ABSTRACT

Whilst the talk and activities of many expatriates reveal deep and strong connections to the places of home, at the same time these links are also often constructed with some ambivalence. Returning home will bring with it new and different demands for identity negotiation. The resources of whiteness, nationality, gender and race may be more ambiguous in the home context than the expatriate one. Work is also the means therefore by which racial boundaries can be produced: within the workplace, between the skilled expatriates and local members of staff, as well as in the city, between expatriates and the local community. That work and organizations are critical discursive sites of centring and marginalization has been well documented in the organizational literature, particularly as regards to gender. Whilst a sense of belonging to a national community can be intensified by migration, this is perhaps more likely to be animated in the new 'foreign' context than in the actual landscape of home.