Le Renard (2019) emphasizes how being white is not only related to skin color, but also to professional status and Western citizenship. Cranston (2017) has also demonstrated how British expatriates in Singapore use racialization processes to distinguish themselves not only from the racialized local elite, but also from low-skilled migrants coming from the Southern countries, contributing to postcolonial forms of encounters (Coles and Walsh, 2010). Hindman

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(2009) shows how expatriates conform to a Western understanding of culture that contributes to the othering of local workers. Yeoh and Willis (2005) have also underlined the separate spheres of Singaporean and British transmigrants in China. Others argue that expatriates are “defined by reference to where they came from rather than who they are. This arises from the difference-in--power relationship between the country of origin […] and the host country” (Guild, 2009: 20, cited by Klekowski, 2014: 17). As such, postcolonial continuities in expatriation have been highlighted as the most relevant frame for a future research agenda (Fechter and Walsh, 2010; Leonard, 2010). Indeed, whiteness needs to be situated as a social ethnicity to avoid making non-white people appear as local postcolonial Others where expatriate communities develop. While the question of qualifications has not raised such intense discussions, one could ask whether conflating the expatriate with the highly skilled c­reates bias for the highly skilled who are not expatriates – for instance highly skilled refugees. Conversely, not all those labeled as expatriates count as highly skilled, as demonstrated for instance by Walsh (2010) and Le Renard (2019) in their work on Dubai. The term expatriate thereby carries with it assumptions of class and education status that confer power and privilege. Expatriation condenses privileges of gender, race, nationality, class, and professional status, as well as sexuality. These privileges are deeply embedded, shaping white, Western, middle-class bodies as the most eligible to circulate in transnational spaces of expatriation. Postcolonial encounters are hence particularly salient in the context of Western migration in countries in the Global South. However, since privileged mobile professionals are also referred to as expatriates in the context of the Global North, the question remains of how to understand such a separate, if not distinctive, status in the context of North– North mobilities. Scrutinizing further neoliberal values associated with this specific form of mobility will provide new understanding of the lived experiences of such a category of migration. 4

An Identity Category of Global/Neoliberal Citizenship Formation

As described above, the term expatriate is not neutral, nor is its use. It is imbued with power relations and carries with it implicit privilege, which makes an intersectional analysis useful for a better understanding of the challenges when using this category. Through the definition of mobility as a power relation that divides and hierarchizes, the expatriate as transnationally mobile subject appears as a desirable migrant subject compared to other migrants. As argued by Leinonen (2012: 220) in her study of expatriates in Finland,

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­Americans, mostly highly skilled, are considered as desired foreigners “who may bring international ‘flavor’” to the country, whereas mainstream discourses on immigration are often deprecating. This positive discourse of internationalization contributes to producing a vision of a borderless world that matches neoliberal conceptions of globalization. Leinonen analyses this vision through the tension between (im)migration and internationalization (Leinonen, 2012) that highlights how the emphasis on border crossings and cosmopolitanism is encoded with neoliberal ideology when it comes to migration. This matches Faist’s (2013) analysis of the mobility turn, and the related dichotomization in public debate into mobility and migration. Drawing on Beck (2008) and Bauman (1998), Faist reveals how opportunities for global border crossings increase the position of individual subjects within hierarchies of global capitalism. He argues that the term mobility connotes “euphemistic expectations of gain for individuals and states”, while the term migration calls for “social integration, control and the maintenance of national identity” (Faist, 2013: 1640) This hierarchization between two categories of cross-border individuals emphasizes the relational dimension of the expatriate category, along with its possibility according to spatial and temporal contexts. It promotes the spatial movement of mobile professionals as highly desirable in a context of neoliberal globalization. Hence mobility stands as the new world order emphasized by neoliberal doxa (Borja et al., 2013), while the expatriate becomes the desirable figure of an ideal free-floating neoliberal subject. Moreover, neoliberal ideology emphasizes a market-oriented approach towards capital accumulation. As such, it contributes to redefining the role of the state while relying on individual responsibility. Neoliberalism has led to “flexible, globally oriented actors” (Mitchell, 2003: 126) who favor self-­ management and individual freedom as new forms of governance (Rose, 1999). As underlined by Ong (2003: 696), “government is no longer interested in t­ aking care of every citizen, but wants him/her to act as a free subject who self-actualises and relies on autonomous action to confront global insecurities”. As such, this “ethos of flexibility” (Elliott, 2014) becomes a marker of class eliteness (Elliott and Urry, 2010; Faist, 2009, 2013) as a way of self-realization within the hierarchies of neoliberal capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). This in-depth transformation goes hand-in-hand with the “(re) articulation” of citizenship (Ong, 2005). As such, citizenship in its global version refers to the institutionalization of individual freedom on a global scale, beyond national territorialized ties. Ong (1999) argues that expatriates benefit from privileges that are not connected to territorialized ties, involving mutations in citizenship: “in the era of globalisation, individuals as well as governments develop a flexible notion of citizenship and sovereignty as strategies to

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accumulate capital and power” (Ong, 1999: 6). Relying on a cultural approach to citizenship, the author (2006) emphasizes the distinctive status and feelings of belonging conferred by such a form of neoliberal citizenship. This leads us to embrace how “elite citizenship is thus paradoxically about both the capacity to be mobile and free-floating and the ability to form and inhabit an enclave” (Mitchell, 2016: 125, emphasis in original), the latter being materialized in the formation of a so-called expat bubble, the contours of which are noted for their blurriness (van Bochove and Engbersen, 2015). Scholars have consequently highlighted the risks of reification of the figure of the expatriate, along with the role played by migration scholars in the renewal of the category itself (Findlay and Cranston, 2015). Although its fluidity is now well admitted, as is that of its spatial formation known as the expat bubble, the term expatriate continues to be used in academic studies. However, one can ask whether the term acts as a catchall category, making it irrelevant as a category of analysis in migration and transnational studies. Looking more closely, research informants themselves (those broadly referred to as expatriates) continuously use it to define their “global sense of self” (Massey, 1994) in the context of transnational mobility. This highlights the use, and usefulness, of such a term in established research. Brubaker and Cooper’s (2000) discussion on categories of identity should be considered for a better understanding of the power of the identity category. Drawing on this framework, I define the expatriate as an identity category of citizenship formation. In their groundbreaking paper on the uses of the term identity, and its academic as well as social and political implications, Brubaker and Cooper (2000) assess its relevance as an analytical category. While scrutinizing the various uses of the term by different actors involving intersectional identity politics, they argue that identity is, like “many key terms in the interpretative social sciences […] both a category of practice and a category of analysis.” They define “categories of practice” drawing on Bourdieu as “categories of everyday social experience, developed and deployed by ordinary social actors, as distinguished from the experience-distant categories used by social analysts” (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000: 4). As such, identity is used by ‘lay’ actors in some (not all!) everyday settings to make sense of themselves, of their activities, of what they share with, and how they differ from others. It is also used by political entrepreneurs to persuade people to understand themselves, their interests, and their predicaments in a certain way, to persuade certain people that they are (for certain purposes) ‘identical’ with one another and at the same time different from others (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000: 4–5). -

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However, its continuing use by academics may contribute to forms of ­reification, avoiding its relational characteristics and the way the category is produced through everyday socio-spatial and discursive practices. Below, I explore the everyday making of the expatriate by privileged migrants while on the move. This contributes to a better understanding of the use of the term by transmigrants themselves as a way of distinctively defining their global sense of self, compared to other individuals, be they migrants or non-migrants. Many studies have addressed how expatriates produce themselves through relational processes of racial othering in contexts of white Westerners going South, mostly to former colonies. Instead, I scrutinize how expatriates produce themselves distinctively in the context of white Westerners going North, where racial and colonial difference does not appear as salient as in the global South contexts (Manalansan, 2006). Following recent work on the boundary-­making processes that allow the expatriate to be referred to as a desirable migrant (Oswin, 2010)—which in turn works as a desirable category of be(com)ing—I assert that these processes are imbued with power. Furthermore, I argue that, in addition to an intersectional analysis of power relations such as race, gender, and class, power should be read in relation to neoliberal accounts of mobility. Its injunctive forms of being mobile that preclude the shaping of distinctive global senses of selves. This chapter illustrates how expatriates in Luxembourg, who are mostly Westerners, relate themselves to an ideal figure of free-floating citizens of the neoliberal world. It shows how they adjust their everyday practices in line with neoliberal narratives and define themselves as global citizens. 5

Researching Expatriates’ Identities in Luxembourg

The research was conducted in the City of Luxembourg, capital of the eponymous Grand Duchy. With fewer than 120,000 inhabitants,1 Luxembourg is a European capital whose population is 70 percent foreign residents from more than 168 nationalities2 – much like New York or London. Despite its modest size, Luxembourg is becoming more and more global (Sohn, 2012) and has been ranked since 2016 at the Alpha level of Globalization and World Cities Group3 alongside much bigger urban centers such as San Francisco, Dublin, or New Delhi. Multiculturalism is considered to be part of the ­Luxembourgish 1 119,214 inhabitants – source: Ville de Luxembourg, 31 December, 2018. 2 Source: Ville de Luxembourg, 31 December, 2018. 3 The ranking is available here : https://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/geography/gawc/world 2016t.html. -

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national identity, promoted by a nation-branding campaign launched in 2016 (Duplan, 2021b). Luxembourg’s population includes a high ratio of skilled migrant workers, a trend labeled as “golden immigration” (Felhen, 2009). Most come from other European countries4 and work in multinational corporations and European institutions, and they are locally labeled as expatriates. However, despite its strong international features, Luxembourg has been overlooked in established transnational studies. This paper is based on ethnographic research carried out from 2012 to 2014. Alongside immersive participant observation, I conducted multiple in-depth, semi-structured interviews with female expatriates that focused on the arrangement of their everyday geographies according to their gender position. Although the research informants have diverse migratory backgrounds and profiles, I retain the term expatriate in this chapter, as it is used by the research participants themselves, underlining a sense of belonging to such a community through the performative production of expat subjectivities. I define expatriate women in this research as highly skilled migrants, based on the definition of the highly skilled from the Organization for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD), who have moved to Luxembourg for a short to midlength period due to a job or career decision by one of the members of the household. I limited temporary migration to stays that did not exceed six years of living in Luxembourg. Beyond an exclusive definition of expatriation related to job assignments for intra-company transfers, I include in this definition what the literature calls self-initiated expatriates, that is, highly skilled migrants who have moved abroad on their own for job-related reasons, without benefiting from an expatriate agreement. However, I excluded young professionals who come to Luxembourg from neighboring areas in search of job opportunities, as they are more likely to be identified as cross-border migrants than expatriates. I also decided not to include European civil servants because most of them benefit from tenure-track positions and are much more geographically stable. This selection has consequences, most notably in terms of the age range and family status of research participants. A total of twenty-one women participated in formal interviews. All of them were parents between twenty-eight and forty-five years old, living in heterosexual families with children under the age of eighteen. Four were newcomers (living less than one year in Luxembourg), and six were soon to return to their home countries. Only two were leading their household’s mobility project in coming to Luxembourg for their own job; the others were accompanying their 4 Eighty-seven percent of foreign residents hold an EU passport.

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male partner, reinforcing the aforementioned global sexual division of labor. Eight of them were benefiting from expatriation packages; four were under local contracts with side benefits; others were self-initiated expatriates. After following their spouses, eleven out of nineteen started working again, mostly part-time as freelancers. Six were third-country nationals;5 others were EU citizens.6 A snowball sampling technique was used to recruit research participants, who were initially contacted through neighborhoods, schools, and expatriate clubs (such as the British Ladies Club and the American Women’s Club), or other social ties. Because of my own situation as a French resident living in a heterosexual family in Luxembourg, I was identified throughout the fieldwork by the research respondents as an expatriate myself. This position facilitated my integration in various social opportunities as well as influencing the course—and often the ease—of the interviews on the basis of an implicit shared situation (Duplan, 2017). 6

The Expatriate as Heroic Figure of a Globalized Era

The discursive and socio-spatial practices through which expatriates in ­Luxembourg identify themselves as such advance specific sets of values and norms involved with transnational mobility. I first disentangle the assumptions that underlie the transnational mobility project, which enhance transnational mobility as a privilege of a cosmopolitan elite. Next, I analyze expatriates’ everyday geographies of encounters as the self-production of an imagined distinctive cosmopolitan community, focusing on practices involving three central places in expatriates’ everyday lives. The discursive and embodied means mobilized by expatriates to define themselves as such in relation to their experience of transnational mobility contribute to producing hierarchical forms of mobility. 6.1  Cosmopolitanism and Geographical Conceptions of Transnational Mobility Expatriation refers to a professional, economically rewarding transnational type of migration (Schneider and Meil, 2008) for the highly qualified. However, while it is considered as a chosen form of migration in contrast to economic migration, its rationales can be much more complex, and economic constraints 5 From the United States, New Zealand, India, Russia, Brazil, and Japan. 6 From France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, corresponding to the nationalities most represented in Luxembourg.

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can also play a role in the decision to move abroad. This is how Jane, a British mother of two who came with her family because of her partner’s job, explains the reasons behind her family’s expatriation: My husband has been working as a contractor for [company name]. He was working for the culture department, he was a contractor for five years, and they decided, when recession really hit, they decided to let all the contractors go […]. Then, Luxembourg came up: he had a few interviews – the whole process took one year, very long process, I thought it was never going to happen and luckily, finally he had the job […]. I was … not happy to go! It was for financial reasons. It was a good career step for my husband, and we had to pay the mortgage on the house, so financially it had to […]. We did not mean to move abroad. It was really economic and job-oriented. Jane’s words underline the blurriness of categorizations between expatriate and migrant if one seeks to differentiate between forced or chosen transnational mobility. Expatriation remains nevertheless related to career development, but even if the professional career is the basic variable, transnational mobility affects all members of the household (Hindman, 2013). Far from being driven only by economic and professional rationales, expatriation thereby takes part in a wider life project that aims at a better quality of life through mobility. This is what New Zealand mother of two Kate, who benefited from a previous expatriation experience in Europe before becoming a mother, explains: I had one year off from work when I had my daughter and I didn’t really want to go back to work. But we kind of needed for me to work, if we wanted to stay in New Zealand, because we needed two incomes, because it’s quite expensive to live there […]. It was just something that happened. We were not looking but I did not want to go back to work and it would not have been possible for me in New Zealand to stay at home. And it just happened that that role was advertised in my husband’s work. Kate focuses on how the choice of mobility improved the quality of family life. The aims of better life-work balance, family life, or education options for children appear in many interviews. Lisa, an American woman married to a New Zealander, who has two children who attend the local school, explained their next move from Luxembourg to Sydney by saying: “I don’t think it’s for jobs necessarily that we will be moving. It’s partly for jobs, we won’t be out of work, but primarily it’s for the kids. And also, just to get some more excitement.” Lisa

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makes clear how the family adjusts their choice of localization according to lifestyle opportunities. Expatriation goes far beyond professional migration in this case. Scholars have referred to expatriation that focuses on this active search for a better quality of life through transnational mobility as lifestyle migration (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009). Because of its role in the production of transnational subjectivities through mobility, it can also be referred to as a lifestyle mobility, defined by Tara Duncan et al. (2013: 4) as “an on-going semi-­ permanent move of varying duration […] that may involve multiple ‘homes’, ‘belongings’ and sustained throughout the life course […] as an on-going fluid process, carrying on as everyday practice over time”, in which “lifestyle practices offer a distinctive sense of personal identity on the one hand, and a distinct and recognizable collective identity on the other” (Duncan et al., 2013: 2). When looking to move abroad, expatriates seek to be confronted by cultural differences. Beyond professional rationales, the project of mobility is underlined by specific social and geographical ideas of transnational mobility that match Hannerz’s definition of cosmopolitanism as “willingness to engage with the Other”, defining “openness to new experiences (as) a vocation” (Hannerz, 1990: 243). That is what Goretti, an Italian woman who lived in Paris before moving to Luxembourg, says about opening her mind and having a feeling of freedom: Living abroad, already, it really opens your mind. You meet a lot of d­ ifferent people, and … well, you have to know how to open your mind, but I mean for me it is very important to meet people with different ­experiences, different lives. I do love to know people, their stories, what they did and also, I do love this freedom to do things. Goretti’s words underline her aspiration for cultural cosmopolitanism, which she considers to be innate and waiting to be enhanced through the experience of transnational mobility. For her, as for many other women I met, expatriation is the gateway to cosmopolitan values and skills, a distinctive extraction from social structures that transform her into a global citizen: she needs to be open to being an expatriate, and openness and mobility are evidence of her belonging to a distinctive world of uprooted cosmopolitans. Indeed, this ability and ease of movement has been historicized as a privilege belonging to the upper class of the European eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Young members of this class were trained to become cosmopolitan bourgeois and aristocrats through a long journey throughout Europe called the Grand Tour, which aimed to complete their abilities to rule and govern by acquiring social and cultural skills (Wagner, 2007).

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Similarly, while enhancing supposedly pre-existing cosmopolitan abilities, expatriation plays a formative role in children’s education. It contributes to produce what is commonly labeled now as “third culture kids” (Van Reken et al., 2009) who are raised as “citizens of the world”. This is what Claire, a French mother of two children who attend a French school in Luxembourg, makes clear when explaining the role of transnational mobility in her life and that of her children: “It gives a great openness: for us, it helps us, or it strengthens us, in our ability to adapt; for the children, it makes them acquire it.” These words illustrate the transformative power of expatriation as well. Transnational mobility represents a situated cosmopolitan imagination (Beck, 2002) “articulated through cultural modes in which codifications of both Self and Other undergo transformation” (Delanty, 2006: 37), illustrated by other interviewees such as Leonor, a Spanish mother who arrived in Luxembourg after three years in Bangkok: The girls have the opportunity […] to understand that diversity is good and that you are part of the world, part of this complex diversity of the people. And if you know other people how they are, you can understand how you are yourself. Besides its association with a historical class privilege and distinction, ­transnational mobility is also closely linked to the power of those who can enjoy the free movement offered by the globalized world. In contrast to the new mobility paradigm (Sheller and Urry, 2006), which posits mobility as an ontological condition and conflates cosmopolitanism with globalization, critical scholars have highlighted social mechanisms and dynamics that shape mainstream ­cosmopolitan urbanism (Binnie et al., 2006; Faist, 2013; Glick-Schiller, 2015). Others argue that mobility is constitutive to modernity and imbued with s­ pecific sets of values, which have evolved to become an unquestioned basic feature of our global era (Borja et al., 2013; Cresswell, 2006). The cosmopolitan has been defined as being in search of “unfamiliar cultural encounters” (Ley, 2004: 159), becoming the desirable mobile person symbolized by the transnational. However, far from being equally accessible and beneficial to all, globalization can be criticized for its power geometries, as a tale of Western countries that ignore their own spatiality (Massey, 2005). This hegemonic narrative of globalization offering an ideal of mobility appears in expatriates’ accounts of their own mobility projects. Beyond a search for financial gain, being an expatriate implies for these women openness and tolerance to others and a cosmopolitan way of life, influenced by particular conceptions of transnational mobility connected to its historical construction as well as to

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current neoliberal ideologies spread by globalization. These conceptions and lifestyles, shaped by power relations and expressing a hierarchical relationship to mobility, are waiting to be embodied in everyday practices. 6.2  Implementing Neoliberal Conceptions of Globalization in Everyday Geographies Once in Luxembourg, expatriate families create new social relations and routines. They learn how to navigate their new daily scenery. Since expatriation has been deeply scrutinized through the workplace (Kofman and Raghuram, 2005), I choose here to focus on three central places in expatriates’ everyday lives beyond the workplace: international schools, expatriate clubs, and dinner parties. A gender analysis of expatriates’ everyday geographies in these three places allows a better understanding of the spatial performativity of their everyday practices. I draw here on Butler’s definition of performativity, which focuses on the reiteration of actions that create norms, and on identities that we can extend to places, for “it is always the reiteration of a norm or a set of norms, and to the extent that it acquires an act-like status in the present, it conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition” (Butler, 1993: 12). The focus on performativity highlights the role of space and place in the making of transnational subjectivities. 6.2.1 International Schools As we have seen, expatriation is considered as a means of enhancing one’s cosmopolitan abilities by extending openness to the world’s cultural diversity. With that aim, one of the rationales of expatriation for families consists in exposing their children to the world’s diversity and educating them as global citizens (Pollock and Van Reken, 2009). In this context, sending children to international schools represents for mobile families a strategy to socialize them as members of the transnational elite (Reay et al., 2009). Female expatriates, who mostly follow their male spouses, engage deeply in their parental role in order for their children to learn how to navigate within this international environment. These institutions encourage values such as openness and tolerance, matching the supposedly innate cosmopolitanism of the transnational elite. Svetlana, a Russian mother of two who arrived in Luxembourg eighteen months previously and whose family experienced administrative difficulties before being allowed to stay on a more stable basis, explains: It’s a good opportunity for us to learn about the world. It’s a good ­opportunity for the kids to get a good education […] I think the most important thing for the kids is that they now understand that there are

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lots of different countries and cultures – not showing them on the map and they will never know what is it going over there, or visiting a country as a tourist – they know from the inside: they have friends from different parts of the world, they have different languages, I think it’s important to feel this big world. Beyond a gendered mothering role, mothers’ involvement in their children’s integration reveals a socially distinct strategy (Mulholand and Ryan, 2015). As Wagner (1998) has shown in her analysis of what she calls the “new elites of globalisation” in the French context, schooling strategies are part of a global project of international lifestyle training, giving children international cultural and social capital through a highly competitive academic environment with opportunities for multicultural socialization. In this context, female expatriates, especially those who follow their spouses, seek to achieve a perfect model of mothering through socialization and education by giving their children the transnational skills needed to take part in the elite milieu. While central to expatriation strategies, the role of international schools is not limited to children’s education. Beyond serving as a model of what multiculturalism should mean, international schools play a crucial role in making contacts, especially for newly arrived families. The schools organize various events and celebrations with the support of volunteers. Parents actively s­ upport new families by organizing informal gatherings. This is what Jane highlights when narrating how she made contacts when arriving in Luxembourg: I could not believe it when I arrived, after having been in (her children’s school) for a week, I think I had been invited to coffees at two big houses, there was a class coffee morning, you know, all these emails were flying in, and it was all from the school. And I met a lot of people […]. I could not believe it, how quickly I met friends here, it was unbelievable. Once again, this relates mostly to female expatriates, due to their parental role in the context of the gender restructuring that typically occurs in a couple’s relationship after transnational mobility. Women often comply with this gendered role, making contacts for their children and husband and becoming the head of socialization for the whole family. These social relations develop among expatriate families, which contribute to reproducing discourses on ­cosmopolitanism. They also enhance a specific gendered role, the one of a ­dedicated mother, which echoes the gendered dimension of expatriates’ ­meeting places.

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6.2.2 Expatriate Clubs Expatriate clubs are other places specifically dedicated to socialization among expatriates (Fechter, 2010; Hindman, 2013; Leonard, 2010). Besides professional and leisure clubs, which expatriate families mostly visit on weekends as ordinary places of transnationalism (Beaverstock, 2011), specific organizations support the social integration of women. The genesis of such clubs goes back to colonial-era meeting places for female expatriates who followed their male spouses at a time when they were not allowed to work. As such, they were even more strongly assigned the role of homemaker (Fechter, 2010). The survival of such organizations in a postcolonial era has been criticized as a form of postcolonial continuity (Fechter and Walsh, 2010), and its persistence in European countries deserves special attention. In Luxembourg, both the British Ladies Club (BLC) and the American Women’s Club play an important role in expatriates’ integration, although broader local integration should be understood in a translocal way (Brickel and Datta, 2011). Clubs are therefore dedicated to supporting newcomers in their material settling, and in developing new social relationships. They distinctively concentrate on expatriates only, however, enhancing values, norms, and discourses around cultural cosmopolitanism and highlighting expatriates’ integration into a transnational network, while promoting local culture as a curiosity of interest to people who self-identify as cosmopolitans. Clubs organize visits and tours to enable newcomers to discover and familiarize themselves with the host country. They also provide tips on how to better navigate local settings and experiences. Sophie, the contact person in charge of the newcomers’ events at the BLC, expands upon this by underlining that the BLC is open to anyone without discrimination regarding class, nationality, or gender. However, because of its name which reflects its historical foundation in the gendered structure of expatriation, and of a sort of reification of women as naturally more open to social roles, clubs are almost exclusively visited by women, as found in other case studies (Fechter, 2007; Toccafondi Shutt, 2015). Sophie points out: A French dad came (to the newcomers’ coffee) and then he left (laughs) […] People do ask if they can bring their husband (to the night out) so I always say yes but I always say to them … I always let them know if there are other guys coming … I don’t want them to feel like “I am the only guy”, or I don’t want them to think there will be others, because ­characteristically most of the time there aren’t. You know I do have guys who pop up on coffee mornings, but they are more likely to come in the evening.

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One can question the relative homogeneity in terms of class position of such social networks and criticize its exclusion of local people who obviously do not visit such places. However, female clubs appear to be important places of belonging while on the move, contributing to shaping a sense of belonging, which is in turn shaped by gender (Fechter, 2007, 2010; Toccafondi Shutt, 2015). Jane relates: I joined [the BLC], primarily because I knew nobody and I wanted to make social contacts, because it was before the school started so I didn’t have the school experience […]. This was my first contact really. And it was very positive, because it was a whole lot of older ladies, like ten, and then all new ones, desperate to meet people, some of them with kids, some of them without kids. And you know, I took phone numbers, just to make you feel better, that you are not alone […]. It’s to feel comfortable, you may not have anything in common with these people only the fact that you are in Luxembourg […]. I didn’t ring any of them to be honest, except Amy, you know, we have actually the same professional background. Jane emphasizes the crucial role played by the BLC in feeling emotionally comfortable and how this helped in her local integration. Local integration has nevertheless to be understood as an in-between space between the global world of fluxes and the local rootedness of non-mobile people. Indeed, visited by a largely homogeneous social population, clubs do lack local connections. They benefit from a distinctive status and play an important role in shaping expatriate subjectivities (Mulholland and Ryan, 2015). Their gender uniformity also has to be underlined for its comforting role in the strict gender division of the expatriate sphere, as well as the gendered dimension of female expatriates’ subjectivities. 6.2.3 Dinner Parties Expatriate ordinary lifestyle is characterized by the intensity of social events. By focusing on expatriate lives beyond the workplace, I have chosen not to focus on professional events but on private ones. Expatriates most often benefit from comfortable housing conditions that facilitate organizing social events in their own homes. Such events count as a major factor in the successful integration of the entire family in the context of expatriation. Being away from one’s own country and family and social networks requires developing new social relations, and dinner parties are highlighted by many interviewees as characteristic of expatriate ways of socialization. Astrid, an upper-middleclass Parisian woman, underlines this social need: “Yes, we go out a lot indeed,

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but just because we need to meet people […]. It is a social need that everyone experiences as an expat. So, you’re invited and you give back the invitation, that’s all.” Beyond developing social relations, inviting or being invited becomes part of an expatriate lifestyle. Leonor argues that it helps to differentiate expatriates from other migrants. Defining herself as “an expat of Spanish citizenship”, she explains that other Spanish migrants in Luxembourg do not go out that often, but expatriates often have a full social calendar: International British people have a very busy social agenda. Look! I met a new friend at school, they are British and we wanted to invite them for dinner because we want to meet other people who are not Spanish, but it was so complicated to find a date: “you know, my husband is away,” and then: “no, we have already another invitation,” etc. In Leonor’s words, invitations and dinner parties are part of an expatriate’s ­condition: “You are much more open when you are an expat, you want to meet people.” This affirmation contributes to naturalizing social abilities of openness, while obscuring power relations and neoliberal model of selective cosmopolitanism. Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere (Duplan, 2021a), the heterosexual couple appears to be a major element of such opportunities of socialization among expatriates, assuming transnational mobility as a common factor and condition for this cosmopolitan entre-soi. The couple is staged according to defined gendered roles that recall Goffman’s (1977) arrangement between the sexes. During dinners, dress codes, attitudes, seating arrangements, and even conversations are gendered. This social ritualization contributes to the standardization of gendered behaviors that contribute to the social and cultural reproduction of the household (Baldassar and Merla, 2014; Kofman and Raghuram, 2015) and social hierarchies. This upholds the reiteration of heteronormativity as a condition for successful integration within this expatriate social sphere. Heteronormativity works as a social marker within hierarchies of global capitalism. Social rituals rely on standards that are ­supposed to be expected, imitating a model that works a regulatory fiction, as Butler (1990) has shown for gender expressions. Performing these standards allows ­expatriates to access this transnational sphere and to be defined as transnational elite as well. Not all women endorse these kinds of socialization, however. Sihem, a ­British mother of five children, explains that for these kinds of events, she has no other choice than “to switch clothes and to switch mind”. However, instead of complaining about it, many women show a form of satisfaction in achieving

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such an expected role, which can be compared to what Arieli (2007) calls “the task of being content”. All in all, this leads women to heteronormative daily performances that imitate a white and bourgeois model, shaping their expatriate subjectivities as a distinctive sense of self while contributing to the othering of those outside their privileged world. 7 Conclusion: Transnational Subjectivities, Global Sense of Self and Neoliberal Citizenship Selected privileged migrants, by conforming to neoliberal narratives of g­lobalization, produce themselves as expatriates through their everyday ­practices of transnational mobility. In so doing, they perform the role of an ideal figure of a global neoliberal citizen. I have shown in this chapter how discursive and socio-spatial practices of transnational mobility contribute to the production of a distinctive global sense of self (Massey, 1994). The everyday practices of expatriates echo cosmopolitan conceptions that should be historicized and situated. This chapter has shown how these ­geographical conceptions of transnational mobility enhance openness to the Other and are infused with power relations and embedded with aspatial ideas of an unfettered mobility as evidence of achievement (Massey, 2005). They favor global aspiration in contrast to rootedness and locality, renewing power geometries in relation to mobility (Massey, 1994) and contributing to the production of elitist transnational subjectivities among an imagined community (Anderson, 1983). Moreover, these conceptions of transnational mobility are embodied in social and geographical practices in the everyday. Using specific places, such as international schools, expatriate clubs, and private homes during dinner parties, I have shown how these migrants perform their global sense of self while attempting to embody the figure of the expatriate as the ideal of neoliberal self-achievement. These practices follow classed and racialized gendered standards. Expatriate subjectivities are therefore shaped by those heteronormative practices that work as regulatory ideals (Duplan, 2021a). By performatively embodying social discourses of neoliberal globalization that promote a specific model of global citizenship (Yeoh, 2004), those selected privileged migrants produce themselves distinctively as expatriates in relation to their practice of mobility. An intersectional analysis of the category of expatriate in its intertwining with neoliberal narratives of globalization offers new insights into the boundary-making process vis-à-vis non-mobile people, be they locals in the host

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country, or in the country of origin. Scholars have underlined that neoliberal globalization emphasizes how the local appears “as a sign of social deprivation and degradation” in the context of globalization (Bauman, 1998: 2–3). This helps expatriates to gather in a form of “likeliness” that is most often “a way of bringing (often white, Western) individuals together and keeping others (often non-white and non-western, but sometimes local) at a distance” (­Lundström, 2017: 84). Expatriates as global citizens benefit from privileges enabled by their ability to embody the ideal citizen of globalization, while contributing to the othering of non-mobile people, including local wealthy middle- to upper-class people in the host country. This chapter thus brings new insights into the relational production of expatriate subjectivities, including social and spatial relationality at different levels. Beyond a sole category of analysis, I argue for the use of the term expatriate as a distinctive category of everyday practice of globalization and citizenship formation. The expatriate stands therefore for a heroic figure of globalization, paradigmatically embodying norms and imaginaries of neoliberal ideology. This chapter opens up discussions about elites to show how they are produced by and through space. By focusing on how specific ideas of transnational mobility are infused in everyday lives, and on how places are specifically used during transnational mobility, it sheds light on the role of space in the production of social privileges (Duplan and Cranston, forthcoming; Twine and G ­ ardener, 2013). I argue that identifying oneself as cosmopolitan implies specific modes of consumption, including specific modes of consumption of space. By learning how to circulate transnationally, and by integrating transnational circulations as part of a normal way of life, these migrants identify with mobility (Duncan et al., 2013). Moreover, by highlighting how the global is favored over the local, this chapter also opens up discussions on the politics of scales by their renewal as hierarchical forms of power. (Mountz and ­Hyndman, 2006; Silvey, 2004). While contributing to the unpacking of the expatriate as a category of analysis through its intertwining with neoliberal ideology, the chapter highlights the workings of hierarchized categories in migration research. Drawing on an intersectional analysis, it presents expatriates as being like other migrants, while highlighting the racial and postcolonial underpinning of such a category in public and academic discourse. In so doing, it aims to join current critiques against “immigrant integration” (Schinkel, 2018), and calls for the “demigranticisation” of migration research (Dahinden, 2016). Finally, while my research has focused on selected privileged migrants who choose to use central places of the expatriate milieu in Luxembourg, more investigation needs to be conducted on everyday geographies and the sense of self of those who resist or are excluded from these expatriates’ geographies. In

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addition, a longitudinal perspective would give more insight into the changing subjectivities of those who may choose to settle more permanently in what was initially intended to be a temporary destination, while maintaining a distinctive global sense of self, to create future perspectives for a multidisciplinary and critical research on expatriation and privileged migration. References Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Arieli, Daniela. 2007. “The Task of Being Content: Expatriate Wives in Beijing, ­Emotional Work and Patriarchal Bargain”. Journal of International Women’s Studies 8(4): 18–31. Baldassar, Loretta, and Merla, Laura. 2014. Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care. Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. New York: Routledge. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: the human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2002. “Transnational Elites in Global Cities: British Expat­ riates in Singapore’s Financial District”. Geoforum 33(4): 525–38. Beaverstock, Jonathan V. 2011. “Servicing British Expatriate ‘Talent’ in Singapore: Exploring Ordinary Transnationalism and the Role of the ‘Expatriate’ Club”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37(5): 709–728. Beck, Ulrich. 2002. “The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies”. Theory, Culture and Society 19(1–2): 17–44. Benson, Micaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2009. Lifestyle Migration. Expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Benson, Micaela, and O’Reilly, Karen. 2016. “From lifestyle migration to lifestyle in migration: Categories, concepts and ways of thinking”. Migration Studies 4(1): 20–37. Binnie, Jon, Holloway, Julian, Young, Craig, and Milligton, S., eds. 2006. Cosmopolitan Urbanism. London: Routledge. Boltanski, Luc, and Chiapello, Eve. 2005. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London/New York: Verso. Borja, Simon, Courty, Guillaume, and Ramadier, Thierry, eds. 2013. “Approches ­critiques de la mobilité”. Regards sociologiques 45/46: 101–110. Brickell, Katheryne, and Datta, Ayona, eds. 2011. Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections. Farnham: Ashgate. Brubaker, Roger, and Cooper, Frederik. 2000. “Beyond Identity”. Theory and Society 29: 1–47.

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Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New-York: ­Routledge. Coles, Andrea, and Fechter, Anne-Meike, eds. 2008. Gender and Family among Transnational Professionals. London/New York: Routledge. Coles, Andrea, and Walsh, Katie. 2010. “From ‘trucial state’ to ‘postcolonial’ city? The imaginative geographies of British expatriates in Dubai”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1317–1333. Collet, Beate, and Dauber, Andrea S. 2008. “Gender and Job Mobility”. In Mobile Living across Europe (I): Relevance and Diversity of Job-related Spatial Mobility in six European Countries, ed. N. F. Schneider and G. Meil, 173–195. Opladen & Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Cranston, Sophie. 2017. “Expatriate as a ‘Good’ Migrant: Thinking Through Skilled International Migrant Categories”. Population, Space and Place 23: 2058. Cresswell, Tim. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. New York: Routledge. Croucher, Sheila. 2012. “Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality”. Societies 2: 1–13. Dahinden, Janine. 2016. “A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(13): 2207–2225. Davoine, Eric, Ravasi, Claudio, Salamin, Xavier, and Cudré-Mauroux, C. 2013. “A ‘­Dramaturgical’ Analysis of Spouse Role Enactment in Expatriation: An Exploratory Gender Comparative Study in the Diplomatic and Consular Field”. Journal of Global Mobility 1(1): 92–112. Delanty, Gerard. 2006. “The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Critical Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory”. British Journal of Sociology 57(1): 25–47. Duncan, Tara, Cohen, Scott, and Thulemark, Maria, eds. 2013. Lifestyles Mobilities. ­London: Ashgate. Duplan, K. 2017. “Pour une éthique du care dans la relation d’enquête. Jalons méthodologiques à partir d’une recherche auprès d’élites transnationales”. Sociographs 34: 97–106. Duplan, Karine. 2021a. “‘She’s a real expat’: be(com)ing a woman expatriate in ­Luxembourg through everyday performances of heteronormativity”. Gender, Place & Culture 28(9): 1–27. Duplan, Karine. 2021b. “The Sexual Politics of Nation Branding in Creative ­Luxembourg”. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 20(3): 272–293. Duplan, Karine, and Cranston, Sophie. Forthcoming. “Towards Geographies of Privileged ­Migration: An Intersectional Perspective”. Elliott, Anthony. 2014. “Elsewhere: Tracking the mobile lives of globals”. In Elite m ­ obilities, ed. T. Birtchnell and J. Caletrìo, 21–39. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Conclusion: Sharing a Common Humanity: Expats and Migrants in Anthropocene Narratives Sylvain Beck At the end of this journey, expat and migrant can be interpreted in terms of ­discourses on modern and traditional societies, reifying belonging, practices and origins. Given that the idea of progress underpins modernity, this ­discourse constitutes a continuity with colonial and racist ideas of racial superiority, and in particular of civilization, by claiming liberty over authority, change over stability, “modern social rationality over cultural orientations”, based on justice, solidarity, complex economic and social discourses (­Eisenstadt, 1973: 5). The terms expat, expatriate and expatriation construct an ideal figure of modernity. Their history is emblematic of modernity, both in terms of law (Green, 2009) and of social representations and images. That may explain why the colonial production of knowledge denies the term expat to people from southern and developing countries. The term expatriate legitimizes a social distinction based on colonial domination in the history of international and racial relations. While human rights advocates generally avoid it except when pointing out the racial aspect, human resources literature is at ease with the term. This legitimacy is linked to images of white male domination in multinational companies that require a family project in order to organize their activities in particular locations in the name of modernity and progress. It also offers justification for modern nation-states to maintain their power in international relations as developed and modern countries. Paradoxically, by the very fact of their migration, immigrants claim access to expatriation, in the sense of belonging to the modern world. But this access is denied in the name of human rights and in the name of the winners in the labor market. Yet why should black delivery men on their bikes in big cities like Paris or ­London not be considered expatriates? Their belonging as neoliberal subjects in a global world appears to be denied. Global knowledge for rethinking inclusion in a common world does not consider the global village as evidence-based, but sees the world as a common humanity. The sociology of migration, from its origins with Simmel, and Robert Park (1928) is a sociology of modernity. The immigrant, as an individual, is a figure of the modern world, a stranger or a

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“marginal man” (Park, 1928)– . - an individual who always feels in-between.1 Beyond the themes of vulnerability and protection (which are the real questions in most studies on migration), we can go deeper by adopting a sociology of expatriation, considering the immigrant both as a modern individual who suffers and requires protection, and as an individual in the existential sense. The distinction between expats and migrants can thus be related to the distinction between tradition and modernity, with powerful consequences. Expats are individuals who have left their country, free to circulate and be themselves, existing and recognized in a global society as uprooted, while migrants are determined by tradition and community, and are still strongly anchored in their ethnic roots. The former is flexible and open to cultural differences, appropriating the notion of cosmopolitanism, while the latter are more difficult to assimilate because of their traditions (particularly their religious beliefs and practices). Following this distinction, we can see the continuity of colonial viewpoints revisited by modern sociologists. This book therefore proposes a research agenda which will move beyond this divide, in an attempt to combat it at the heart of its structure. In short, Migration Studies often resemble Refugee and Asylum Seeker Studies, while Expatriation Studies focus on world managers, international executives, and long-term tourists such as retired ­people abroad or backpackers. There is a degree of privilege in international migration law and the right to circulate. In order to avoid the reification of identities in any way, the privilege might be preferred as considered as an advantage, underlining the more informal character, as demonstrated by the Kafala ­system in chapter 7, and the situation of expat wives in chapter 4, underlining the importance of local structures of social organization that makes social pressures and boundaries to the individual freedom beyond the legal privilege of nationality. Blurring categories of migration and mobility in a global world, and from a perspective of international comparison, we can argue that expatriation belongs to the leisure class, with the expatriate embodying a global elite legitimized by its conspicuous consumption. This distinction neglects global social inequalities and power struggles. While expatriates can cross borders openly in the name of modernity, migrants are restricted to their roots insofar as they are presented as traditionalist (Bauman, 1998). Access to modernity and emancipation, in other words to expatriation, is refused to immigrants, except in the case of proven persecution, or the recognition of professional skills.

1 The masculinization of the title of this major sociological reference is itself specifically anchored in the modern discourse.

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The use of words and their meanings in different languages, stemming from the Latin root patria for the expatriate, and relating to displacement for migrants, displays a rhetoric of power entailing norms based on modernity: progress, individuality, change, adaptability, and individual freedom. In this framework, legal and administrative standards constrain immigrants in the name of modernity, requiring them to show they belong to the modern world. This also highlights a global hierarchy in the social division of labor. Ironically, sharing the same planet, the freedom of one group increases the vulnerability of the other, by way of the pollution generated by business ­activities without regard for the environment. Modernity has this extraordinary malleability. Neoliberal public policies are typical of a modernity in which the expatriate as a hero of globalization appears as a paragon of modernity. But the Anthropocene Age is both a narrative and a global experience, observed and legitimized by science (Lewis and Maslin, 2018). Even if expatriates were to stop running around the world, they would still require space, transhumanism and algorithms, in a romantic aspiration to escape from themselves, which is also a defense mechanism. Even if they stopped polluting the air with their carbon footprint, they would still destroy soils, rivers and oceans, and colonize land in the name of economic growth. Behind the expatriates’ impression of freedom and heroism as a masculinized figure of the self-made man, they are characterized by opportunism in a highly normative world. Indeed, thoughtlessly complying with the norms of the free global market, considering themselves as natural elites in the sense of a natural evolution following global market norms, the expatriate is the soldier of necropolitics. Unaware of their own limits, the limits of otherness and nature, ­separating themselves clearly from nature, they travel everywhere and nowhere, attempting to escape from themselves, brushing aside everybody and everything in their way, diffusing fake news or false words like incantations. Trying to reassure themselves of their benefit to the Earth and humanity while serving only their own interests and survival, expatriates are characterized by their vacuity of thought and an absence of meaning in words, history, facts, the experience of otherness, and the limits of nature, while these are things that could recall the reality of experience. Expatriates’ ability to instrumentalize words on a political level is significant. To some extent, studying expatriation is like studying behaviors like opportunism at work, and condescension towards immigrants. From this perspective, identification with the figure of the expatriate has a negative connotation. Without admitting it, few wish to identify with anything, except with cynicism or ignorance. Beyond the distinction across types of human displacement, migration and expatriation are not on the same level, and that is why they cannot define the

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same situations. They do not play out on the same stage. While migration is concrete and descriptive, putting the focus on material displacement, expatriation is more abstract, a wider analytical concept based on an affect, a feeling of belonging, a history. A profile of the expatriate can be drawn. The expatriate is mistrustful of psychoanalysis as it is a reminder that private life and personal history can be real issues. The mechanisms of escape prefer to explore new ways rather than cultivate a past that would nostalgically recall the absence of patria. Anxiety is denied by expatriation, because it tolls the bells for the image of intense life and perpetual change, leading to boredom and death. Boredom casts its shadow on modernity and is hated by the expatriate. Expatriates live in an infinite representation of the world, without end and without barriers, but they are unable to think globally and collectively. The expatriation discourses are suspicious of concerns such as collectivism, institutions, norms and conflicts, afraid of social action demanding recognition, and afraid of radical ecology that plots out the natural limits the self. Further, the expatriation is both fascinated and embarrassed by philosophy and tend to deny the structures, even those of its own situations. Fascinated because it is a powerful source of discernment in modern society and an instrument of justification, but embarrassed because of the connotation of an alternation between vita epres activa and vita epressative contemplativa, more complex than will (Arendt, 1971). The expatriate is the opposite of thoughtfulness because this mental activity is considered to belong to patria.2 Power and money are not patria. Patria may not be reduced to home or country, nor to networks, friendships, family or religion. Patria can be some of these in part, but this means being able to think beyond the self until the end, until death. This is precisely what the expatriate is attempting to escape. In other words, and paradoxically, expatriation and migration can draw on similar and different situations. The two are close in meaning, but they are positioned at a different level. The ubiquity of the term patria seems to be the source of confusion: one is ideal, the other is material. Beyond race, economic reasons, duration of stay, or administrative status, migration and expatriation are divided “y what t”eyepressent. In this conception, there is no reason to exclude Westerners, rich people, white people, highly skilled people (top professional categories versus working class) from migration studies. Nor is there any reason not to include people from southern countries, poor people, Black people, Asians, Indians, Arabs, low-skilled and labor migrants, or refugees in 2 The loss of the Latin root patria in English, replaced by homeland or fatherland, can be deplored, as it reveals a dissociation between the use of being or feeling inside and outside in expatriation. This slippery slope and its consequences could be sought in linguistic studies.

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expatriation studies. Migration studies and expatriation studies are at once separate and intertwined fields of research. The former is more empirical (laws of nationality, descriptions of situation, and feelings of belonging) while the latter is more philosophical, drawing especially on notions of nostalgia (affects, mental health, language, reflexivity). The sociology of expatriation is related to the process of individuation. The fact that most researchers are reluctant to treat this topic pinpoints two biases. On the one hand, being confronted with a deep reflexive approach is difficult and not always well recognized as a scientific posture, except in phenomenology. Researchers are themselves included in a process of individuation, and their research often participates in this process. The sociology of migration addresses dominated people seeking to free themselves from their personal characteristics of gender, race or social origins. In other words, the sociology of migration studies vulnerable people. Researchers take on the role of champions of a stigmatized group to defend their rights. On the other hand, the pitfall is to end up by maintaining vulnerable people in their condition. Researchers can contribute to the emancipation of migrants in a certain sense, but paradoxically this is achieved at the cost of participation in the construction of the public problem they themselves denounce. Thus, the gap between us and them is reinforced, including researchers in this idea of us. The Sisyphus-like character of migration studies needs to find a way out of this dilemma, in order to stop denouncing the problem researchers contribute to producing through their use of categories and their refusal to be confronted with the dilemma of expatriation. The sociology of expatriation explores a process of individuation that includes all kinds of displacement, mobility and immobility extending beyond territoriality, but in an existential and emotional sense: where and when do we find the patria? To ask this question systematically could solve the materialist problems of immigrants. This does not mean that materialistic questions and their resolution are not important, but that there is a possibility of understanding the solution to the problem differently by searching for common elements rather than differences in lifestyle, economic conditions, or life courses. Migrants are often conceived as being dominated and determined by structures (for example, community, or war) and not as individuals, as expatriates are. At best, when the agency of migrants is highlighted by biographical approaches, it is as if their reflexive abilities were not evident. Expatriates are conceived as individuals, dominant, reflexive, and rational by nature. A sociology of expatriation allows us to break away from this distinction, seeking reflexivity and individuality in the meaning of patria. We could explain this construction of migration studies as underpinning the shaping of migration as

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a public problem, on the one hand by colonialism, on the other, by the framework of Orientalism. In the two categories of migration and mobility, expatriation appears as a paragon of modernity. Like the exterritorial global elites (Beck, 2000), expatriates embody the free individual, free of all constraints, legal, familial, national and even biological or climatic. If we deepen the concept of expatriation, ­linking it with modernity, it becomes an existential concept, envisaging humanity in terms of mental health and norms. The expatriate is the winner, always on the move, physically and in imagination, in a modern world. The expatriate is the adaptive individual by essence, never fixed, forgetting history and roots, taking risks. The expatriate lives in, and produces, a runaway world (Giddens, 1999). In the age of the Anthropocene, what kind of legitimacy is expressed by expatriates in their discourses on modernity, underlying the definition of progress? Escaping, living elsewhere, outside the self and permanently insecure. Awareness of the influence of human behaviours on ­natural change on a geological scale should be considered (Hamilton, B ­ onneuil, Gemenne, 2015). Especially in a period of pandemic, after the lockdown of half of the inhabitants on Earth in a joint experience of immobility as a result of natural phenomena, the existential question of displacement needs to be posed. The future of studies on expatriates and migrants needs to look at the colonization of the planet Mars, transhumanism, and the vulnerability of climate refugees. All of these topics are generating a system of action and feedback. While some continue to pollute the air, the oceans and the soils in the expectation of colonizing Mars and transcending their own humanity, others endure pollution and exploitation, dreaming of emancipation by becoming expatriates themselves. We can contribute to softening this binary approach by confronting expatriates with a sense of their own existence, and by sharing a common humanity with migrants with objective knowledge centered on thought and humanity – that is to say, by othering (Sonnis-Bell et al., 2018) expatriates rather than migrants through a political process. References Arendt, Hannah. 1971. The Life of the Mind. The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think. New-York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, Ulrich. 2000. What Is Globalization. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. 1973. Tradition, Change, and Modernity. New-York: John Wiley and Sons. Fromm, Erich. 1941. Escape from freedom. New York: Rinehart & Co. Giddens, Anthony. 1999. Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. London: Profile Books. Green, Nancy. 2009. “Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept”. The American Historical Review. 114(2) 307–328. Hamilton, Clive, Bonneuil, Christophe, Gemenne, François, eds. 2015. The ­Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking modernity in a new epoch. ­London: Routledge. Lewis, Simon L., and Maslin, Mark A. 2018. The Human Planet. How We Created the Anthropocene. London: Penguin Random House. Park, Robert. 1928. “Human Migration and the Marginal Man”. American Journal of Sociology. 33(6): 881–93. Sonnis-Bell, Marissa, Bell, David Elijah, and Ryan, Michelle. 2018. Strangers, aliens, ­foreigners: the politics of othering from migrants to corporations. Boston: Brill.

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Index abroad 5, 11, 12, 18–22, 24, 27, 29, 36, 43, 45, 55, 56, 70–73, 87, 89, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101, 105, 107, 108, 117, 123, 132, 135, 145, 152, 157, 159, 166, 168, 169, 185 academic 5, 11, 19, 21, 44, 71, 75, 116, 117, 164, 172, 177 administration 8, 13, 32, 103 administrative 7, 27, 30, 31, 34, 53, 55, 92, 132, 136, 142, 171, 186 advantage 13, 33, 79, 108, 113, 115, 126, 135, 146 adventure 70, 115, 132 advertisements 57, 96 Africa 10, 12, 32, 35–37, 69, 77, 78, 131, 132, 134, 152, 155 America 10, 39, 89, 115, 116, 132, 134, 137, 148 Anthropocene 4, 8, 14, 184, 186, 190 anthropology 3, 109, 110, 129, 130, 152 anxiety 13, 99, 103, 141 apartment 101, 102 applicants 33, 56, 96, 98, 146 Arab 4, 11, 13, 134–136, 143, 147, 150, 151, 155 Asia 10, 15, 16, 32, 43, 48, 53, 54, 57, 61, 63, 64, 85, 93, 96, 108, 109, 132, 134, 135, 153 aspiration 169, 176, 186 assigned 91, 93, 96–98, 100, 101, 105–107, 173 assimilation 8, 23, 40, 61 asylum seeker 7–9, 11, 33, 185 asymmetry 22, 26, 115 Australia 30, 48, 57, 64, 92, 93, 99, 103, 109, 110, 131, 148 bags 70 Beaverstock, Jonathan 3, 14, 22, 38, 43, 62, 159, 160, 173, 178 belonging 5 belonging (sense of) 28, 82, 127, 186 benefit 114, 140, 145, 148–150, 152, 163, 166, 174, 177, 186 Benson, Michaela 3, 14, 22, 38, 44, 62, 90, 93, 94, 109, 110, 113–115, 121, 129, 133, 153, 160, 169, 178 Black 4, 31, 32, 33, 40, 73, 85 Blackness 9 border 40, 113, 117, 118, 120, 122, 139, 141, 147, 158, 163, 166, 182

boundaries 4, 12, 13, 42, 45, 46, 51, 54, 71, 72, 80, 81, 87, 106, 138, 165, 176 Brazil 89, 119, 167 bureaucracy 13 bureaucratic 19, 74 business 4, 5, 49, 53–55, 60, 95, 96, 98, 102–104, 106, 108, 117, 121, 124, 141, 147, 150, 186 capacity 58, 144, 145, 164 capitalism 38 capitalist 8, 73, 158 career 54, 55, 74, 92, 94, 99, 100, 103, 105, 161, 166, 168 care workers 90, 91 categories 3–7, 9–15, 18, 19, 21–27, 29, 34–38, 42–47, 49, 51, 54, 55, 58, 71, 84, 92, 94, 96, 102, 105, 116, 121, 122, 125, 131, 133, 137, 140, 145, 149, 151, 157, 158, 160, 163, 164, 166, 168–170, 174, 175, 177, 184–186 challenge 8, 60, 87, 152, 161 checkpoints 138, 142 children 25, 32–36, 69, 70, 73, 74, 79–82, 90, 91, 105, 147, 150, 161, 166, 168, 170–172, 175 China 10, 12, 40, 63–66, 89, 91, 96, 102–109, 131, 134, 162, 183 Chinese 16, 24, 39, 60, 63, 65, 103–108 citizenship vii, 18–29, 35–38, 58, 102, 104, 106, 108, 113, 114, 117, 120–125, 127, 132, 133, 135–140, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 152, 163, 165, 167, 169–171, 176, 177, 181 city 14, 38, 62, 63, 65, 66, 76–79, 89, 119, 124, 153–156, 165, 178, 180–182 class 6, 23, 24, 29, 33, 44, 45, 48, 54, 56, 60, 84, 114, 117, 123, 124, 133, 134, 136, 145, 151, 152, 161–163, 165, 169, 170, 172–174, 177, 182, 185 clubs 78, 105, 120, 167, 171, 173, 174, 176, 178, 182 coffee shops 69, 137 colonial 6–8, 11, 12, 15, 22, 24, 36, 38, 45, 46, 61, 78, 106, 117, 129, 133, 158, 165, 173, 184, 185 comfort 4, 10, 13, 33, 72, 79, 82, 92, 93, 101, 103, 106, 113, 136, 143, 174

-

192 community 8, 11, 14, 40, 63–65, 72, 79–82, 85, 94, 102, 105–110, 118, 119, 125, 133, 136, 166, 167, 176, 178, 185 company 5, 8, 11, 12, 53–57, 61, 69, 71, 76, 80, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95–98, 100–109, 116, 117, 146, 150, 151, 159, 160, 166, 168, 184 comparison comparative sociology international comparison 5, 6, 10, 20, 26, 61, 90, 102, 185 compatriots 127 compensation 16, 70, 74, 75, 87, 100, 106 competences 105, 137, 144, 145, 146, 158 competition 14, 100, 146, 148, 150 concept 8, 10, 19, 23, 27, 31, 36, 44, 93, 94, 113, 118, 119, 121, 144, 147, 187 condescension 186 connotations 11, 42, 48, 51, 61 consultants 74, 145, 149 consumption 12, 22, 94, 114, 136, 177, 185 co-presence 73, 137 corporate 38, 39, 65, 180 corporation 55, 59, 96, 102, 107, 166, 190 cosmopolitanism 3, 6, 8, 23, 45, 51, 56, 61, 117, 157, 158, 163, 167, 169, 170–173, 175–177, 181, 185 Cranston, Sophie 3, 15, 18, 19, 38, 41–47, 49, 51, 61, 63, 157, 161, 162, 164, 177, 179, 180 critical 3, 6, 11, 20, 21, 30, 41–43, 45–47, 61, 72, 89, 91, 92, 96, 109, 133, 135, 160, 161, 170, 173, 178 Croucher, Sheila 3, 15, 21, 38, 62, 63, 113, 115, 129, 133, 153, 157, 179 culture 10, 16, 17, 22, 24, 31, 32, 39, 45, 48, 50, 53, 55, 56, 61, 64, 66, 73, 80, 84, 86, 118, 126, 127, 137, 144, 145, 147, 149, 152, 156, 164, 169–173, 175, 178–181, 183–185 cynicism 186 Dahinden, Janine 4, 10, 15, 24, 38, 71, 84, 85, 177, 179 decolonial 7 deploying organization 70, 75, 84 deploying organizations 72–75, 84, 85 depression 98, 103 desirable undesirable 3, 42, 60, 162, 163, 165, 170 destination 57, 58, 74, 89, 99, 108, 113–115, 119, 120, 122, 125–127, 135, 139, 142, 157, 178

Index dichotomy 3, 5, 8–10, 42, 49, 61, 117, 138 disappointment 100, 107, 108 discourses 8, 10–12, 19–21, 27, 28, 31–33, 37, 41, 44, 47, 49, 75, 96, 117, 133, 157, 160, 163, 172, 173, 176, 177, 181, 184 discrimination 27, 92, 100, 147, 173 displacements 3, 4, 6, 7, 9–11, 14, 114, 186, 187, 189 distinction 6, 9, 11, 12, 22, 84, 94, 107, 170, 184–186 doctorate degree 123–125 doctors 123, 124 dominant 7, 29, 42, 60, 73, 124, 140 dominated 7, 47, 51, 82, 140 domination 8, 10, 143, 184 dream 113, 135, 189 earnings 100 economic 9, 12, 13, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28–30, 32, 37, 38, 44, 45, 50, 55, 59, 75, 80, 85, 89, 91, 93–95, 98, 102, 103, 107, 113–115, 117–119, 122, 123, 125–127, 129, 132–136, 138–140, 142, 144, 145, 148, 149, 151, 152, 157–160, 167, 168, 184, 186 Ecuador 15, 16, 39, 115, 121, 130 education 53, 99, 105, 123–125, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 162, 168, 170–172 effort 22, 23, 36, 37, 59, 70, 76, 77, 83–85, 141 elites transnational elites 3, 5, 43–45, 48, 51, 109, 136, 172, 177, 186 emancipation 8, 12, 14, 185, 189 embassies 20, 69, 71, 106, 135, 144, 151 emigration 14, 21 emotion 77, 93, 119 empirical 6, 17, 19, 43, 73, 134, 158 employees 15, 55, 70–73, 84, 90, 92, 96–105, 107–109, 123, 142, 146, 149–151, 159 employer 11, 69, 70–72, 77, 104, 146, 151, 157 employment 12, 45, 53–56, 59–61, 75, 77, 83, 84, 92, 98, 100, 103–105, 108, 109, 159 engineer 53, 54 engineers 123 english 44, 48, 51–55, 57, 62, 79, 80, 82, 90, 99, 104, 116, 126, 132, 133, 144, 148, 187 enthusiasm 48, 53, 94 entrepreneurs 98, 121, 132, 148, 164 environment 4, 5, 10, 23, 76, 93, 160, 171, 172, 186

-

193

Index equal, unequal inequalities 84, 93, 98, 100, 151 escape 12, 115, 186, 187 established 28, 43, 49, 50, 52–54, 58, 80, 96, 102, 108, 115, 137, 142 ethnocentrism 6 ethnography 121, 158, 166 etymology 28, 159 europe european vii, 8, 10, 13, 15, 20, 21, 24, 31, 34, 40, 42, 43, 46, 48, 51–58, 60–65, 79, 90–92, 97, 109, 113, 130–132, 136, 139, 145, 148, 153, 154, 165, 166, 168, 169, 173, 179, 180, 182 evaluations 7 everyday life 74, 76, 85, 118, 158 evidence 6, 21, 71, 73, 176, 184 exclusion 47, 81–83, 174 exile 20, 27, 36, 116, 137 existence, existential 11, 13, 23, 24, 27, 36, 50, 79, 91, 138, 149, 185, 189 expat bubble 164 expatriation expat expatriate 3, 5, 9, 16, 21, 37, 39, 62, 87, 113, 117, 130, 154, 160, 162, 167–169, 179, 180, 185, 190 expatriates 3–5, 9, 11–13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 27, 36–38, 43–48, 55, 56, 60–62, 79, 87, 89–92, 96, 97, 107, 108, 116, 132, 133, 151, 157–167, 169–177, 179, 184–186, 189 expats 3–6, 8, 10–12, 18, 19, 42, 44, 60, 64, 69, 70–72, 74, 78–80, 83–85, 113–115, 117, 120–128, 131, 150, 151, 161, 181, 185 expat spouse 69, 70, 71, 83 experience 6, 12, 47, 50, 56, 59, 60, 70–73, 77, 80, 84, 89, 93, 94, 96, 99–101, 109, 134, 135, 143, 148, 152, 158, 159, 164, 167–169, 174, 186, 189 Faist, Thomas 3, 7, 13, 15, 23, 38, 163, 170, 180 familiar 6, 74, 173 family 8, 11, 12, 32–35, 71–73, 75, 80, 84, 90–92, 97, 102, 107, 118, 123–125, 140, 160, 161, 166–169, 171, 172, 174, 184 fatherland 187 Fechter, Anne-Meike 3, 15, 21, 22, 24, 38, 42, 44, 45, 56, 63, 78, 79, 86, 114, 116, 130,

133, 134, 151, 154, 157, 158, 160–162, 173, 174, 179, 180 feelings 4, 10, 11, 13, 79, 86, 141, 164, 169, 174, 187 female 12, 24, 52, 54, 70, 90, 91, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 161, 166, 172–174 feminist 73, 86, 160, 181 feminization 92 fieldwork 4, 5, 12, 48, 54, 134, 147, 150, 167 finance, financial 4, 20, 30, 37, 53, 54, 96, 100, 102, 115, 136, 144, 146, 149, 150–152, 168, 170 flexible 57, 59, 74, 84, 90, 144, 163, 185 flows 32, 46, 79, 91, 114, 136 foreigner 6, 20, 50, 83, 121, 140, 143 France, French 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18–21, 23–40, 58, 65, 134, 139, 145, 147, 148, 152–155, 167, 170, 172, 173, 181, 182 freedom 4, 6, 7, 12, 13, 102, 108, 113, 119, 133, 134, 137–139, 141, 143, 144, 146, 151, 152, 163, 169, 186, 190 freelance 81, 83, 148, 167 friends 76, 77, 83, 94, 101, 105, 107, 123–126, 172 future 6, 15, 75, 99, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 136, 162, 178, 189 gaikokujin (japanese) 41, 49, 50 gender , 3, 6, vii, 9–11, 22, 45, 60, 70, 90–92, 95, 97, 100, 101, 105, 107, 108, 133, 145, 151, 160–162, 165, 166, 171–175 geographers 10, 181 german 10, 11, 80–83 Glick-Schiller, Nina 19, 40, 129, 157, 170, 180 governance 16, 38, 145, 163 growth 46, 48, 52, 53, 58, 60, 61, 88, 89, 102, 103, 122, 186 Gustafson, Per 119, 130 Hayes, Matthew 3, 15, 16, 23, 39, 115, 121, 130 headquarters 100 heroes 9, 12, 13, 158, 167, 177, 186 hierarchy 5, 7, 115, 133, 134, 136, 147, 148, 150, 157, 158, 163, 175, 186 hiring 54, 57, 98, 146, 150 history 6–8, 23, 29, 36, 37, 39, 41, 47, 75, 78, 89, 105, 106, 116, 126, 132, 143, 152, 170, 173, 184, 186, 187, 190 home 13, 19, 22, 25, 31, 32, 69, 70, 77, 78, 80, 83, 107, 109, 110, 116, 119, 122, 123, 125, 132, 133, 137, 148, 150, 157, 159, 166, 168

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194 homeland 9–11, 13, 94, 100, 105, 113, 120, 128, 187 homelessness 6 Hong Kong 22, 24, 39, 65, 91, 95–106, 108, 134 hospitality 147 host 7, 22, 23, 31, 61, 70, 83, 84, 94, 95, 107, 115, 159, 162, 173, 176, 177 hostility 107 human resources (hr) 5, 49, 71, 72, 145, 160 human rights 5, 7, 184 husband 12, 69–72, 74–77, 80, 81, 83, 104, 168, 172, 173, 175 identification 6, 11, 18, 19, 22, 36, 42, 44, 45, 61, 118, 186 identity 9, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21–25, 32, 38, 39, 45, 61, 71, 81, 94, 114, 118, 130, 147, 148, 158, 162–164, 166, 169 ideology 137, 163, 177 image 11, 12, 24, 25, 28, 31, 37, 38, 42, 47–49, 51, 53, 55, 56, 59, 70, 84, 99, 127, 135, 148, 158, 184 imagination 24, 42, 49, 93, 152, 157, 158, 170, 177 imin (japanese) 41, 49, 50, 60 immigration 10, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30–33, 35, 36, 40, 41, 49, 89, 95, 98, 109, 116, 121, 122, 127, 140, 153, 163, 166, 180–182 immobility 4, 138, 140, 189 inclusion 47, 60, 75, 82, 184 independent 59, 95, 97, 99, 101, 107, 135 individual 4–8, 10, 12–14, 23, 25, 31, 89, 90, 93–96, 99, 100, 102, 104–108, 116–119, 132–134, 137–139, 141, 144–148, 150–152, 159, 160, 163, 165, 177, 184, 185, 186 individuation 4, 11 industry 52, 57, 59, 61, 91, 93, 101, 103, 147 inequalities 6, 115, 134–136, 139, 148, 182, 185 informants vii, 76–79, 95, 164, 166 injustice 143 inquiry 19, 20, 27, 28, 158 installation 141, 152 institution 20, 73, 148 integration 4, 7, 8, 16, 19, 20, 33, 40, 62, 84, 85, 158, 159, 163, 167, 172–175, 177, 179, 182 international 3, 5, 7, 9, 13, 23, 38, 44, 48, 52, 53, 56, 69, 71, 74, 79, 90–92, 96, 101, 105,

Index 116, 118, 121, 123, 126, 132, 133, 136, 137, 141, 144–147, 149, 151, 163, 166, 171, 172, 176, 184, 185 international organizations 5, 9, 145 international schools 74, 79, 171, 172, 176 intersectional 9, 158, 162, 164, 165, 176, 177 interviewees 56, 74, 95, 96, 98–108, 120, 170, 174 interviews 48, 59, 70, 74, 77, 93, 95, 107, 108, 134, 166–168 invisible 37, 42, 43, 45, 60, 77 Japan, Japanese vii, x, 10, 11, 41–43, 46–66, 89–94, 96–103, 105–110, 139, 167 job market 134, 140, 144, 146, 148–150 job opportunities 61, 91, 135, 137, 146, 148, 152, 166 jobs 29, 37, 48, 53, 56, 59, 61, 89, 92, 100, 104, 107, 114, 121, 137, 145, 147, 148, 168 job-seeking 95, 96, 100 journalists 142, 149 justice 30, 184 kafala 13, 140, 141, 155, 185 kampala 69, 70, 77–81, 85, 88 knowledge 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 15, 56, 78, 84, 106, 182, 184, 189 kōdō jinzai 49–51 Kofman, Eleonor 90, 92, 109, 160, 161, 171, 175, 180, 181 Kunz, Sarah 3, 9, 16, 18, 28, 39, 42, 43, 44–46, 51, 55, 61, 62, 64, 71, 86, 90, 109, 114, 130, 132, 133, 135, 141, 148, 154, 157, 158, 161, 181 labelled 6, 8, 60, 132 labor 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, 22, 26, 30–32, 48, 54, 55, 57–59, 61, 77, 89, 90, 92, 94, 98, 107, 113, 144–148, 152, 184 labor division 147 labor market 12, 14, 26, 48, 54, 55, 144–146, 148, 152, 184 Lake Victoria 69, 80 landscape 77–79, 81 language 19, 22, 23, 36, 48, 53, 55, 57, 78, 80–82, 84, 90, 103–106, 132, 144, 145, 148, 152 language skills 57, 80–82, 104, 105 law 7, 8, 13, 30, 35, 92, 146, 184, 185

-

195

Index learning 104, 161, 177 legitimacy 4, 27, 184 leisure 12, 72, 110, 115, 123, 129, 141, 143, 173, 185 Leonard, Pauline 3, 23, 24, 39, 42, 44, 45, 53, 56, 65, 133, 134, 151, 155, 161, 162, 173, 181 Le Renard, Amelie 134, 151, 155, 161, 162, 181 lifestyle 3, 12, 14, 16, 22, 38, 39, 48, 70, 74, 79, 84, 90–94, 96, 98–102, 107, 109, 110, 114, 115, 129–131, 160, 169, 172, 174, 175, 178 lifestyle migration 3, 14, 16, 38, 39, 91, 93, 94, 99, 109, 115, 129, 130, 169, 178 limits 61, 92, 158, 186 low-skilled 41, 48–50, 159, 161 luxembourg 10, 13, 16, 139, 157, 158, 165–175, 177, 179, 180, 182 male 11, 32, 34, 51, 55, 70, 90, 92, 95, 99, 100, 101, 105–107, 160, 161, 167, 171, 173, 184 man 4, 6, 12, 31, 34, 37, 53, 59, 60, 78, 81, 82, 90–95, 98, 101, 105, 108, 116, 158, 160, 184, 186 management 4, 5, 15, 21, 24, 25, 28, 69, 98, 123, 145, 160, 163 marginal 6, 35, 92, 134, 184 marriage 44, 72–74, 76, 84, 90–92, 101, 105, 123–125, 161 media 4, 11, 18, 41–43, 46, 48–51, 96, 98, 100, 103, 106, 107, 109, 110, 143, 156, 157, 159, 160 methodological bias 160 methodological difficulties 27 mexican 13, 114, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 131 mexico 10, 12, 113, 115, 117, 120– 123, 125–129, 131 middle east 10, 32, 132, 134, 135, 140, 144, 148 migrants 3, 5–11, 13, 15, 18, 19, 22–24, 39, 41– 51, 53–55, 57, 59–62, 71, 85, 89, 90–97, 99–102, 104, 105, 107–110, 114–120, 129, 130–136, 138, 140, 141, 143–145, 147–152, 157, 159–162, 165, 166, 175–177, 184–186, 189, 190 migration 3–16, 18–23, 28, 32, 38, 41–44, 46–54, 57, 60–62, 64, 69, 71, 80, 84, 85, 89, 90–96, 98, 102, 103, 108, 109, 110, 114–121, 126, 127, 129–135, 138, 141, 148, 151, 152, 155, 157–164, 166, 167, 169, 177–179, 181, 184–187 mobility 3, 6, 7, 11, 13–15, 22–24, 27, 29, 37, 38, 41, 44, 51, 55, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79, 113,

116, 120, 121, 132, 133, 137–143, 146, 152, 157, 158, 160, 162–172, 175–177, 180, 185 modern 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 34, 35, 47, 84, 92, 109, 114, 123, 184–186 modernity 4, 6–9, 11–14, 111, 170, 184–186, 190 monotony 99, 115 motherland 78 mother tongue 81, 82 motivation 91–94, 98, 100, 101, 115 multiculturalism 165 multi-local practices 117, 120, 122 multinational 5, 8, 11, 29, 117, 159, 160, 166, 184 myth 73 narratives 30, 33, 37, 91, 94, 96, 98, 99, 108, 165, 176 nation 6, 7, 10, 12–14, 19, 21, 29, 30, 35, 37, 71, 84, 108, 117, 118, 127, 131, 166, 184 national 6, 8, 12, 13, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 32, 37, 47, 71, 91, 94, 104, 105, 108, 113, 115, 120, 142, 143, 145, 146, 148, 163, 166, 181 nationality 3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14, 23, 33, 45, 60, 82, 84, 120, 131, 134–136, 139, 144–152, 162, 173 nature 9, 12, 45, 90, 93, 99, 132, 186 necropolitics 9, 186 negative connotation 29, 186 negotiation 72, 85 neoliberal 4, 7, 8, 13, 158, 159, 162–165, 171, 175, 176, 177, 181, 184 newcomers 79, 95, 116, 166, 173 non-mobile 174, 176, 177 normativity 4, 13, 14 norms 4, 13, 14, 56, 119, 167, 171, 173, 186 north 7, 10, 15, 24, 69, 85, 89, 123, 132–139, 148, 153, 158, 162, 165 nostalgia 187 observation 11, 18, 119, 134, 166 occupied palestinian territories 13, 134, 136, 138, 142, 151 Oceania 90, 91, 97 opportunities 53–55, 57, 59, 61, 79, 89, 90, 92, 106, 107, 115, 160, 163, 167, 169–172, 175, 186 optimism 78, 99 O’Reilly, Karen 3, 14, 22, 38, 44, 62, 65, 90, 93, 94, 109, 110, 113, 115, 121, 169, 178

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196 organizations 5, 20, 71, 72, 73, 75, 90, 118, 120, 132, 137, 141, 144, 146, 149–151, 173 origins 8, 22–24, 27, 29–31, 35, 42, 43, 93, 94, 106, 113–121, 123–128, 136, 147, 148, 157, 159, 162, 177, 184 otherness 3, 6, 186 overseas 57, 89, 90–92, 94, 96–98, 101, 107–110, 117 package 148, 150, 151, 167 palestinian 13, 134, 136–139, 141, 142, 144–146, 149, 151, 154 pandemic 4, 6, 52, 58, 89, 189 paradigm 15, 38, 117, 170, 180 participation 126 partners 72, 74, 105, 106 passport 3, 115, 132, 139–142, 143, 147, 150, 152, 166 patria 9, 11, 13, 35, 36, 127, 186, 187 performance 84, 103 permanent 41, 98, 104, 105, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 127–129, 159, 169 persecution 7, 8, 185 personnel 95, 96, 98, 100, 102, 103 peru 89 photographer 149 picture 49 pleasant 12, 113, 114, 117, 120–128 pleasure 12, 13, 129 policies 7, 9, 11, 19, 29, 30, 41, 50, 51, 60, 84, 98, 116, 123, 136, 139, 141, 161, 186 policymakers 58 political 5, 6, 9, 11, 19, 20, 22, 26, 28–30, 32, 33, 36–38, 41, 43, 46, 50, 114, 117–120, 123, 124, 126, 127, 132–134, 136–139, 141, 143, 144, 149, 157, 158, 164, 186, 189 political meanings 133 political participation 123, 124, 126 political practices 127 political relations 132 positive connotation 11, 37 postcard 11, 12 postcolonial 7, 23, 151, 161, 162, 173, 177, 179 poverty 4, 6, 78, 139, 158 power 9, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 23, 30, 44, 61, 77, 79, 113, 115, 123, 133, 136–140, 145, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 170, 171, 175, 176, 184–186

Index power relations 44, 61, 157, 158, 160–162, 165, 171, 175, 176 precarious 59, 99 precarity 59, 148, 149 prefecture 105 pressure 12, 54, 55, 101 private 25, 53, 73, 75, 124, 125, 136, 142, 146, 148, 150, 174, 176, 187 privilege 3, 6, 12, 13, 22, 26, 29, 38, 85, 111, 115, 129, 132–134, 138–141, 143, 145, 148, 149, 151, 152, 155, 160, 162, 167, 169, 170, 185 problematic unproblematic 3, 11–13, 42, 43, 45–48, 51, 55, 60, 71, 116 production of knowledge 5, 184 professional 4, 18, 22, 24, 29, 44, 50, 53, 72, 74, 83, 121, 136, 138, 141, 145–148, 150–152, 159, 161, 162, 167–169, 173, 174, 185 progress 34, 102, 184, 186 project 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 25, 48, 72, 158, 166–169, 172, 184 promotion 12, 101, 122 proof 8, 117, 185 protection 7, 13, 185 public 5, 8–11, 19, 25, 28, 35, 37, 44, 47, 49, 91, 107, 115, 125, 143, 146, 150, 163, 177, 186 public services 5, 8, 115 push and pull factors 3 quality of life 115, 126, 168, 169 quantitative methodology 120, 121 questionnaires 120 quit 100, 101 race 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 23, 32, 33, 45, 46, 51, 60, 114, 133, 134, 151, 152, 161, 162, 165, 181 racialization 16, 23, 32, 33, 39, 43–46, 48, 49, 51, 60, 61, 130, 161, 176 ready-made life 76, 77 recognition 8, 12, 148, 185 recruitment 8, 56, 96, 146 refugees 7–9, 11, 20, 34, 41, 44, 137, 149, 158, 162, 189 registration 34, 35, 121, 141 reification 9, 158, 164, 165, 173 relationship 10, 46, 69, 72–75, 96, 106, 108, 118, 162, 171, 172 relocation 73, 74, 84, 96, 150

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197

Index rental 142, 149 reproduction 161, 175 researchers 9, 26, 90, 117, 118, 132–136, 138, 142, 149, 151, 152 residence 7, 9, 22, 24, 29, 35, 37, 99, 104, 105, 117, 122, 127, 136, 139–141 residency 104, 105, 140, 152 resilience 8, 25 resilient 78 responsibility 25, 34, 35, 143, 163 responsible 59, 70, 100 restaurant 59, 60 retirement 39, 93, 114, 120, 122, 123, 126, 127, 130, 132 return 7, 19, 30, 31, 32, 99, 100, 105, 117, 119, 123, 126, 127, 136, 150, 157, 166 return trips 117, 123, 126, 127 rich 20, 22, 71, 78, 79, 133 role 11, 22, 23, 36, 53, 57, 61, 62, 69–73, 75, 79, 83, 91, 92, 96, 102, 133, 144, 146, 152, 160, 161, 163, 164, 168–174, 176, 177 roots 140, 144, 159, 185 salary 71, 77, 79, 88, 98–101, 133, 135, 137, 145, 148–151 satisfaction 87, 105, 107, 113, 175 savings 94, 100, 113–115, 148, 149 school 35, 70, 74, 79, 105, 168, 170, 172, 174, 175 self 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 19, 21, 25, 28, 37, 38, 42, 44, 45, 61, 73, 78, 82, 83, 85, 105, 115, 159, 161, 163–167, 173, 176–178, 181, 186 self-confidence 105 self-realization 115, 163 self-reflexive 161 sending organizations 70, 75 senior 115, 150 settlement 41, 48, 49, 116, 140 sex trafficking 90 sexual division of labor 167 Simmel, Georg 6, 16, 138, 156, 184 skilled migration highly skilled migration 3, 9, 47, 48, 49, 55, 60, 91, 116, 150, 157, 160, 162, 163, 166 smooth 72, 84 social 4–15, 18–26, 33, 37, 38, 42, 46, 50, 56, 59, 61, 62, 72, 76–83, 86, 94, 95, 107, 113, 117–121, 123, 124, 126–130, 132–136, 138, 143–149, 151, 152, 162–164, 167, 169–177, 180, 184–186

social activities 78 social class 9, 124, 144 social division of labor 5, 186 social mobility 14 social network 8, 174 social sciences 15, 40, 120 social spaces 118 society 4–6, 8, 12, 22–24, 33, 41, 45, 49, 50, 51, 56, 78, 79, 83, 94, 103, 104, 107, 108, 114, 117, 119, 121, 130, 135, 136, 158, 184, 185 sociology 3, 5, 10, 15, 23, 43, 71, 83, 138, 184, 185 solidarity 184 south 7, 10, 58, 65, 69, 89, 106, 132–139, 147, 152, 154, 155, 158, 162, 165 South Korea 58, 106, 139 space 117–119, 134, 142, 171, 174, 177, 186 spatial mobility 4, 182 spouse 12, 34, 70, 75, 81, 150, 160, 161 stable 28, 69, 73, 74, 98, 166, 171 standard 18, 22, 37, 54, 56, 70, 104, 161 stay 49, 59, 72, 83, 91, 99, 104, 105, 116, 138, 141, 143, 168, 171 stereotypes 32, 108, 147 stigma 3, 11, 31, 33, 35, 38, 71, 139 stranger 6, 16, 184 studies 3–7, 9–12, 15, 19, 22, 33, 38, 41–47, 51, 53, 55, 61, 71, 73, 90–94, 116, 117, 123–125, 127, 132–135, 138, 141, 151, 152, 157, 158, 160, 161, 164–166, 173, 185, 187, 189 subjectivities 14, 28, 157, 158, 166, 169, 171, 174, 176–178 summer holidays 105 supermarket 69, 106, 120 supporters 73 survey 20, 26, 27, 79, 120, 122–125 teachers 44, 48, 51–53, 123, 142 team 11, 72, 74, 75, 84 technologies 94, 103, 123 telecommunication 94 temporary 45, 71, 72, 74, 83, 90, 91, 99, 109, 149, 151, 157, 159, 166, 178 territory 34, 114, 121, 123, 126, 127, 137, 139, 142 time 6, 16, 26, 39, 42, 44, 46, 49, 51, 59, 60, 69, 71, 74–77, 81–83, 94, 96, 99, 100, 102, 105, 113, 116, 118, 119, 123, 125, 127, 130, 132, 141, 146, 157, 164, 167, 169, 173 Tokyo 63, 66, 96, 102, 109, 110, 155

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198 tourism 3, 12, 13, 53, 57–61, 79, 93, 99, 110, 114, 115, 121, 122, 125–127, 172 trading 100, 101 tradition 4, 9, 11–14, 121, 185 trailing spouse 44, 74, 87, 160 training 70, 74, 172 transformation 30, 116, 127, 163, 170 transmigration 12, 119, 120, 123, 128, 129, 162, 165 transnational 3, 13, 22, 24, 26, 27, 43, 51, 61, 69, 71–73, 79, 94, 110, 114, 115, 117–121, 123, 126–130, 136, 157–160, 162, 164, 166–173, 175–177 transnationalism 91, 110, 117, 119, 160, 173 transnational organizations 84 transnational social spaces 72, 118 travel 58, 70, 74, 79, 113, 124, 125, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 152, 186 travellers 3 UAE (United Arab Emirates) 13, 134, 135, 138, 140, 141, 144, 146–152 Uganda 11, 69, 77–80, 83, 85–88 underprivileged 136, 143, 152 unemployment 6, 28, 32, 84 united states 92, 99, 101, 109, 113, 114, 117, 120–127, 161, 167 universities 56, 57, 90, 98, 104, 105, 137, 145 unpaid supporters 70 uprooted 12, 159, 169, 185 urban space 119 violence 6, 25, 127 visa 33, 41, 42, 45, 47–50, 52–54, 57–59, 61, 65, 70, 92, 96, 99, 104, 108, 113, 119, 126, 133, 139–141

Index visa application 70, 139, 147 visas 34, 48, 52–54, 57–59, 99, 139, 140, 148 visible 30, 69, 90, 118, 142, 181 voluntary 30, 102, 104, 105, 107, 115, 116 volunteering 137, 149, 172 vulnerability 4, 94, 141, 185, 186, 189 wealthy 22, 27, 54, 93, 114, 129, 132, 135, 136, 139, 177 welcome 82, 109, 113 well-being 13, 73, 76, 77, 79, 84 western 6, 11, 15, 20–24, 26, 29, 39, 42–45, 47, 51, 53, 57, 61–65, 91, 116, 132, 134, 136, 141, 143–145, 147–151, 154, 161, 162, 170, 179 white 11, 12, 18, 26, 29, 31, 41–43, 45, 50, 51, 55, 59–61, 64, 82, 116, 132, 147, 150, 158, 161, 162, 165, 176, 177, 181, 184 whiteness 4, 9, 11, 24, 42, 43, 45, 46, 51, 61, 62, 133, 147, 151, 152, 161, 162 wine and cheese 69 woman 74, 77, 78, 80–82, 105, 168, 169, 174, 179 work 12, 13, 19, 20, 24, 25, 33, 37, 41, 46, 49, 50, 55, 57, 59, 60, 70, 72–75, 77–79, 81, 83–86, 90–95, 98, 105, 107, 109, 115–117, 120, 123, 126, 128, 140, 141, 146–150, 160, 162, 165, 166, 168, 173, 176, 186 workplace 56, 90, 100, 105, 171, 174 xenophobia 114 Yeoh, Brenda 3, 17, 22, 40, 45, 47, 63, 65, 66, 121, 131, 160, 162, 176, 183

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