ABSTRACT
On a number of occasions during the course of fieldwork in Grand Cayman between 1993 and 1996, British expatriates told me that they had left Britain seeking ‘adventure’, a chance for something ‘different’, to live abroad for a while.1 These were not youths with little investment or few social obligations seeking a travelling interlude between school and work. They were, for the most part, middle-aged, middle-ranking professionals: nurses, teachers, draughtsmen, archivists, etc. How, I wondered, could people leave long-standing jobs, property and familial relations to take up well paid but insecure contractual employment and temporary work permits in a locale about which, in most cases, they knew little or nothing for a purpose so frivolous as a little adventure? The term must, I thought, be code or even cover for more substantial motivations: capped salaries, career stalemates, and family difficulties. And indeed these kinds of factors, to a greater or lesser extent, also often appeared to be in attendance. But I think I missed the point.
