The Decline of the Executive Expat: Three Factors that Killed the Golden “Expat Era”

Starting way back in the 1800s and until not too terribly long ago, several regions of the globe with heavy international business presence had significant expat groups.

Sure, “expat” is short for “expatriate”—and, etymologically, the term would seem to fit any person at any moment that the person is outside their home country.

However, no one has consistently used the term “expat” in this very literal sense in a very long time, if ever. In the very literal use of the term, you could even apply “expat” to tourists—who, while on vacation in foreign-to-them lands, are outside their home countries.

And that would feel absurd, wouldn’t it?

Today, people use “expat” when they want to speak positively about an immigrant or migrant—and they use the terms “immigrant” and “migrant” when they want to speak negatively about someone who is “not from around here.”

Side note: I’ve written an entire article about terms for people who have moved far from their home countries. Worth a read, perhaps, if the subject interests you.

However, more specifically, the term “expat” has, for decades, designated a very specific group of people who have moved countries or regions at the behest of their employers for professional purposes. The companies, organizations, governments employing said expats would shift them to another region of the world for a handful of years so that they could share their experience with that area’s local office and so they could gain experience from that corporate department in turn.

In recent years, though, the era of the expat (in this sense of the term) has declined precipitously—and for three primary reasons.

Let’s review, why don’t we?

From One-Company Careers to Job-Jumping

Before our modern job-hopping era, people tended to spend their careers at single companies. You’d finish your schooling, sign on somewhere, and there you’d generally stay until you retired. (My mother always called this “lust to dust.”)

Back in the lust-to-dust career era, companies had a long-term view when it came to their employees. Moving them to different offices—whether within the same country or abroad—for several-year stints each move made sense for rounding out the development of an employee an organization had an eye to advance along the organizational ladder.

Via gaining varied experiences in different divisions and departments and roles, an employee could better serve the company in the future—and organizations had reasons to believe, back in those days, that the employee would still be in their employ for that future. The more facets of the business a person had seen, as they saw it, the better they could serve the organization.

At this time, corporations paid for the moves and often gave stipends to the employees’ families—especially when the transfer involved an international move—to pay for relocation costs, of course, but also often to pay for the families’ living expenses (including rent, education costs, and even vehicles and sometimes drivers) and, quite often, for the costs of visits back to their home countries while they lived abroad.

Today, people change jobs every handful of years, rarely staying at an organization longer than five to seven years at a stretch. I’ve even heard career experts recommend that no one stay in a role longer than seven years, as they thereafter become “unhireable” elsewhere. Potential employers seeing a lengthier stint on a resume will worry that they’re too anchored in their current (or most recent) corporate culture and structure and that a change will be too rocky for all involved.

Why would career experts make this recommendation, and what caused the shift from career employment at a single organization to moving organizations over the course of a single career? Well, that’s an entirely different article about societal shifts and too much to cover in this post, alas. (Maybe a subject I’ll address in the future, though.)

Roughly, though, the dropping of pension plans at corporations made staying less enticing, as did employees’ realization that they can often level up their salaries and their job functions more quickly by moving companies than they can in staying within the same corporation.

Employees leaving their organizations after a handful of years demotivated corporations when it came to investing in employee training. Today, employers tend to invest in employees only as far as they believe they’ll recover their investment before the employee leaves.

And those expensive corporate relocations and fancy “expat packages?” Much too high a cost for the potential reward to companies in today’s business climate, in most cases. Organizations today prefer to hire locally or rely on the second factor in the expat decline—which I discuss in the next section—to cover any necessary cross-nation or international exchanges.

Easy Travel and the Internet Make the World Smaller

Thanks to reductions in the cost and effort involved in travel and the magic of the internet, our world has become much smaller.

Today, travel has become much easier and more affordable than ever before—including international travel. In way-back times, you needed to haul everything, yourself, and your family to a foreign land on a boat. More recently, but still in a bygone era compared to today, international air travel involved high costs and travel time. Flying employees hither and yon for a week or two at a time—or even a month at a time—over and over again when needed, make no sense. In the boat era and in the complicated-air-travel era, companies simply found it more financially efficient to send lust-to-dust employees for two- or three-year stints to another part of the country or globe. Plus, longer time “in situ” meant employees gained greater depth of experience—which mattered if you planned to have them on board for their full careers.

With cheaper and more efficient air travel, companies see sending people to other offices and locales in short, periodic stints—and as needed—as much more cost-efficient.

Add to the ease and efficiency of today’s travel the advance of the internet—which has reduced the need for people to be face-to-face, in person, as often as they had to be even a decade ago—and today’s corporations don’t need to send people far and wide even for a week or so at a time as often as they once did. The need for international travel for business still exists, sure, but the frequency and urgency has decreased, making it even more evidently resource-efficient to send an employee overseas for a short business trip on occasion, rather than shipping them for years and paying their costs in the process.

Two-Career Households

A few decades ago, one career per household was more widespread—even if only for a certain period of time. (Again, the societal reasons for this shift are more than this single article can contain.)

Today, two-career households have more predominance. This makes a move to a different part of the country or a different country much more onerous for a family, as it requires a significant setback to the careers of one of the adults in the household. (And lest you default to thinking that the other adult can simply get a job in a different country as a foreigner who’ll be in the area for only a couple of years—especially if the person doesn’t speak the local language—better you pause and think again.)

For employees, staying in the region of their hiring or at least within their home country makes better long-term sense. Staying put means both careers can continue to develop without disruption, which typically translates to a better overall financial outlook for the family in the long-term—plus much less life and family upheaval. (Click here for my take on the challenges of integration into countries far from one’s own.)

Today, companies could lose employees through pushing global moves—another deterrent.

The Executive Expat Still Exists

Does this mean that the old “expat model” no longer exists? Of course not.

The executive expat still exists, just in smaller numbers—and in a very different structure.

Today’s expat has more likely moved corporate offices within their home countries or internationally through applying for the job internally at their corporation after extensive reflection and, where applicable, family discussion.

Because the employee has more often initiated the move than in the past and because the person may decide to stay in their adopted position and place permanently, corporate relocation packages have decreased and in-country stipends (the days-of-yore “expat packages”) have almost entirely gone away.

Here in Lausanne, where I reside as of this writing, several international companies once upon a time had filled the city with expats, rotating them out every two to three years in what felt, from what I’ve heard, almost like an ongoing revolving door exchange system. Today, many of these offices have changed character. The executive expat hordes have gradually returned to their countries of origin, replaced by fewer and fewer expats each year, most of whom no longer fit the traditional expat model.

The organizations who cater to corporations with expat programs have had to shift focus accordingly. International corporate relocation firms now promote their services as often to individuals making moves as they do to corporations for moving their employees. And organizations that cater to expat people in terms of helping the acclimate and build social connections with people from their cultures or within the local expat community have dwindled so much that many have folded or have folded their organizations together—or have shifted their focus areas to bringing in more locals or permanent immigrants and long-term migrants, rather than people who fit the traditional expat profile.

The Expat Mindset

I’ve lived in several countries now, but I’ve never moved under the aegis of a global corporation via the classic expat structure or program.

Each time I’ve moved, as a foreigner, I’ve encountered the expat groups and organizations. I’ve even tried on more than one occasion to participate in some of their activities. I considered it a possible way to meet people, as people who’ve been in a place a while already have their friend groups established.

I’ve always felt like the odd bird in the group, though.

In many cases, the expat stipends covering the other participants’ living expenses meant they could afford lifestyles well beyond my means with only my income.

Further, expats have highly temporal mindsets—and somewhat enclosed ones. Knowing that they’ll live in a place only a few years, they see the stint as a momentary life experience and employ almost a tourist’s lens for their stay. Most never seem particularly pulled to integrate into the place via learning the language or getting involved in local events and activities and associations (other than the expat ones). They live their years in the country in a bubble—something fascinating to observe, but not at all my perspective or outlook. I’ve always wanted to integrate as much as possible: learn the language, volunteer, do the local things with the local people as much as I could, and fully exist in a place more than use it as a “base of stay” for visiting the region before I move away. In fact, every time I’ve moved, I never knew if I wouldn’t stay there permanently.

Not to say I can’t understand, in some ways, the appeal of the classic “expat lifestyle.” And also not to say that I can’t understand the wistfulness I’ve encountered from people who I’ve heard bemoan the old expat way of life that’s dying out around them.

And I suppose I’d feel the same wistfulness, if ever I felt myself as part of the traditional executive expat group. The dying out of anything in which we’d once held place always feels strange, after all.