Expatriation As Mobility or Migration? – Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Insights

The aim of this session, to highlight the place of the expatriation in the field of migration studies, relates directly to my current research project on people who have lived in more then two different countries, including their country of origin respectively birth, which often takes place in the context of career path of the persons concerned, or indirectly, by their spouses or parents. These social type of the (post)modern stranger, who is coming today and leaving tomorrow, is mostly discussed in other scholarly fields then in migration studies. However, in my own research they are contextualised in the rarely examined phenomenon of onward migration and thus within migration literature. Significantly, in this slowly evolving research field particular and increased attention – at least in the European context – is paid to refugees, who are crossing another nation-state border some time after the legal-administrative recognition of their refugee status, which allows them free intra-European movement respectively migration, depending on how one choose to put it. Nevertheless, up to the present concerning the object of my own study I also make use of the term «transnational mobiles» and ask amongst others about potential cosmopolitanisation processes, which indicates the connection not only to the literature focusing on expatriation but also on cosmopolitanism, both empirically, theoretically and semantically to a great extent separated from the field of migration research. Despite this seemingly inconsistent and conflicting framing, the idea to contextualise expatriation in the field of migration studies remains and is combined with the expactation of its mutual benefits. For the presentation in this session the approach of the study and its results will be outlined and discussed.