Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down]: An Interview with Mark Cohen

Mark Cohen with his wife. Photo taken and provided by Mark on August 18, 2019.

I conducted this interview as part of Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down]. For more information about the project, read the project overview. To read additional entries as they come available, subscribe to The Letter.

Mark Cohen and I met through a mutual professional contact, who saw my request for introductions for the Stakes project on LinkedIn and shared it with her contacts. (A huge thank you to the connectors out there who have made so many of the interviews in this project possible!)

For our interview, Mark and I met via Skype on a Thursday evening for Mark in Melbourne (Australia) and a Thursday morning for me in Lausanne (Switzerland).

The Emigration Possibility Tied to National Origins

Based on previous interviews as part of the Stakes project, I’ve noticed a pattern connecting place of origin to the inspiration to move far from home.

For example, previous Stakes interviews with people of origins in the Philippines (for example, in this interview) and India (for example, in this interview and this interview) indicate that leaving the country of origin long term or permanently for education or professional paths is a known and accepted—and even, in some cases, welcomed—possibility.

However, a path far from the borders for a long-term or even permanent stay—in other words, long-term or permanent emigration—does not appear to naturally occur to people with U.S. origins, based on my interviews to date.

Mark’s Introduction to Possibilities Abroad

In Mark’s case, this pattern appears. Mark’s wife—of Polish origin—introduced him first to international travel and then to the potential for job opportunities abroad.

The Singapore branch of the company where Mark had worked in New Jersey (and at which he still worked at the time of this interview) offered him his first international role, which his wife encouraged him to take after falling in love with the country on a prior vacation.

Though they had planned to move back to the United States after three years, the company reorganized and decided to eliminate Mark’s division in Singapore after two and a half years. Amid the shuffle, Mark received an offer to join the company’s office in Australia for a role that mapped to his skill set and experience.

Direct and then Immersive Exposure to New Perspectives and Ideas

In addition, Mark’s wife was the first person to directly expose Mark to an international or non-U.S. perspective. When they met in the United States, his now-wife lived mostly with other immigrants as a student.

“I’d never looked at America as an outsider before,” he said. “Before, I’d been guilty of having an American-centric point of view.”

Getting to know her and her friends at that time gave him “the first idea that there was another perspective and things aren’t the same elsewhere. I hadn't known the immigrant struggle as intimately before. I realized it wasn't some ‘American dream’ experience, like the one I’d had in my head.”

Mark said that his life outside the U.S. borders has shown him a greater global community, making him less nationalistic or patriotic than before.

“Americans are so tied to this ‘best country in the world’ idea, this chauvinism, that I hadn't recognized until I moved away,” Mark said, and added that he retracts from this attitude more now that he sees it more clearly.

Also, he’s received exposure to American stereotypes abroad and said that he wouldn’t have realized that certain fashions and behaviors are “American” if he hadn’t lived in other places. Examples? He mentioned Australians commenting on Americans’ emphasis on their teeth and on American male preferences for baggy shirts and wearing t-shirts under their dress shirts.

Expat vs. Immigrant: Defined Emotionally

Mark mentioned that he felt like an expat in Singapore and feels like an immigrant in Australia.

When then asked to provide his definition of “expat” and “immigrant,” Mark said that the terms have an emotional import to him.

“I relate it to the experience I had,” he said, referring to his experience as a self-defined “expat” in Singapore. “You don't feel permanent, you feel disconnected. It’s amazing, but it’s also lonely. Surreal. You're taken care of in exchange for that weirdness via perks.”

Mark said that in Singapore, the expats gravitated to each other. “In Singapore, there is an expat class—or there was when I was there,” he said. “The expats are getting paid a lot more than the locals, so you gravitate to other people who are expats. Often, you send your kids to international schools.”

He said that the locals kept their distance from the expats as well. “It is a very small country. Generations [of locals] live together or very close to each other. It felt almost exclusionary. Typically, the locals don't invite expats home for dinner. Also, they know the transience [of the expats], so they don’t invest themselves in the relationship.”

Mark said he and his wife didn’t feel a lot of common ground with the expat community and didn’t have a local community, which made them never feel truly at home in Singapore.

In Australia, Mark said he doesn’t feel “foreign,” which is why he identifies as an immigrant. He participates in the local community in Melbourne and doesn’t think he receives any special treatment or fringe benefits from living and working there as someone from the United States.

Many Years Later, Still an American

Mark and his family plan to apply for Australian citizenship—though Mark said he still identifies as an “American.”

“The first thing I do when I wake up is to look at the U.S. news to find out what’s going on,” he said. “My attention is still 90 percent on American news.”

Also, Mark feels very nostalgic about his New Jersey roots. “There’s a real Jersey pride,” he said. “My grandmother spent half her life in Florida, but she always got nostalgic when reminiscing about New Jersey. Fortunately, I have the opportunity to go back and visit and maintain my connection with the place and the people.”

When he goes back—as he usually does, once a year—Mark drives past his old house and goes through all the old neighborhoods of his youth. He tries to go to a baseball game. And he always feels sad to leave.

Defining “Home” for a Once Expat, Later Immigrant

When asked about his definition of home, Mark said, “It really depends on with which lens I'm interpreting the question. If ‘home’ is where my heart is, then it would be New Jersey and Philadelphia. If ‘home’ is where I want to be, then it would be here in Melbourne.”

Mark said that he has become more settled in being away from home. His first year in Australia, to which they moved straight from Singapore, he said he was ready to go back to the United States. That has changed.

He and his wife now plan to stay in Australia permanently, though he said their thinking could change if their daughter decided to go to the United States for university. Also, he said, “We own a house in Philadelphia. I have a dream that we do winters in Australia and summers in Philly. Though my wife may not be on the same page as that.”

By his own estimation, there’s a 70 percent chance he’ll live in Australia for the rest of his life. How does that make him feel, given his New Jersey nostalgia?

“There’s a little sorrow that comes to me when I say that,” Mark said. “There’s a balance. Does the happiness supersede that feeling of sorrow? Right now, the answer is yes. But maybe it changes.”

Language, Race, and the Experience of International Living

As our conversation concluded, I mused with Mark about whether his responses to my questions for the Stakes project and his perspectives on his experiences could have any connection to his race (Mark is a white male) or his native language (which is English).

Mark said that he hadn’t thought about this angle. After a few moments of consideration about his definition of his ethnicity—to which he had answered “American”—he said that he’d never really considered “Caucasian” as a definition.

However, he did feel white in Singapore. “I was different. I stood out,” he said. “In Singapore, there is ethnic alignment. The Caucasians were seen as richer expats. The local people didn’t look down on us, but there was an animosity. It had a colonialist feeling.”

However, he said that he couldn’t say for certain that the feeling of division stemmed from race and wasn’t a class question or an issue of foreigners versus locals. He mentioned other people of other races in the Singapore expat community and said he didn’t know whether they had experiences different than his or perspectives different from his own.

Mark acknowledged that Australia is probably easier for him because he fits into the white majority and English is the official language.

As Always, a Deep Gratitude

I’ve had the good fortune of connecting with people from several places across the globe through this project. I continue to be amazed by the experiences and perspectives I’ve encountered.

However, though it’s the nature of the Stakes project for the people I interview to come from and to live in different places than I do, it does mean that most of the participants and I are too far away to share a drink or a meal.

Mark, I hope one day we manage to break bread together. I cannot tell you how much I valued our conversation, your insights, and your willingness to explore this topic and its many facets.

P.S.—By pure coincidence, the Stakes conversation I had immediately after my conversation with Mark, I had with an Australian who had moved to the United States—the inverse of Mark’s move. Click here to read about Greg’s experience.

For more information about Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down], the project that generated this interview, read the project statement. If you would like to participate as an interview subject or have a participant to recommend, please contact me. To get updates on the project, subscribe to The Letter.