10 types of expats: which one is you?

10 types of expats: which one is you?

"¿Por qué uruguay?"  I asked the Armenian restaurateur why he moved to Montevideo.

He winked at me and smiled. "Por Amor."

He was clearly a "romantic", as defined by internal expenses in her second annual expat insider survey, which was updated for 2015. The Expat organization surveyed 14,000 of its 1.8 million members from all over the world to evaluate the life situation and the well-being of expatriates. With this abundance of quantitative and qualitative data, they defined 10 specific types of expats, as shown in the infographic below.

Interestingly, less than 10 % of expats like our Armenian restaurateur, who has moved in the name of love. When I look at a cross -section of my own friends, one (maybe two) of 20 has left their home country out of love. The others are evenly spread over the other nine categories.

Kia and I have never taken such a big step. We have been working and living abroad for over a year and will be a few more months away, but we still pay our taxes in the UK and call it our home. If we dared the last jump, we would probably fall into the "greener pastures" category, as we would be self -employed and the cost of living would probably be our main consideration before moving.

Of course, the 10 categories are not 100 % comprehensive - there will always be people who do not fit exactly - but considering the scope of the survey, these are the most representative data we have. Which expat type are you? Or if you haven't dared to jump, what would you probably do in the future?

10 types of emigrants

Click the picture for larger version old = "Types of expats"

Download the full expat insider report 2015.

(Main picture: Dreamstime.com)

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