Fifth column: Happy Returns?, E T Ranger

A recently published piece of research that caught my eye concerns the factors associated with comfortable re-entry when it is time for expatriates to go home. The researchers, four social scientists from Ghent University in Belgium, decided to look not at the problems but at what made people happier (van Gorp et al, 2017). Their findings will surprise no-one. That, to me, shows a successful project: after all, most of the time what we are doing is pretty good sense. But in this case it does give us something to think about.

As the researchers say, most of the previous research had either been carried out on business people, who are very expensive to send abroad, or on ‘international’ students – who pay the bills at many established universities. The anecdotal literature on returning families is massive, but what circulates in schools is very largely the personal stories of people who have gone through the returning experience. It is good that the researchers have put all this in writing, for several reasons. It has given many creative people who are wrenched from their careers a chance to express and relieve their feelings; it supplies a foundation of sympathetic storytelling with which the newcomers can identify, to their great comfort; and it gives clues to ways in which similar people with similar expectations can prepare for the shocks of cultural and social dislocation. But ever since 1976, when Dr Ruth Useem first coined the term ‘Third Culture Kids’ for the returning children of American missionaries in India, there has been little exploration of what is going on inside these youngsters.

We in international schools have our transition programmes, and work hard to provide a welcoming social environment. A lot of international schools take this further and reason that they need to help people to go ‘home’, but what the programmes provide is largely based on what a bunch of well-intentioned, thoughtful Western people themselves find helpful. It can be different for others.

So what did the researchers find? Reassuringly, they tell us that we are worrying about the right things. Yes, families need emotional support from people like themselves. Yes, this comes from relationships. Yes, it is good to have visits from friends from home. And, as we may have suspected all along, those who settle in well overseas may have more trouble settling back. Those who identify as ‘international people’ may be more comfortable if they choose to stay abroad.

The advice that the team came up with is interesting. On a single posting, keep in touch with home, have many visitors, talk to co-nationals. By all means look at the host community to get the hang of living there, but don’t commit to them. To the employers, support expats before and after the service overseas, and think about having a cadre of permanent expats who are happy to move from one posting to another.

But hold on – does this research really show causes and effects? What if the comfortable returners are just the people who are naturally flexible, and their comfort is the cause of easy settling, not the result? People are different. We have tried our best in our transition programmes, but maybe the results were going to happen anyway. And maybe the results which we think are typical and universal have come from only interviewing one sector of the people; the ones who are willing to be interviewed by researchers because they think the same way the researchers do. The Belgian team only had completed surveys from 13% of those they approached; perhaps these were the ones who could look back in comfort. If we are to serve all our families, we need to look fearlessly at what is happening, and dare to ask whose moves didn’t have a happy ending.

Maybe it is time to develop the Third Culture Kid profile. People are diverse, and so are the circumstances in which they find themselves. Ruth Van Reken, a leading figure in this field, has recently taken a pioneering look at mobility in a much wider perspective (2017). Her image of a CCK (Cross Cultural Kid) links our students with a great mass of research on children going through changes: migration, refugee life, adoption, minority or locally mobile living. This could bring together a wealth of psychological evidence, based on ideas which have moved a long way since 1976.

The whole world is living with change, and we are just a part of it.

Van Reken, R (2017) Who are Cross Cultural Kids?, Available at http:// www.crossculturalkid.org/who-are-cross-cultural-kids/ (Last accessed 11 June 2017) van Gorp L, Boroş S, Bracke P and Stevens P A J (2017) Emotional support on re-entry into the home country: does it matter for repatriates’ adjustment who the providers are? International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 58, 54-68