Does becoming an expat change your view of home?

How does emigration affect expats’ views of the home country?

There’s no doubt that moving overseas changes lives, but how does it affect memories and feelings about the home country? One reason for relocating overseas is to gain the experience of a totally new way of life in an unfamiliar culture, but many expats don’t realise it’s not necessary to cut themselves off from their country of birth. Whatever the individual motivation for the move, feelings of losing touch with home are inevitable but don’t need to be taken as a permanent reaction.

The vast majority of expatriates find themselves keeping up with the news from home by reading online media, watching the relevant TV channels or streaming radio channels, all of which were almost impossible before the tech age arrived. One way to acknowledge you’re still interested in what goes on ‘at home’ is to cook your favourite dinner dish as if you’d never left. You may well be crazy about your adopted local cuisine, but that doesn’t stop you from missing familiar treats unavailable at any price in your new location.

One slightly more scary way to blend into your new location is to mix with and make friends from the diverse cultures in your new work and leisure environment, as long as you don’t ignore the fact that touching base with friends from the home country helps stop you feeling homesick and vulnerable. In this social media age, keeping in touch with friends and family is a breeze for those with the relevant accounts, unlike in the old days when letters took weeks to arrive and international phone calls cost a small fortune or couldn’t be made at all from your new location.

Let’s face it, the arrival of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, not to mention Skype, have changed expats’ lives in a way never before possible. It’s not just the content of the communications, it’s also the use of your native language which helps keep a sense of perspective for those overseas.