ABSTRACT
Expats are a bold bunch to turn their back on so much – kith and kin, the whole country – even if ‘did they ever really leave?’ seems always to follow them as well. Who wouldn’t change a cold and rainy, over-taxed, immigrant-swamped going-to-the-dogs motherland for a place in the sun? Or who would, with all the visiting if grandchildren are not to miss out on grandparents? No matter, there they are – younger ones working online, female timeshare touts, male plumbers, and barmen servicing other expats – but for the greater part a scatter of greying couples with enough life to follow a trail around the wider Mediterranean, Croatia, southern Ireland (not so sunny), or Bulgaria. These are not just any émigrés. Excluded will be migrant contractors in Qatar or Dubai and drug money fugitives stuck in Marbella for their sins, while the genteel who go somewhat native in their adopted Dordogne, Tuscany, or Provence will be classed as exceptions proving the rule. ‘Expat’, more broadly than when it meant chiefly old colonial-looking types, means the rest. This is Cataluña or Corfu but by a whisker was Mallorca or Malta not called home, if indeed ‘home’ is how the new site of domicile is actually reported back. Not only Brits, Germans, and Dutch – it can be Finns, Japanese, or Russians. Ireland is not so bothered by its ‘blow-ins’ but unsureness is also abroad. Doesn’t the accepting country see, in essence, tourists who stayed on, even if the latter might claim other identity? We cringe that it should be ambassadors of ourselves living the holiday but leave it unexamined that cringing is not quite saying good riddance. We smugly enjoy accounts of the dream turning sour and then admire the lack of homesickness when it doesn’t. We settle for an unsettled sobriquet, half endearing, half censorious. We call them expats.
