Transnational Lives

Expatriates in Indonesia

Anne-Meike Fechter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317006787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Privileged migrants, such as expatriates living abroad, are typically associated with lives of luxury in exotic locations. This fascinating and in-depth study reveals a more complex reality. By focusing on corporate expatriates the author provides one of the first book length studies on 'transnationalism from above'. The book draws on the author's extended research among the expatriate community in Jakarta, Indonesia. The findings, which relate to expatriate communities worldwide, provide a nuanced analysis of current trends among a globally mobile workforce. While acknowledging the potentially empowering impact of transnationalism, the author challenges current paradigms by arguing that the study of elite migration shows that transnational lives do not always entail fluid identities but the maintenance of boundaries - of body, race and gender. The rich ethnographic data adds a critical dimension to studies of migration and transnationalism, filling a distinct gap in terms of theory and ethnography. Written in an engaging and accessible style the book will be of interest to academics and students, particularly in anthropology, migration studies and human geography.

Chapter 1 Expatriates: Who Are They?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315549828-1

Had people with such exotic customs, such irrational beliefs, such complex social organizations, and such tremendous power, been of any other skin colour they would have been studied in great depth and detail by anthropologists from all over the world. Unfortunately, however, most of the world’s anthropologists are white, and it is a rare anthropologist indeed who studies somebody of his own colour (Crocombe 1968:76, quoted in Erik Cohen 1977:5).

Although anthropologists have in the meantime begun to study people of their own colour, expatriates have remained curiously absent from academic accounts. An early overview article by Cohen (1977), entitled ‘Expatriate communities’, seems to have been largely forgotten. This relative academic invisibility contrasts with their prominence in the popular imagination, even though this often takes the form of caricatures and clichés. Undoubtedly, the existence of such clichés, which are entertained by those at home as well as expatriates themselves, is linked to the assumed ‘exotic customs’ and ‘irrational beliefs’ alluded to above. They typically portray expatriates as egotistical, domineering, ignorant and greedy; as neurotic about hygiene while living a life of luxury, whiling away their days by the pool or at Coffee Mornings, and knowing local people only as their servants. The aim of this study is to move beyond such stereotypes, and establish ‘expatriates’ as a valid and relevant ethnographic object.

The term ‘expatriate’ is a loose one and has multiple meanings; I do not attempt to systematically review them here, but discuss only those that are relevant in the present context. The word ‘expatriate’ consists of the Latin ex (‘out’) and patria (‘native country’), describing ‘a person who lives outside their native country’. The origin of the current use seems to be the mid-18^th century, in the form of the medieval Latin term expatriat-, ‘gone out from one’s country’ (The New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1999). In spite of this rather broad meaning, the majority of contemporary migrants who leave their countries to live elsewhere are typically not referred to as expatriates. Instead, the term is conventionally reserved for Westerners who have lived abroad for varying lengths of time, especially artists, colonials, and generally those with a mission of one kind or another (Cohen 1977:6).

The term ‘expatriate’ has gained prominence for example in relation to the ‘Lost Generation’ of American writers living in Paris after World War I, which included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein (Earnest 1968). A quote from Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, suggests the tropes of moral decline which were associated with these expatriates’ existences: ‘You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see?’ (Hemingway 1926, Chapter 12). A related, but more pertinent use for the present context appears with regard to colonialism. In fact, the words ‘colonial’ and ‘expatriate’ are regularly employed in conjunction with each other in accounts of late colonial life (Morrison 1993). These include the British gentlemen who, after prolonged exposure to the tropical climates of South or South East Asia, suffer from world-weariness, alienation and alcoholism, as they are portrayed in the novels and short stories of Anthony Burgess, Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham. This association (and sometimes continuity) between past colonials and contemporary expatriates also surfaces in popular discourse: leisurely sipping one’s gin and tonic at sunset has become as much an iconic image of expatriate life in the tropics today as it may have been of British colonial officers in India. I will discuss the significance of the links between the two groups in the next chapter.

A more current, technical meaning of the term ‘expatriates’ is employed within the field of international human resource management (Selmer 1995, Morley, Heraty and Collings 2006). In this context, an expatriate is someone who takes up an international assignment for their current employer. As the person remains within the company, these moves are also referred to as ‘intra-company transfers’. Although they are frequently called ‘business expatriates’, these kind of transfers may occur in the public as well as in the private sector. This traditional model of expatriation stipulates that the employee is given financial incentives to move, and is compensated for the costs and inconveniences incurred by the relocation. Although there is growing evidence that these packages, which were rather lavish in the past, are being reduced, many remain fairly generous. Such packages may consist of a moving allowance, airfare, housing costs, a car and driver, medical insurance, home leave, and children’s’ school fees. They also include a higher salary to accommodate the cost of maintaining a lifestyle abroad similar to the one they had at home, as is necessitated by the increased prices of imported Western foods sold in developing countries. The literature on these corporate expatriates is specifically concerned with the different stages of the ‘expatriate cycle’: that is their selection, assignment and repatriation, remuneration and evaluation of their success or failure.

It has been suggested that this conventional model of expatriation is changing, and that it is already being complemented or replaced by other forms of mobile working, such as short-term and ‘commuter’ assignments, which do not require the employee to move abroad, but rather involve frequent travel (Doyle and Nathan 2001:5). Given that an expatriate employee is considered to be three to four times more expensive than a domestic one (Harris, www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/news/manfocus/downloads/expatriates.doc, accessed August 2006), many firms are increasingly looking to reduce the costs of overseas assignments, or avoid them altogether. One way of doing so is to ‘localise’, that is, to recruit qualified local nationals rather than sending Western employees. Another significant trend is the emergence of a younger generation of professionals, who are more interested in working internationally than some of the ‘traditional’ expatriates, and who are therefore prepared to take up posts abroad with a reduced expatriate package, or none at all.

Apart from this narrowly defined sense, the term ‘expatriates’ frequently appears in media representations, for example with regard to British nationals who move to southern Spain, France or Italy on a temporary or permanent basis. These include elderly people who could be considered ‘retirement’ or ‘leisure’ migrants, but also those who leave their jobs and sell their property in the UK in pursuit of a better quality of life abroad, a warmer climate and lower living costs. These kind of expatriates have gained a relatively high profile in the popular imagination in the UK, partly through several television series following their relocation and settlement abroad, their appearance in novels such as Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence or JG Ballard’s Cocaine Nights, and in news features, for example about access to healthcare for elderly UK citizens in Spain. They are also slowly coming into the focus of social sciences, which I will discuss in the following chapter.

As will become apparent from this limited selection of examples, the meaning of the term ‘expatriate’ is variously accompanied by associations of luxury, leisure or moral decline abroad, in historical as well as contemporary contexts. I suggest, however, that its value-laden nature is of heuristic benefit insofar as its usage – or avoidance – by my informants is itself telling of some of the political and social issues in which the term is enmeshed. Thus, before explaining my own use of the term, and introducing my informants in greater detail, I discuss below aspects of how Western residents in Indonesia relate to the term, and how this speaks of their identifications vis-à-vis other foreigners, Indonesians, and people in their home countries.

Among my informants, all of whom were Euro-American residents in Indonesia, those who most readily described themselves as ‘expatriates’ were those corporate expatriates in the strictly-defined sense mentioned above. Some of them not only accepted the term, but embraced it with relish. This was in recognition of its technical meaning regarding their employment status, but also, I suggest, because this status to some extent justified their comparatively luxurious existences. As surveys indicate, the annual living cost for an expatriate and spouse in Jakarta was estimated to be US$102,184 in 1995 (PT Price Waterhouse Sutanto 1995), while the gross national income per capita in Indonesia in 2000 was still only US$590 (http://devdata.worldbank.org/external/CPProfile.asp?PTYPE=CP&CCODE=IDN, accessed August 2006). The often stark contrast between Westerners’ lifestyles and that of many Indonesians generates a sense of considerable guilt and unease among Westerners. Being classified as an expatriate by company policy, however, may allow them to relinquish a sense of responsibility for these differentials. Being labelled an ‘expatriate’ signifies their embeddedness in the mechanisms of global capitalism, which they have no individual control over, and they hence cannot be held accountable for the resulting inequalities.

The basis for such reasoning is what could be called a ‘hardship ideology’, which also underpins the ‘expatriate package’ described earlier. One element of this is the concept of expatriation as a state of deprivation, including the idea of a ‘hardship’ post. It is, or used to be, the assumption underlying corporate expatriation schemes that a relocation abroad is in many ways a time of scarcity – that is, as measured against the kind of life that the employee would be able to lead at home, and for which he has to be compensated. This is especially true of postings to locations where the re-creation of a Western standard of living is difficult, as measured for example through quality of housing, regularity of power supply, availability of healthcare, provision of international schools and amenities such as Western consumer goods and foods. Such contracts are classified as ‘hardship posts’. Adopting this kind of thinking allows corporate expatriates to consider themselves as deserving recipients of generous packages, irrespective of the average standard of living in the host country. This ideology often appears in conjunction with the concept of the ‘expat expert’, the idea that corporate expatriates, per definition, are more skilled and qualified for the job they have been assigned than members of the local workforce, and are therefore deserving of their much higher salaries than locals receive. Independent of how accurate such rationalisations are, they provide a further justification for expatriates’ privileged position, and often underlie corporate expatriates’ self-perceptions.

Other arenas where this kind of ideology is maintained are the commercial websites which provide expatriates with products such as grocery items, overseas editions of newspapers, removal support, insurance, financial services and advice books. One website for example offers a range of foods from UK-based supermarkets, which can be ordered over the Internet and delivered to people’s homes worldwide. Other websites, which are often run by former expatriates, provide moral support and information, and sell self-help manuals, such as Robin Pascoe’s Homeward Bound: A Guide to Repatriation (2000a). These websites are distinct from general e-commerce enterprises in that they are specifically geared towards expatriates. The items for sale are usually easily obtainable in their home countries, but difficult or impossible to source in Jakarta. These companies thus indirectly reinforce the idea of expatriation as deprivation, which is central for the identity of many corporate expatriates.

In contrast to those foreigners for whom the acceptance of an expatriate identity offers relief for their social conscience, for others the term represents certain characteristics from which they are keen to distance themselves. Among them are those working in the development sector, including permanent staff, trainees, and consultants. The group of development workers is extremely diverse in terms of their motivations, job profiles, and income, and while there are quite a few people who receive local-level wages, there are also those who receive salaries and benefits not dissimilar to a corporate expatriate package. It appears that in recent years, the professionalisation of development work has led to the emergence of a type of ‘development manager’, a highly qualified individual who works in the capital of a developing country, and whose lifestyle is in many ways indistinguishable from that of corporate expatriates. Chambers refers to this phenomenon as the ‘capital trap’ (Chambers 2005), signalling the emergence of an unwelcome distance between development professionals and the people of the country they are working in. Despite some manifest commonalities with corporate expatriates, however, many development workers are reluctant to refer to themselves as expatriates. This is arguably due to its negative connotations, such as greed, ignorance, and a personal lack of interest in the host society, characteristics with which they do not want to be identified. It also relates to the fact that development workers may still consider their mission and motivation as fundamentally different from those in the corporate sector, emphasising humanistic rather than profit-oriented motives.

Another group, which partly overlaps with those of development workers, is a younger generation of foreigners who are not necessarily posted to Jakarta by corporations, but who have taken up a job there on their own initiative. They may receive globally competitive salaries and have comfortable lifestyles, but would not necessarily describe themselves as expatriates. I suggest that this group is loath to be associated with older expatriates and the ‘culture’ they represent in terms of their compatriot-orientated social lives, community organisations, and generally with what they perceive as an old-fashioned, traditional expatriate lifestyle.

Even among the ‘family expatriates’, however, there are those with relatively high incomes, who acknowledge their privileged position, but are at pains to emphasise their genuine engagement with Indonesia, their different outlook and motivation for being there. For example, at one social gathering of expatriate women in Jakarta, a well-dressed, middle-aged French woman, Monique, distributed leaflets promoting her business, a gallery and furniture shop, which were clearly designed to cater to expatriate tastes. She was adamant, however, about not being regarded as an expatriate. She explained to me: ‘I am not an expatriate, because we want to live here, we have our business here and we are thinking of adopting an Indonesian child’. She was thus emphasising her long-term commitment and what she saw as a caring attitude towards the country and its people, contrasting with the supposedly egotistical and exploitative motivations of her compatriots. While she was closely involved with the ‘expatriate community’ and in fact depended on them for her business, she found it even more necessary to dissociate herself from them, however unconvincing this claim may have seemed to a detached observer.

Such concern to demonstrate their greater involvement with, and knowledge of Indonesian society also underpins the position of many non-corporate foreign residents who live outside the capital, who also tend to be dismissive of ‘expatriates’. These include for example small-scale entrepreneurs, teachers, artists, and those working for small NGOs. In their understanding, the term ‘expatriate’ indicates luxurious lifestyles, a lack of language skills, arrogance, ignorance, and possibly racist attitudes. In contrast, they aim for a better level of integration into Indonesian society, building genuine relationships with Indonesians, while they have comfortable but moderate lifestyles that are not that far removed from local ones. It is questionable, though, to what extent they are able to escape or counteract the inequalities of wealth and power that exist between them and many Indonesians.

While all of these people are uneasy with the term, there are also those who almost defiantly describe themselves as expatriates in spite of a sense that the ‘expatriate community’ proper may not consider them as such, due partly to their comparatively low socio-economic status, and especially if they have an Indonesian spouse. One such group are Western women married to Indonesian men, some of whom work as so-called ‘local hires’ with small salaries. Their lives can be very different from those of corporate expatriates, depending on the income and social status of their husbands. This was the case, for example, with Julie, an American woman with an Indonesian husband, who worked for a foreign company on a local salary. She said: ‘Of course I am an expatriate, because I live and work outside my home country, right? I might not earn as much as the others, but that does not make me less of an expatriate.’ The ‘others’ she referred to were fellow Americans, corporate expatriates, who sometimes appeared hesitant to grant her full membership status in the expatriate community, as Julie knew from experience. By applying the term ‘expatriate’ for herself, she stated her claim to belong to this community.

Finally, there are individuals who have the requisite professional positions and income levels, but whose ethnicity can lead to their exclusion from certain national expatriate communities. For example, Endah, an Indonesian national, had lived in Germany for more than twenty years while she was married to a German. She had been working as a manager in the textile sector in Germany and had been posted by her company to oversee its operations in Jakarta. Although she was divorced now, she explained: ‘I feel like a foreigner here in Indonesia – I am an expatriate! I have been sent to work here. And my family in Sumatra think I am too Westernised, and do not really accept me any more.’ She occasionally attended events organised by the German women’s association, but expressed her resentment at the fact that her ethnicity and nationality seemed to prevent her full acceptance, in spite of how closely she felt related to Germany herself.

Expatriates – the Making of an Object?

As these examples demonstrate, the term ‘expatriate’ is socially contested, politically and morally charged, ambiguous, and is linked to particular notions of ethnicity and class. Given this, it does not seem to be particularly suited to use for one’s informants in an ethnographic study. One reason for doing so anyway is that terms which carry fewer connotations and may be sufficiently neutral, such as ‘Western temporary resident in Jakarta’, are not especially convenient. A more pertinent reason to employ the term is its prominence in discourse among foreigners, whether through positive identification or emphatic dissociation. Also, the word ‘expatriate’ is recognised across the spectrum of different foreign nationalities. Although it may be used with greater ease by native English speakers, others are similarly familiar with it, even if they encounter the term only during their stay abroad. Furthermore, it is commonly used to describe groups such as the ‘American expatriate community’, or ‘expatriate community organisations’ in Jakarta.

A risk in using this term is that it may conceptualise expatriates as a bounded, homogeneous group. The aim here is to utilise the term ‘expatriates’ as an analytical tool that avoids shoehorning Western foreigners into a single category, and instead explores the range of their attitudes, practices and experiences of life in Indonesia. In fact, the differences between them according to age or gender contribute to a fuller, more complex picture o...