Episode 30: The 8 Different Types of Expats

Not all expat gigs are the same. In fact, some are drastically different than others, but there are elements that weave through the core of them all. What type of expat are you? Join Chandra as she delves into the 8 different types of expatriates and discover which type you are or maybe which type you hope to be!

And "what do you know"?!... (which happens to be the English translation of this week's "Chan Select") Chandra is sharing another amazing restaurant this week. Listen in!

• This episode's "Chan Select": Ristorante Che Te Ne Sa
• Follow on us Instagram: @Expatriotical
• Episode Reference: Episode 5: Language is Key with Sissi Arellano and Episode 23: Moving Abroad and Travel as a Solo Girl with Nikki- Part 1

"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Transcript

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, traveling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without losing your own.

Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life in every episode!

Hello everyone! I hope that this episode, if you are listening to it on the day it airs, boosts your mood, brightens your day, and helps you get past what is know as Hump Day, in America. Or better known as Wednesday, Miercoles, Mercoledi, or Mercredi in the only languages that I attempt to speak.

So for this episode, I had initially wanted to do it with another person as more of a discussion or conversation, pinging ideas back and forth between each other. But since I have yet to find that person and have an aching desire to talk about it. I’m just going to do it myself and it can always be something that is revisited later. Maybe even as a round table type of discussion, which would be fun!

The idea of there being different types of expatriates came to me when I did my first interview ever for Expatriotical with my friend Sissi, listen to Episode 5: Language is Key with Sissi Arellano to hear more, but during the interview I said something to the effect of was it different being an expat when she moved to China versus when she was an exchange student in America. And she said something to the effect of, “Well no, I don’t really consider my time as a student as being time as an expat.”

And that really got me thinking. What classifies a person as an expat? If you look up the definition of expatriate, it says, “A person who lives outside of their native country”. That’s it. It’s simple. So to me that meant that yes, a student is an expat, but what Sissi stuck with me. Because obviously those two experiences, living outside of her native country of Venezuela as a student in the United States and living in China and now in Paris as an expat with her husband’s employer, felt different.

That made me start digging and even asking people what they thought and in their walk of life living abroad, did they consider themselves an expat. And so, I made a list of the 8 Different Types of Expats. Let’s dive into them together!

The first type is the Student. Someone who moves abroad to study. Whether as a high school student in what we, in America, call a foreign exchange student or as a college student getting their bachelor's degree, master’s degree, or someone enrolled in doctoral studies.

Yes, it is fair to say, that the expat student may not have all of the same responsibilities as other types of expats, depending on the program they are enrolled in and all of the perks there are (or lack thereof).

But they still have to buy food, obtain and renew visas, go to the doctor, most students usually travel, and many more things that can have hiccups and mess ups along the way.

They also have to deal with cross-cultural issues. The first time this ever came to my awareness was in high school, particularly in my senior or 12th grade year. I graduated with a class of 19 people. Yep, you heard me right 19, like 1-9 not 9-0 people. And of those 19 people one person had just moved to town from California and the other was a lovely foreign exchange student from Germany.

Her name was Ise and we became friends, as she was a genuine sweetheart and was hosted by one of my really good friends. We would have conversations about lots of things, but one that caught me off guard was that in Germany the legal drinking age was 16. And we, my American friends and I, couldn’t believe it. I actually looked it up just for this episode and 16 is still the legal drinking age for consuming beer and wine and 18 is the legal age for spirits or hard alcohol.

Isa, could not believe that drinking was considered such a big deal that it was prohibited until a person was 21 years old, to her it wasn’t a big deal and we couldn’t believe that people were allowed to drink so young!

Also, if I remember correctly, Ise worked to get her driver’s license. Because since she was 17, she could have it there in Colorado, whereas in Germany she had to wait until she was 18.

I was talking to my dear friend, Libby, here in Paris, who did a short study or exchange program with the Sorbonne, which as a fun tidbit is Europe’s second oldest university, she loved it in France so much that she decided to stay and to go to the American University of Paris (also known as AUP).

Libby explained to me that unlike many or most American universities, AUP, does not have dormitories or a cafeteria, but it does have a housing program and an annex with a cafe. I mention this because to me that is a huge cultural difference. I will tell on myself now and admit that I attended two universities and one community college (in between those two universities) before finally getting my degree. I also worked in the Admissions office of the first university I went to and I lived on campus in three different dormitories.

So someone familiar with that sort of system where your housing is close so you can walk to a cafeteria and choose from an array or buffet even, of different types of food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and dessert may be a little intimidated by going straight from their parents’ house, to an apartment where they have to do everything themselves.

Anyway, I digress, I just want to say that living abroad as a student still has its challenges and still counts as being an expat.

The next type of expat is the company or government-sponsored expat. This is someone who typically has a set period for their assignment and their employer pays to move them to the foreign posting. This is the category that Chris and I fall under.

Of course there are plenty of details between companies and governments or even agencies within the same government that are different. Some of this type of expat get the benefit of their company or agency paying for an annual home leave trip and some do not.

Some pay for international schools from the age of preschool and beyond and some do not, they start later. Some agencies have houses that they rotate their expat employees in and out of and some allow the employee to have more agency and choose their own accommodations.

Honestly, in this category there are so many minute details that can differ, that I would truly bore you if I shared them all. Now I find them interesting and curious, but I will not put you through listening to all of the ones I can think of.

Suffice it to say, that admittedly, this is one of the cushier and more supported types of expat experiences, since you have your company or government behind you. And I’m not going to complain about that, I’m thankful, it’s just simply a fact.

Another type of expat, is or are missionaries. Growing up in Christian culture, I have always been aware, in a general sense, of missionaries and what they do, but it hasn’t been until moving abroad that I have learned more and understood their experience, as much as I can from an outside perspective.

Missionaries can have apparently as short as one or two month assignments or, they can live abroad for decades. Their funding, if you will, comes from people who believe in their mission and what God is calling them to do and so those people give donations, usually of the monthly variety.

The missionary expat, has to pay for everything themselves. From the move itself, to the furnishings of a new house, private health insurance, etc... They have to deal with paying taxes to a foreign government on their own, renewing their visas on their own, and paying for those sacred home leave trips on their own.

They also usually put their children in local schools, to avoid the exorbitant cost of international schools, and this can create an added level of stress when the school is instructed in a different language than their mother tongue.

I will be honest that I haven not had to deal with this, as we are company-sponsored expats and have so far only been posted in countries where we do not speak the language and so due to the fact that our next assignment could always be back in America, we need to keep class instruction for our children in their mother tongue of English and also, as much as possible we try to find similar curriculums to what can be found in the States.

But this part of being a missionary expat amazes me, because I watch as the children are immersed in the language, pick it up quickly, and go on speaking their own mother tongues as well. Becoming bi-lingual or sometimes tri-lingual or more! It’s fascinating watching that transformation and seeing how their young malleable brains work and grow and learn so quickly. I wish I could say the same for myself.

Another issue that missionary expats can face, is that when civil unrest or war happens in their post country, they may be forced to leave. And they may have spent years or decades of their lives in that country. It can be challenging to have to return to their country of origin and their job is no longer the same.

If that happened to Chris, which honestly, when the war between Russian and Ukraine started, his and many companies pulled their employees and sometimes even their operations out of Russia. But Chris would have just been assigned to a new posting, whether back in America or in another country abroad, still doing his same job. But that is not always the case with missionaries. Sometimes they are forced to leave the country that has been or become their home, never to return. And so I would say that the missionary type of expat is the one with the most sacrifice.

Another type of expat that experiences a lot of sacrifice are members of the armed forces or military. Now I personally have never been in the military, nor has Chris, nor have any of our parents, so I don’t speak from personal experience here, but one of my besties, Jen, lived in Okinawa, Japan for a couple of years when her husband was stationed there.

Military families can have a variety of experiences, from living on a base and doing pretty much all of daily life within its confines, such as shopping for food which is done at a commissary or clothes shopping which is done at the PX, or even grabbing a bite to eat at a restaurant. But there are also times when the family lives off base or there isn’t a base at all and then their life can look a lot like the lives of other types of expat families. And this was Jen’s experience, living off of base and living amongst the people of Okinawa.

And then within that whole train of thought are soldiers who are deployed. Honestly, I hadn’t really thought of them as being expats, and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it, but they are living outside of their native country. Yes, they probably live on base, but they may be going out during time off and exploring their surroundings and meeting the locals.

I mean, if you look up the legend of how the famous Roman pasta dish, Carbonara, (Carbonara in my American accent) was made, it is said that it came from the GIs (government issued soldiers) utilizing their rations of eggs and bacon during WWII. I can imagine some eager young privates in the American army meeting some beautiful young Italian women and a delicious infusion of those cultures comes about.

Soldiers still have to deal with the language barrier, cultural differences, and many other things, such as extreme danger and being more cut off from communication with their loved ones, than a lot of other expats have to deal with. Hats off to them.

One more type of expat that is sort of similar to that last group is an NGO or Non-governmental Organization expat. I am not as familiar with this group because I have only met, that I can think of, one or two people that did that kind of work. But for a reference point you would be familiar with several of the NGOs such as The Peace Corps, Doctors without Borders, Amnesty International, Save the Children, and the International Red Cross. According to a quick Google search, NGOs “are vital for driving social change, providing humanitarian aid, developing communities, and advocating for the rights and welfare of populations worldwide.”

It is my understanding that NGO expats can get a very deep and intimate look into the lives and world of the locals in the country where they are staying, even if their length of stay is not very long. In the Peace Corp, for example, volunteer assignments range from 3 to 12 months.

I won’t belabor this category of expat, since I am not as familiar with it, but I did think it was important to mention them.

Now we are going to switch gears and move onto three more types of expats that I feel like fall into the “extra fun” category and the reason for that is that all three of these types of expats have made a very specific choice to either move abroad or to stay abroad.

The first one I will mention is the Adventure-seeking Expat. They either have had a long-standing love for a certain country, culture, language, or people, a long standing childhood dream of living in a place, or visited that place and then never wanted to leave.

My friend, Nikki, shared with me in Part 1 of my interview with her, that she had always just had this affinity for the French language and a fascination with the culture and country, since around age 10. So she just started positioning herself for a trajectory of living in France. First by doing an intensive major in French during university, including an entire year studying in the South of France in French. Then by incrementally working and gaining the accolades that would allow her to transition to the French branch of her company. (You can hear more about Nikki’s journey to living in France in Episode 23: Moving Abroad and Travel as a Solo Girl.)

These Adventure-seeking expats, tend to experience all of the same problems some of the other types of expats face, but can tend to have a lot more determination in the face of challenges, because that love for the country they have moved to, seems to form this sort of grit and makes them a force to recon with.

Another friend I have, visited Italy, though I can’t remember if it was on a brief work assignment or for a vacation, but she fell in love and decided that she never wanted to leave and so she didn’t. She started finding work and learning Italian and she eventually met the man that would become her husband and has been living there happily for around 2 decades. This is the next type of “extra fun” expat. When either an Adventure-seeking expat or maybe even a Company sponsored expat decides they like it so much, they never want to leave. This is called a Longterm Expat, but could also be known as an immigrant.

Immigrant is defined as “a person who has come to a different country in order to live there permanently”. Now this is a very HOT Topic word and I am not going to go into all of the variations of that or the reasons why. BUT I will say that this is a very interesting topic to me, specifically that change from being an expat to wanting to Immigrate or being a Long-term expat.

I am sure there are lots of reasons to want to stay in your new country and I think that those tend to be very personal and specific to each individual, but it’s a big step and I am fascinated by those that choose to take the plunge!

The final type of expat, is the one that I think I aspire to be. And that is a Part-time expat. This is the bougiest of them all. It’s the fair weather expat and usually requires a person having some disposable income to make it happen.

Part-time expats have stumbled upon a place that makes their hearts sing or makes them feel alive, and though they don’t necessarily want to pull up stakes from their country of origin and live in this new place forever. The new place has forever changed them and they desperately desire to go back and not just for a one week vacation every few years.

And that typically requires them buying a home in this new location. For me that place is or would be Cinque Terre, Italy. I fantasize about living there, like I’m seriously not joking, every couple of months I go on a real estate website and look for a house or an apartment with a view of the sea.

I know, that I can’t have that right now, but maybe just maybe, I will be able to one day. Because I think that when you live somewhere that place is forever a part of you, but some places infect you with a passion and a desire to have more than just your short stint as an expat there.

But I also love this idea of being a Part-time expat because, you don’t have to cut your ties with your roots. Family and friends are still accessible because you live there too, but you also don’t have to be a burden if you want an extended stay.

I know that this may be a privileged dream, but that’s the beauty of having a dream. It costs nothing, it’s not illegal, and everyone can have one.

On that slightly philosophical note, I will wrap up this discourse on the 8 Different Types of Expats. Listing them again they are: the student expat, the company or government-sponsored expat, the missionary expat, the military expat, the NGO expat, the Adventure-seeking expat, the Long-term expat, and the Part-time expat. Which one are you?

For today’s “Chan Select” we are going to travel back to Italy, to a little town called Roma. Just kidding, it's not little! But since we were talking about Carbonara, I have to tell you about the best carbonara I have ever had in my life!

When we lived in Italy, Chris had been to Rome on a couple of business trips and came back home to Milan raving about this place and said if we ever got a chance to go to Rome together he wanted to take me there. So in the summer of 2020 when the world was closed up and locked down, we set out on our Tour of Italy vacation, with Rome as our first destination, but our first stop was a restaurant to the north of Rome on the outskirts of the city called Ristorante Che Te Ne Sa (which means “What do you know” in Italian.)

And it’s with that same flair that gave them their name, that they cook their food. The Carbonara is rich and yet creamy from the egg yolk, with a perfect balance of salt from the guanciale pork and pecorino cheese, a small punch of flavor from the black pepper, and the Paccheri pasta is perfectly al dente, creating a culinary masterpiece that is truly unforgettable!

This is such a local haunt, such a “hole in the wall” type of restaurant, that it actually doesn’t even have a website and when I typed the name into the search engine of Instagram all that came up was 4 posts with the hashtag of the same, name BUT when I clicked on that hashtag, there it was a photo of the best Carbonara ever!

Don’t lose heart, I will leave the link for Ristorante Che Te Ne Sa’s page on Tripadvisor in the show notes, so that you can check it out for yourself! And as usual, I am not an affiliate, just a super big fan.

And finally for our quote of the day, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before, something that might be a bit preposterous or presumptuous and that is to quote myself. Or maybe I should say to paraphrase myself. And this is it, “The beauty of having a dream is that it costs nothing, it’s not illegal, and anyone can have one.”

That is going to wrap up our episode for today everyone! And before I sign off, I want to tell you something exciting that I just discovered! If you are an Expatriotical listener through Spotify, you can officially comment on each episode and it’s even retro active!

I cannot tell you how much I have wanted to “like” or comment on episodes of podcasts that I listen to regularly, just say “this was so helpful” or “I love this, thank you!” And now, I or we can!

So, if you are a Spotify user, first please subscribe or follow Expatriotical there if you haven’t already and then leave a comment! Especially if you have thought of another type of expat that I missed, I would love to hear it and maybe that conversation can be fodder for a potential round table discussion in the future!

Thank you all so much for listening and for being a part of this growing community! That is all she wrote for this episode. I’ll see you back here again next week. Until then, dream big, it’s free! This is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical!