ABSTRACT
Fernando Alegria’s description of his expatriation’s beginnings points to some salient features also found in the experiences of other expatriates. This chapter focuses on the social interactions and their effects on personal identity of individuals of three sorts: foreigners who, as Alegria puts it, have become immigrants; those who, like Gypsies, have no homeland; and those who are expatriates at home. It examines the expatriate experience in the wider sense that also covers what sometimes is called “internal exile”. The chapter considers the relation between expatriates and members of a group which partially overlaps with expatriates—strangers. It discusses the forms and nature of dialogue and interactions elsewhere, in the process of outlining a conception of philosophy as diplomacy. The expatriates’ reliance on convention-settling procedures is often displayed in response to the personal effects that ongoing globalization processes have on them.
