Thomas Wolfe. It Was He,

¶ … Thomas Wolfe. It was he, in his novel "You Can't Go Home Again" coined the phrase and inserted the thought into our collective psyche. Wolfe's book is not so far from our subject. The novel deals primarily with a successful novelist who writes a book about his family and hometown, a book which causes his family and friends to feel betrayed by what they see as his use of them as characters shown in an unflattering manner. Driven from his home, the novelist leaves his home town and becomes the original expatriate - going to New York, to Paris, and to Berlin. The main character seeks to find himself everywhere, but it is not until he returns to America that he is able to rediscover himself and his homeland, both in sorrow and in hope that he can regain something of what he has lost. The character goes from expatriate to repatriate.

The word repatriation means to restore someone to his homeland. It is from the Latin, and is often used to describe the process of refugees returning from a safe haven, or soldiers returning from a war. Repatriation also simply means someone coming home.

It has often been said that one cannot go home again. Is this truly the experience of expatriates, especially those who have been away from their homelands greater than 5 years? What is it about the span of time that changes home from just that to only a place well remembered and yet not entirely a place one's own?

Are the elements which estranges one from his or her home an element of time, experience, age or a combination of these and other issues?

For many of us, the urge to travel is derived from an inner restlessness, perhaps an element which is unique to use here in a country where most come from somewhere else. Abigail Adams, the wife of American President John Adams was known to wryly refer to her fellow citizens as "the mobility" (ibid.) because of the natural inclination for Americans to succumb to wanderlust. Why are we so keen to travel away from what is known to what is new? Why do certain elements find that it is better to set down roots in another place, making the new place home? After a period has passed, many of us find it difficult to reconnect with the places we originally call home.

Perhaps the best example of estrangement from home is the homesickness never fully resolved in the Irish who emigrated from their country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At one point the population of Ireland dropped from 8 million in 1845 to around 2.5 million, the worst drop being seen during the potato famine (Mulcahy & Fitzgibbon, 1982). Most of the Irish left their homes to go to as far flung places as the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Swift, 1992). This was only the beginning of what has continued to be a drain on the Irish population. When asked why they go, most leave to further education, advance career, find employment, improve current employment opportunities or simply to find adventure they felt was lacking at home in Ireland. Most long-term emigrants are unable to ascertain when and if they plan to return to Ireland, although themes are easy to identify when this population is polled. Most of those who emigrate do not intend to return to Ireland, and the reasons noted are usually related to economics or a career issue. Emigrants cite the difficulty in finding quality employment in Ireland, higher taxes and a lower standard of living then they are able to find in the countries which they now call home.

Many who left home for education find that it is difficult to return home simply because they are unable to find work which is consistent with their level of education, or even plan to advance in career the way they could in their adopted homes. Many from Ireland also state that they are unwilling to return to what they consider a restrictive social climate. Many find it unlikely that they will be able to tolerate what they consider narrow mindedness regarding religious affiliation or overrun of morality. Many Irish feel that they will be unable to adjust to this kind of society after years of being away from it. (the transition from home to some place else can be very difficult, and even when one returns home, one can find a sense of longing for the place they lived for years, a kind of reverse homesickness. This is especially true for those who left their original home at a very young age Mervosh & McClenahan, 1997), and have little to tie them to their home of record. Sometimes parents cannot understand how overwhelming this sense of loss may be. While people are often excited and anxious about returning home, it is not unusual to feel a sense of loss for those friends we have made and those places we have lived, although technically they are not one's home, one has made a dwelling there. It is most common that any kind of sadness over leaving and returning home will resolve with time, but for some, the time to transition back to home takes longer than others. It is natural for people to grieve in a way for that which has been familiar and secure, even if has just been for a short period of time (Allard, 1996). Just because one is an experienced traveler and has lived many places, this does not mean one will be immune to the effects of reverse homesickness. Vulnerability to this problem may be increased by a sense of anticlimax at finally returning home after such a long time away, or unhappiness when expectations of home are not met. The reaction of friends and family members to one's return can also complicate the picture and make it difficult for one to reassimilate easily (Ashmalla & Crocitto, 1997). Contrasting lifestyles, especially lifestyles learned while one is away can also make the job of getting back into the swing of home patterns a little more difficult (Frazee, 1997).

Another group that has faced challenges in returning home to is East Indians. Indians are among one of the largest groups who have emigrated from their home countries, constituting a diaspora (a diaspora is a term used to describe and people or group who is forced or induced to leave their homeland and move throughout the world.) Indian expatriates are most likely the most successful expatriates in that the median income they receive in countries like America or the United Kingdom is generally 1.5 times that which they could hope to earn in their home country. This makes an obvious reason why some feel that they cannot return home (United Nations, 2006). Despite the fact that many Indians have been victims of hate crimes especially in the United States, there has not been a large degree of exodus of Indian-Americans from the United States back to India, despite problems with lack of assimilation for both ethnic as well as non-ethnic Indians. Sikh and Indo-Americans of Muslim origin were particularly vulnerable to attack after 9/11/2001.

Many Indian-Americans do not return home, simply because they find themselves caught between two cultures, especially first generation Americans. The children often find themselves in a culture clash between traditional parents who want to raise them in a traditional way and the liberal communities in which they live. These children are unlikely to feel comfortable in either the new world they were born to or came to early in life, or the world their parents knew.

It has been quite interesting to not how so many of the internal issues which are germane to the continent of India have followed Indians to the United States. It is noteworthy that when Indians in Chicago lobbied to make part of Devon Avenue in that city renamed after Gandhi, there were Pakistani businesses which made sure that another section of the same street was called Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Sikh separatist movements in the Punjab receive a significant amount of money from the United States and expatriate Indian-Americans find themselves continuing the call for an autonomous Sikh homeland. While there are very few Indian Muslims in the United States, there are many Hindus who offer support to the continuing Hindu militancy which exists within India. Indians may have chosen not to return to their homeland for reasons of employment or finances, but that does not mean they do not feel strongly about the politics of their homeland nor do they feel they do not have the right to take part in some of the decisions made around the governing of the homeland.

The Indian situation is only one of the many diaspora which exist in our new global economy. It is no longer unusual for people to leave their homes seeking better lives for themselves, for their families, for a better standard of living, to escape refugee status and many other reasons. Many expatriates are able to find large communities of their own nationalities far flung from their homes, and this in another significant factor in the choice of expatriates to stay away from home (United Nations, 2006).

When people of any origin begin to build their own community in a new place, it is harder for them to move away from that which has become safe and familiar.

Perhaps, of all people, the African-Americans who were originally brought to the new world as slaves suffer from not being truly able to return home again. Brought to a country against their will, forced to take on names unfamiliar to their tongue and work for men who claimed dominance and supremacy above them, the African-American population is quite possibly the most interesting diaspora of all. The Museum of African Diaspora provides and interesting look into a culture trying to regain itself, by slave narratives, by photography, by movement and origin stories. This is the gathering place of a culture trying to find itself, despite attempts by others to destroy the culture all together.

The following is an excerpt from a first person narrative by Margaret Nakechi Onwuka in which she describes her experience as an African in America.

You are not one of them." Those were the words spoken to me by my father the first and last time to his knowledge that I said the word ain't. "You are not one of them." The "them" were the students at the predominantly African-American elementary school that I attended in Inglewood, California. It was the first time that I became aware that, although I looked like everyone else at school, I was different. I knew that my last name was different. I knew that my parents had accents. And I knew that my mother served fufu at least once a week. I also knew that I dressed like everyone else, my speech was a mixture of valley girl and slang, and that I loved McDonald's. All I wanted to do in the first grade was play jumprope and tag, not contemplate my identity. It was at that moment when I heard my father's harsh words that I began to question who I was." report before the Icelandic ministry of foreign affairs on migration noted a significant increase in the number of foreign immigrants from 1996 to 2006. The labor market in Iceland is now felt to owe 7% of its labor to immigrants from more than 100 different nationalities. While Iceland had previously been felt to be too remote, or too harsh of a climate to become a significant home for migrants, it appears that the globalization of the economy as well as the presence of jobs resulted in Iceland seeing both positive and negative effects from international migration. Many migrants to Iceland moved their due to the gender equality which exists in that country.

Maria O'Shea is a researcher and independent consultant of Middle Eastern affairs, and her works have required her to spend great amounts of time in that region, especially in Iran and Kurdistan. While completing her doctoral studies, she spent quite a bit of time in Iran ad has written extensively on the effect of being in and life after Iran in her book "Culture shock: A Guide to Customs and Etiquette in Iran." O'Shea relates some of her experiences gained as a Westerner in Iran. Although a foreigner, she loves the Middle Eastern Culture and even so found that it was difficult to assimilate back into Western Culture once her time in Iran was over. She explains that, as a Western Woman married to an Iranian, she was free to work in any capacity she chose but did note that most expatriates chose to either teach English or else run businesses which cater solely to the needs of other foreigners. Because of her studies, Dr. O'Shea was exposed to a broader element of society than most Westerners who go to the Middle East. Upon her return to London to resume her teaching career, she found that many of her home countrymen where unable to give up what she considered to be a distorted view of life in Iran, beliefs which were mostly based upon media focus on hatred of Western culture, religious fanaticism and terrorist acts. Dr. O'Shea found it hard to convince people of the world that existed outside that environment within Iran, although she did her best to give her home countrymen a greater depth of information on Iran and the Iranian people. Dr. O'Shea describes Iran in her book as."..Like no place else on earth...it is rife with contradictions and internal contrasts. Part of the Middle East and yet not an Arab country, firmly within the Islamic world although it's people practices a different form of Islam than other Muslim Countries." Dr. O'Shea writes about the relative isolation she felt as a westerner in Iran, but also about the same feelings she noted when she returned to the West. People in the West were more willing to follow their own preconceptions regarding life in Iran than the true to life stories she had to share. She felts somewhat cut off from her countrymen who were unable to understand the complexity of the country and the Iranian people. In this way she found herself relatively isolated again, in that people were unable or unwilling to understand her experience.

Joanna Halpern is another individual who has written extensively about her experiences as an expatriate returning home. After spending seven years in Germany, she returned to her home in New York City. She resigned from an important position with a prestigious institution in Germany to pursue her doctoral degree. As she describes herself, she left Germany a confident and experienced professional who had made a significant contribution to the internationalization of a small German University and returned to the United States to find herself in a city, county and culture which seemed very foreign to her. This led her to do further research on the specific problems of those who return home after time away. She found that those who return home are often undervalued and are themselves often times unrealistic in their expectations of the world to which they return. The overwhelming sense of the returning one is feelings of being slighted and undervalued,

Sam Bahour is another somewhat unwilling expatriate who in his own way cannot go home again. In 1993 he left the United States to work in Palestine, believing that the newly signed Oslo Accords would bring opportunity for the Palestinians based on new economic venues. A Palestinian American himself, Bahour had a somewhat vested interest in seeing Palestine rise as an economic force comparable to Israel. He built a telecommunications company which employed more than 2,000 Palestinians and was worth $100 million dollars. He developed a large shopping center within the Palestinian Territories, employing more Palestinians. He even married and had children. For twelve years, during his work he awaited approval by the Israeli authority to approve an application for residency in Palestine, and felt that the issue was moot since his family was from Palestine. He had been allowed to live in Palestine by renewing his tourist visa and had done so every three months for over 12 years, however he was recently notified that he would no longer be allowed to stay in the Palestinian territories and would have to leave his businesses, move his family and go back to the United States. The only other alternative is for him to stay in his adopted country on an illegal basis and run the risk of being deported to the United States and being denied re-entry privileges. While Bahour's children are American Citizens, they have never known the United States. With his denial of his visa, he has effectively lost his dream to contribute to the development of his homeland. Israeli's support their decisions to deny visas to people like Bahour because they feel that a growing Palestinian populations represents a demographic threat to the Israeli state.

Bahour chooses not to return home, but now the choice is taken away from him.

Ugandan refugees have spent the better part of the last ten years in refugee camps trying to escape civil war. Now, with the advent of peace talks between the Ugandan government and the Rebel Resistance Army it may be possible that the refugees will be able to move back from the displacement camps which have been their home for so long into what are termed "relocation camps," simply because the home they used to know does not exist any more. Those who live in the resettlement camps are willing to take their chances. It is not surprising that more than anything the refugees of Uganda want to return to what they consider some degree of normalcy, no matter where it is or how they get it, they want it now. Since the hostility between Ugandan and Rebel forces have decreased, these is a slight improvement in the situation, security wise, and people are branching out towards home, building smaller, less congested camps in an attempt to move away from the refugee status and a little bit closer to their original villages and land. They have been waiting to go home for 20 years, and in their minds to go home now is the only option. The situation is not good. Rebel forces still roam the land, and it is difficult for security forces to adequately protect those refugees who are moving back home on their own. But this is the best hope any of them have had in almost twenty years, and they are not willing to give this hope up.

Even so, the life they have returned to is less than what can be called ideal. Uganda, one of the countries known for the rampant use of child soldiers, has many children who were kidnapped by rebels in their childhood and early teens. These children were kept away from their families and held for months or years by the followers of the Lord's resistance Army, many times with little more to eat than leaves (United Nations, 2006). These children were trained to handle guns, ordered to steal and often raped. When these children are able to escape, they escape back home but often times they return a very changed person from who they were before. For these children, childhood has ended, and home as they knew it, is a place which no longer really exists.

Living as an expatriate may sometimes have financial rewards which the person may not want to give up when returning home after a long time abroad. In the United States, the Treasury Department has developed guidelines which provide taxation benefits to those Americans who chose to live abroad, especially those Americans who live in very high cost of living area like Hong Kong, Singapore and London (Knowlton, 2006). This in itself is an incentive for the Americans not to return home. The new tax relief takes into account that those who live in these areas have to pay more for things like housing. Housing exclusions alone for these individuals can be as high as $50,000 in their annual incomes. Expatriates get a country-by-country, and in some case a city by city report on the limits of excludable housing expenditures. Not everyone has been pleased, since some companies which employ workers overseas see this as an element that will make U.S. business less competitive in the foreign markets.

As more and more companies turn to the foreign markets, the small number of individuals who experience expatriation and repatriation grows. Companies understand that to keep their workforces strong when moving families overseas there has to be emphasis on the family, and making it a win-win situation makes more families like to stay over seas once their roots are settled.

It has been reported that 81% of international relocation candidates actually turn down assignments solely based upon the fact that the move, whether back home or to a new assignment, may have a bad impact on the family (Marchetti, 1996). Shell Oil has a very in depth program which addresses the needs of these employees and their families. (Solomon, 1996). Shell has created programs in which there is a spouse employment consultant who is available to consult with spouses on employment possibilities and local visa issues. Schools are also being developed for expatriate employees and Shell has made effort to expand the International Baccalaureate organization, which offers a diploma program for children age 11 to 16 and is also considering starting a program for primary school students.

It is noteworthy that all the elements of an individual which make him or her the perfect person to live and work overseas - that is the ability to adapt and take on new challenges can cause significant problems when returning home, as we have noted. According to researchers (Frazee, 1997; Allard, 1996) even the elements of the job itself can be different in that working over seas may have been a more broad assignment in responsibility, as well as the previously mentioned financial perks. Sometimes when an employee returns to a work situation which is not similar to the life they lived elsewhere, they feel frustrated. Many overseas workers avoid being placed on a list to return simply because it is likely they will have no idea where they will be returned to for as little as four months before they plan to move. Repatriation of employees has resulted in a significant degree of employee turnover, a loss to both the employee as well as the company since the need for individuals who are experienced with overseas assignments is high.

Perhaps the most recent episode of diaspora will be seen in the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Perhaps the costliest and deadliest hurricane ever seen within the United States, the devastation caused by Katrina left catastrophic damage, requiring many residents to move out of Louisiana to states as far away as Ohio and California. While the Hurricane occurred over a year ago, there are many refugees who are still unable to return to what is left from their homes due to lack of basic services like sewer, water and light as well as safety issues. Many of the refugees have gotten jobs in the towns they were evacuated to, placed their children in schools and attempted to build a life to take the place of the one which was shattered by Katrina. While many express the hope that they will be able to return to New Orleans at some point in the future, this may never be an economic possibility for families living paycheck to paycheck while at the same time putting down roots in a new city with children making new friends (Rand, 2006). It is unlikely that many of the poorest sections of New Orleans will be able to receive its citizens back within the next 5 years and by that time; many families will be unwilling to move again due to financial and emotional ties they will make with their new homes. The Rand Corporation, in their study of the repopulation of New Orleans post Katrina noted that the population of New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane was 91,000 people. This number was expected to rise to 155,000 by early 2006 as basic infrastructure was restored and then it has been estimated that repopulation would begin to taper off. In September 2006, it is estimated that the population will be up to 198,000 and then three years after Katrina, the Rand study estimates that the population of New Orleans will be approximately 272,000 or only about 56% of the population of the city before the hurricane. This can be attributed to several factors. Many of the people of New Orleans lived in areas which experienced such significant damage that it is not at all clear that rebuilding would be possible. It is more likely that the parts of New Orleans which will be redeveloped will be certain areas found likely for such investment while other areas may be converted from residential to alternative land use options. The areas of New Orleans which had little to no damage will likely be resettled quickly but at premium prices since rehabitable land will be rare. But more than issues about the land, the chance of individuals returning home to New Orleans is in the most part based upon the number of jobs, schools and services which become available in New Orleans. There must be jobs and schools for people to return to. To date, there is still a significant amount of confusion for the residents of New Orleans. If those in power are able to increase jobs, services and other issues which will increase repopulation rates, then it is more likely that the people of New Orleans will come home. There are, however, concerns regarding uncertainty regarding upgrades to the levee system, making residents skittish about returning only to lose all they have had again. There also exists no specific plan at this time regarding school reconstruction, rebuilding hospitals and other elements which New Orleans will need if it is to support a population such as in the pre-Katrina days. The longer individuals stay away from New Orleans, the less likely it is they will find it easy to return to their home.

Simply coming home can be a real shock to people. Even if the time spent away from home was not especially happy or productive, there are issues about coming home which always have to be considered, especially the impact on family. Recent experiences with soldiers returning from overseas have shown that the return of a family member into the family unit after a long period can be a particularly stressful time, even if the return is much wanted and desired. The discomfort which one can experience culturally while readjusting to one's home can cause disorientation (Latta, 2006; Solomon, 1996a). Some even call this element reverse culture shock. Many people who return home after a long time someone else can experience any of a range of feelings or issues. While they are usually temporary issues, it is often a good thing for those who do try to return home after a long time away to understand what may be in store for them.

Expatriates who return home after a long absence can experience any thing from problems with eating, sleeping, mood, anger, depression, impatience, irritability, anhedonia, loneliness from the loss of friends and acquaintances, and even periods of withdrawal (Sievers, 1998). When repatriates understand that these feelings are very normal, it may be easier for them to adjust to the return home. Perhaps they felt this way when they originally left home, and were able to overcome those issues as well. Expatriates must understand that they did not acclimate to the host country they lived in immediately, and neither should they expect to reacclimatize immediately to their home. A cultural readjustment must occur just as it did before they left home. Everyone will respond to this kind of situation in their own way, and there are no hard and fast rules or time tables for individuals. Some people will breeze through it. Most will suffer from some mild disorientation and be fine. A very few will not be able to make the change back to their home and will likely move elsewhere (Solomon, 1998b).