ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the aspect of expatriation and discusses the following questions: What is the expatriate experience? How does it differ from the experience of being a stranger? Under what conditions does it undermine an individual's personal identity? It argues that some of the salient characteristics of the expatriate experience are typically critical wonder, feelings of estrangement, and a mixture of melancholy and exhilaration. The chapter also argues that the expatriate experience involves ambiguity about one's remembered, imagined, or hoped-for homeland and heightened awareness of local conventions. It shows that expatriates' reliance on convention-settling procedures is often displayed in response to the personal effects. The chapter also shows that convention-settling procedures promise to be of help in enabling us to deal fruitfully with globalization problems and issues—in particular, with the problem of adapting to changes brought about by globalization—without thereby sacrificing our personal identity or our sense of self.
