Halfway down the Danube

Thanks for those, Claudia! I've really enjoyed your blogs on TCK and expatriate culture. I've spent most of my life as an expat/immigrant and now I'm back in my home land, where I so feel like an expat. It's just one of those things. I'm a TCK all grown up, with itchy feet. But I feel all the better for all my experiences in other countries. I'm sure your children will, too.

:)

"the Americans in particular have the commissary where they can buy American products"

On behalf of the PX part of that service: "You're welcome." ;-)

The "4th class" of ex-pats you do not mention is the military. But in fact among US citizens military service is the most likely way a person gets outside US borders and lives among, or at least near, other nationalities and cultures. Nothing like a tour in Panama or Guam to instill a deep and heartfelt love of Lubbock or Binghampton.

The US also sends along vast numbers of civilian support employees where ever the military maintains a permanent station. Teachers in Department of Defense Dependent Schools. PX/Commissary workers. Medical staff. University Professors -- on contract for "extension" courses thru Pentagon-supported programs like University of Maryland's. Morale Support Librarians. (I had a gal-pal in Germany who'd been a GS-9 "combat librarian" in VietNam in the 70's before her transfer to Germany ...) The AFN (Armed Forces Network) broadcast teams. The engineers who maintain installation infrastructure like generators, phone systems, 110V/60 Hz power systems (regardless of local standards) water treatment systems, sewage treatment systems ... All this just the official portion of support. Volunteer efforts among the USO, US Red Cross, and denominational religious missions to "support the troops" also swell the ranks of the ex-pat services. And finally the "tourist" class dependents who jaunt over and around in "follow the fleet" travel are not statisically insignificant.

The US civilian support people in symbiosis with the US military tend to stay put in their remote locations on longer rotations than the actual military -- and tend to mingle with locals more.

Since the US volunteers a larger share of its citizens to service than many contries, and sends more support for its troops, and has more committments in more places than most, this contribution to the ex-pat community may tend in some places -- like Germany -- to "swamp" other categories -- the 4 classes might then seem to collapse into "military" and "all else".

Pouncer claims:

The "4th class" of ex-pats you do not mention is the military.

I did, actually:

Now's the time to confess that I left out the military entirely on purpose. I have no great insight into their lives, so I ignore them. Sue me.

I'm also not so sure that military do belong into the expat category at all, traveling with all their entourage and stuff. They carry the US with them wherever they go, different than other expats.

More on that later.

Claudia

re: cuban ISPs, maybe it has something to do with american software providers and blacklists. i remember being denied access to online banking because i lived in serbia, as well as to the services of AOL, not that i particularly wanted them. i have no idea whether those bans are still in force, nor whether your blog has any kind of anti-roguestate filters, but just a thought.

Raoul, our blog itself doesn't block ISP's other than those of very very heavy spammers.

This might result in some people getting access denied because spammers were using their ISP's to route through - I'm sorry if that ever happens but spammers are just evil.

Yesterday, we had over 80 Trackback spams!! I am against capital punishment but I might make an exception for these guys...

But in fact among US citizens military service is the most likely way a person gets outside US borders and lives among, or at least near, other nationalities and cultures.

Mm, no.

More than half a million Americans live in Canada; virtually none of them are in the military. Another half million plus in Mexico. Virtually none of /them/ are in the military, either. Just over 200,000 in Great Britain, of which only 12,000 are troops on active duty. Even throwing in civilian support personnel, you're not talking more than 10% there.

Worldwide there are somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million Americans living abroad. Even if you include the current troop deployments in Iraq, plus everyone who was ever former military, the majority of US expats are purely and entirely civilian.

Since the US volunteers a larger share of its citizens to service than many contries, and sends more support for its troops, and has more committments in more places than most, this contribution to the ex-pat community may tend in some places -- like Germany -- to "swamp" other categories -- the 4 classes might then seem to collapse into "military" and "all else".

I've seen this in some parts of Germany, sure.

But it's not the norm IME. In fact, it's not the norm, period. If you lived in Britain -- or, better yet, Ireland, a country with ~50,000 Americans and no American military presence whatsoever -- you'd have a rather different view.

Eyeballing the data, it looks like the majority of American expats live in countries where US military presence is modest to nonexistent. There are 100,000 Americans in France, another 100,000 in Australia. 70,000 in mainland China, 40,000 in Poland, 40,000 in Brazil, 90,000 in Spain.

There are a lot of expats out there. The military isn't that big a piece of it, though it can certainly look so from the inside.

Check your assumptions, etc.

Nothing like a tour in Panama or Guam to instill a deep and heartfelt love of Lubbock or Binghampton.

Um. I've been to Guam. 135,000 people. Of which about 25,000 are former military (and the families thereof), now permanently resident. The VFW headquarters is bigger than the Hyatt.

Is this really a surprise? Guam has a much, much nicer climate than Lubbock, and is prettier too.

Doug M.

Also, I don't think the drinking water in Guam stains your teeth the same way it does in Lubbock.

Hi from further up the Danube!

Interesting comments on life as an expat. I started out as a backpacker, found a well-paying job with a European company and worked there for 4 years. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next, and trying to keep out of the ranks of washed-up backpackers so middle class expats don't start to ignore me (the horror!).

I guess the distinction then falls between those "ex-pats" who, like Phillip Nolan, remain outside their homelands and those who, like Lewis Lambert Strether, take a prolonged Grand Tour but return.

Except of course that the young loudmouth "Man Without a Country" was always surrounded and supported by the US Navy, while the tactful, observant but aging "Ambassador" who spent only a few months in one European city is the one who learned the most.

The problem of generalizing from convenient examples is having BAD examples ... ;-)

Google is SO cool!

Okay, recognizing that I'm 15 years out of Europe -- (heck, the proposed EU free trade zone of 1992 wasn't quite a reality when I left) I'm predisposed to acknowledge that Things Are Different Now ... But I had no idea the ex-pat question was so controversial. The movement of military (and hangers-on) populations is some professional interest as I'm on the teams to launch freight towards their general areas ... And Google suggests that this bias is systemic. The IRS, the Census Bureau, and the major political parties track the military ex-pats closely. Taking the latter, and unofficial source first:

http://www.fairvote.org/righttovote/prnewswire.htm

"There are no firm statistics ... estimates [range] from 3 million to 10 million. - The non-partisan Center for Voting and Democracy says 2 million to 3 million expatriates are eligible voters. Federal officials say roughly 6 million Americans overseas are eligible to vote: 3.2 million private expatriates; 1.4 million members of the armed forces and 1.3 million of their relatives; and about 200,000 State Department workers and other government employees. "

2.8 privy to the PX for every 3.2 not by this.

That's voters, it says. I wonder which group is more prone to drag along citizen-not-voting spouses, in-laws, outlaws and kids?

Of course other estimates are higher. But then other estimates include dual nationals. There's an issue. Is a person resident in country C holding nationality from both nations A & B an ex-pat of A, an ex-pat of B, one-half of each, or two ex-pats: counting among the ex-pat population of A AND B? Ack!!

Also, many US ex-pats are retirees. One source quotes the US Social Security Administration
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04299/401103.stm
with 242,000 beneficiaries living outside US borders in 2002.

I'm inclined to suspect that the SSA sponsored ex-pats stay in their chosen locales longer, while military forces rotate out and back. But the fractions of total citizenry who then get the "ex-pat" experience via one method or the other is sensitive to the assumed lifespan of retirees and duty-tours of the troops and it's all more math than I care to attempt right now. ;-)

And on second thought, it's worse than that, for some of the ex-pat retirees will have retired from the military. Which pool would I add them to?

The Census Bureau was apparently directed to firm up the stats and after spending over $1M on PR to "get out the enrollment" formally counted:

http://www.aaro.org/faq.html

Country...Responses......Est. Population*
France.......3,105........ 101,000
Mexico.......1,999.......1,036,000
Kuwait.........286...........7,700

Nearly $200 per enrollee or, if State can be relied on to know more about it than the Census Bureau we invested over a dollar a head to MISS counting ex-pats... That sounds about par.

All in all, I think I may possibly have been too eager to surrender my hasty claim that more US citizens experience non-US residency (if not exactly "ex-pat" lifestyles ) via military conduits than other. An equally hasty review of the easily available hard data suggests the sort of question for which better-connected people than I might be awarded lucrative government or foundation grants to study and resolve. As such, I think I retract any previous attempt to retract the claim -- keeping the question open seems lots more fun.

I suspect you're being too hasty to retract your retraction.

1) The US Census does not track Americans living overseas. (You can go to your embassy and ask to be counted. No, seriously. But otherwise, nope.) So all the numbers are distinctly squish. A few of the online cites seem to be using calculations based on voting records from 2000. Doesn't look like the '04 numbers have been crunched yet.

If you look here, you'll find a .pdf that has good numbers. (They give their methodology.) Alas, they're from 1999, so they have to be considered a bit squish too. Note that these are the same numbers as your aaro.org cite.

State Department and USAID folks may have PX, BTW, but they're definitely not military.

2) IME private expats are at least as likely as the military to drag dependents along. On one hand, it's true, the military gives full coverage and help for families in a way that not all private employers do. On the other hand, a lot of military folks are young and either single or childless, whereas private expats are more likely to be in the childbearing years. Based on my experiences in Eastern Europe and SE Asia I have the impression that the private sector prevails, but those are just two marbles from a biggish jar.

3) The military figures are pretty hard, but civilian figures are almost always going to be undercounts, quite possibly by a lot. Here in Romania, the number of US military personnel is a known quantity. (About 250 at the moment -- some NATO personnel and the Marines at the Embassy.) The number of expats is a complete unknown. The 1999 numbers are useless, because the numbers have certainly increased sharply since then. Bechtel got awarded a $4 billion road contract; they're bringing in managers and engineers by the plane load. Backpackers and adventure tourists are discovering the Carpathians, and a few are settling for a while. And so forth. The 1999 figure of 13,000 is probably low by a factor of two, maybe three. But nobody knows for sure. As you point out, the last attempt to make a count was pretty feeble, and it was six years ago, and apparently there hasn't been another since.

4) Retirees: there are at least a hundred thousand in Mexico. Much of Mexico has a nicer climate than Florida, and is much cheaper. If you can deal with the language issue and some modest culture shock, it can be a great retirement destination.

Military retirees are significant, too; they tend to cluster in a handful of locations, like Guam. (Although Guam is strictly speaking part of the US. On the other hand, so is Puerto Rico. 4 million Puerto Ricans are US citizens. Do we count PRans who have moved to the US mainland, or mainlanders in PR? Lubbock-PR is probably a bigger culture shift than Lubbock-Britain or even Lubbock-Germany.)

5) Another wrinkle to make it even worse... consider people holding US passports who identify very strongly with their host country, either because they were born there or have very deep roots. A lot of American citizens in places like Israel, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic may not consider themselves "expats".

6) And another: if your standard is "experiencing foreign culture" as opposed to "living abroad", then the military does fall sharply behind. military personnel tend to have much less interaction with the local culture than non-military expats. It's very easy, especially on a large military base, to have almost no contact with the locals at all. (In a few extreme cases -- places like Johnson Atoll and Diego Garcia -- there may not *be* any locals.) No private enterprise, not even a Bechtel, has the resources to insulate its employees like that. The majority of military personnel are living on bases; virtually no civilians are. That right there guarantees a much higher level of immersion.

Might be worth a post in its own right some time...

Doug M.

USAID, State Department, and certain civilian Department of Defense employees and their dependents living abroad also have PX privileges. Of course, if you're living in Austria in 1978, you still have to drive to another country to get your English comic books and peanut butter, but nevermind, your parents will take you...once or twice a year. That was my experience, anyway.

(My dad was on a Fullbright Exchange with the University of Graz. A delightful backwater of central Europe not near to any American outpost at all, especially then, and famous mostly for its medieval armory and near proximity to the farm that breeds Lipizaner horses and Arnold Schwarzenegger's birthplace)

Joy

Hi there
I iked your comments about the fear of staying in one place. As another serial expat I agree with everything that you said but wanted to add a personal recommendation about the need to manage your finances while living overseas. Many of these postings can be quite financially rewarding but the difficulty is knowing how to manage the entire financial process. We searched around for a bank and finally decided on HSBC (we were in Asia) and I have to say that having one bank that can follow you through different postings has simplified things for us as far as each successive move has been concerned. I got so sick of having to conatantly re-explain and rejustify myself to a new set of bank tellers each time and, at least now, it all comes with us and (touch wood) things have been far simpler and more streamlined since then. Just another bit of expat advice for the general pot of wisdom.
Cheers
A