Monday, October 24, 2016

The problem with being a long-term expat...

After 15 years, and a life on the road that took her to Japan, Singapore and Australia, Helen Maffini felt it was time to return home to Canada. But, it took just a fraction of that time for her to realise she had made a mistake.

“We moved [back] to Canada in 2013 because we thought we wanted to settle down,” she says, via email. “We realised after a year, we did not! Me, especially. I found it hard to fit in again, I felt very different and things had changed a lot. We found the long winter very hard and it was pretty quiet compared to where we have lived before.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Maffini, 46, an education consultant, this month, moved to Cambodia, where her husband, an Italian chef, is taking up a new position.

Maffini's experience is not unusual, particularly as the expat demographic has shifted over the past 20 years. Traditionally, an expat posting involved a professional being transferred to an international office by their company for what would typically be a one-off three-year deployment. A lucrative package of incentives would often sweeten the deal. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Why Switzerland is getting worse for expats...
  2. The downsides of being an expat in Australia...
  3. There’s a mass expat exodus from Brazil...
  4. 10 popular expat countries to stay away from...
  5. The end of the expat? Cities fight for 'Inpats'
  6. Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?
  7. New international schools for Singapore as expat population surges...
  8. Switzerland and Singapore regarded as 'best place for expats'

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