Types of Expatriates: Only 16% look for a better…

Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity Cover — This is the first chapter from the book Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity

There are plenty of questions to answer when you are moving out. Instead of asking which one of the types of expatriates we are, our doubts are about more trivial things, like:

● Will my money, or salary, be enough?

● Where will I live?

● Can I speak their language, or at least learn it without a headache?

● What will I do with my belongings? Should I sell or ship it?

● What about the bureaucracy or the visa procedures?

● What should I do in case of getting sick or needing emergency care?

I had been in these situations several times in my life. In another article, I wrote some of these troubles that expatriates experience. But here you will learn how to understand what you are, so you can look for the correct answers. This is the very first step for anyone moving out from home.

After you learn to identify what is your type, it may shock you to know that people move abroad without thinking about it! It may be the reason so many of them come back frustrated.

Periodically the network InterNations promotes The Expat Insider, one of the biggest worldwide surveys about immigration and emigration. They made a convenient division of the expats into 6 types:

1. The Optimizer: Representing 16% of the total, they moved for a better quality of life, finances, political, religious, or safety reasons. The majority of them are men (56%) and are in a relationship (66%).

2. The Explorer: They make 12% of the total, and moved because of the appeal of living abroad, or because they were looking for new adventures and challenges. Their numbers are quite balanced between men and women, and just a small minority have children.

3. The Foreign Assignee: Making 10% of the expats, they went abroad by request of their existing employers, and the large majority of them are men in a relationship.

4. The Go-Getter: Representing 21% of the respondents, they moved out to start their business, find a job, or were recruited locally. The majority are well-educated men in a relationship.

5. The Travelling Spouse: This 8% of the whole expat community are the ones moved to follow their partners. If most of the types until now are male-dominated, in this one, women are an absolute majority: 86%.

6. The Romantic: The last category represents 12% of the total. They moved to the country of their partners. Mostly are women in a relationship, but there are a significant number of men in this category (me included).

One interesting thing here is that the categories are not definitive. There are plenty of cases where Foreign Assignees become Go-Getters when they spot an opportunity and change from employees to employers. The Romantic also often is part of another category besides their current one.

When I moved to Chile, I was a Foreign Assignee, the same as when I moved to Qatar. My life in Poland started as a Romantic, but almost after arrival, I also turned into a Go-Getter by starting my business. Henceforth, categories should not limit or make you think you will always belong to only one of them. Eventually, expatriates will move from one to the other.

Have in mind that each of those types have their goals and dreams. Each of them have also their advantages and disadvantages. A Travelling Spouse or the Romantic may not feel as alone as an Explorer, while the Foreign Assignee, with the guaranteed income source from his job, will take less risk.

There is also a type not represented above in any category: individuals moving away to evade their families and domestic problems. My best guess for their absence is because they are short-lived. When you move away to escape from your private problems, you will not solve them at all. You are just making it even more difficult to solve them by distance when it gets unbearable.

There is another important characteristic you will discover when understanding your type: if you are a provisional or long-lasting expat. The first is someone planning to live abroad for a certain, pre-established number of years. The second is a person who is moving out with a long-term plan or permanently. A foreign-assignee or explorer most likely will be a provisional, unless they fall in love with a local or start their own business, becoming, respectively, a romantic or go-getter, two long-lasting types.

Are your plans in your new country temporary or long-term? Are you moving out just to progress in your career and then return home with a bigger salary or are you willing to build a new life outside? The first secret of life abroad is to know yourself by answering those questions. You cannot follow the other rules, especially the numbers 2 and 3, before defining who you are. You cannot research what is better for you or what are your goals if you don’t know what you are looking for. The answer to these questions not only will make you feel more comfortable and secure, but they will be a basis for a better expatriate life.

Ask yourself why you are leaving. Ask yourself if you are planning to come back soon. Then, you will have self-knowledge enough to the next steps.

Levi Borba is CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com, creator of the channel Small Business Hacks, and a best-selling author. You can check his books here, his other articles here, or his Linkedin here.

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Business

IA Syndrome: A Culture Shock Problem Affecting Work and…

Image by Hajili Sevil for Wikimedia Commons. Culture Shock Illustration

With higher mobility between cities, regions, industries, and continents, there is an equal boost in intercultural issues. Maybe you already saw some of the culture shock problems below:

Different approaches to power and authority. Individuals from societies like Japan or Malaysia, perform well under rigid hierarchical structures. Meanwhile, Scandinavians or Canadians favor more flexible authority schemes.
Individualism vs Collectivism. They praise individual initiative in Australia or the US. On the other side, in Asian countries like China it carries negative shades. In collectivist societies, initiative happens in coordination with the sorrounding stakeholders, or higher authorities.
Risk Aversion. Cultures vary in their inclination to take risks. That in part explains, for example, why the British explored almost the entire globe. Great Britain is one of the least risk-averse societies on the planet.

The cultural differences mentioned above are part of the discoveries from the Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede. In a previous article, we wrote about Hofstede’s findings on cultural shock. In another article, I explained how these discrepancies in societal attitudes contribute to the feeling of homesickness to the point of, in certain cases, making it unbearable.

There is a special type of problem that is forgotten when we talk about culture shock. It is a constant in universities and workplaces, harming cooperation between international teams or corporate departments. It caught my attention how this trouble is so harmful but still nearly nobody talks about it.

It is the Inertial Antagonism Syndrome. A widespread disorder slowing down, or even blocking creativity and problem-solving qualities.

To understand what is inertial antagonism, think about mob-rejection. It is the reaction entire communities have when they conform to a long-standing problem and do not know how to overcome it. Often people know that there is a problem, but they just prefer to keep the status quo instead of trying other ways to solve it.

The roots of inertial antagonism are assumptions we have against foreign methods. Sometimes these assumptions are well justified and avoid disasters. Often, on the other side, they are psychological barriers.

A famous example of Inertial Antagonism Syndrome happened in Spain. Vanderlei Luxemburgo is one of the most victorious Brazilian football coaches in history. He accepted to train Real Madrid in 2004. The team had a squad filled with some of the most successful players of the time, nicknamed Galacticos. Luxemburgo adopted techniques like the quadrado mágico (magical square), a very offensive, Brazilian-minted formation. Spanish specialists warned that such offensive style could not fit European fields. Later, Real Madrid fired him.

When locals tell you that the techniques from your land will not work here, listen to them and analyze their objections with the utmost care. If there are shreds of evidence that your once successful methods will not work, rethink your ways. But if there is no evidence of failure besides the typical inertial antagonism, then go forward, but with caution. Just like Ward Chartier.

A Recipe to Avoid IA Syndrome and Reduce Culture Shock Problems

Mr. Chartier is a seasoned expatriate. For 14 years, he lived in five different countries, including the Far East. When I asked about the conflicts created by bringing foreign methods and cultural characteristics, he answered me:

We, Americans, have the unfortunate reputation of being arrogant and loud. My personality is neither, but I still remained aware of the general perception and acted to avoid it. In addition, I avoided slang, spoke slower than my usual moderate pace of speech, and enunciated clearly.

A few people derided my methods and management tools as “Western thinking. Won’t work here.” My methods and tools were actually a hybrid of East and West, which I explained, but some remained intransigent. Let them think what they wish. My results were financially and operationally successful for the benefit of my customers and employers.

There are two points in the answer of Mr. Chartier that I would like to highlight:

1. There was a negative preconception from the locals. It was the idea that Americans are arrogant and loud. To confront and defeat this assumption, Mr. Chartier avoided giving any sign of these undesired characteristics. Perhaps behavior toward self-policing is a tiresome effort, and that is true. It sometimes feels that all the time you are stepping on eggs, or walking through a minefield to not hurt sensibilities.

Here it is important to balance how much you want to build an excellent reputation and establish a healthy image in your new environment. If this is a must for you, start avoiding now attitudes that give fuel to stereotypes.

2. When people doubted his battle-tested techniques, his first attitude was to check if there was any evidence to justify their doubt. Maybe they knew something that he didn’t? Maybe they already tried it before, and it already failed? Or maybe there was no raw (or human) material for this kind of solution in the place?

Talk to the Grocery Cashier

Remember that locals are in their places way before your arrival, so it is worthy to listen to their objections. This is one reason behind a recommendation I make to clients of my consulting firm that intend to venture into new territories. First have a talk with the grocery store cashier, or with the taxi driver. These locals have valuable insider advice that can soar the adaptation pace of any newcomer.

After careful investigation, Mr. Chartier realized that the critics of his imported system had no factual basis. They did not try his idea before. It never failed in a similaar scenario, and it was applicable in the Far East. People resisted because of pure inertial antagonism. So he applied his methods and proved that they work by achieving excellent results.

Point 2 is a sympathetic approach to deal with reactions like “the techniques from your land will not work here”. Investigate, ask questions, and level the expectations to realistic standards. A wonderful tool for this kind of investigation is the PEST analysis.

By using point 2, you will manage to implement innovative ideas in your university or workplace while keeping healthy relationships with locals. Locals are, according to empirical evidence, among the most important allies to a successful career or business.

Regarding point 1, not giving reasons for people to believe in their preconceptions is prudent, but only if they are negative. If they are positive presumptions, be aware that you have a positive reputation to justify. One example is the natural expectation that British and Swiss citizens will be punctual.

Even if it is just a stereotype, it is positive, so worth keeping it, right?

Levi Borba is the founder of expatriateconsultancy.com, creator of the channel Small Business Hacks, and a best-selling author. You can check his books here, his other articles here, or his Linkedin here.

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Cultural Shock

What to Consider When Moving Out

Starting Your Own Business Cover — This is a chapter from the book Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company in Another State, Country, or Galaxy

You just received an excellent job offer abroad, or maybe you decide to open a company abroad and have the full plan read. Either way, you concluded that you checked what to consider when moving out. You think that the chosen destination offers a good professional perspective. Now it is time to pack your things and decide the date of the flight, right?

Not yet.

If you are planning to the new place, there are other things to consider. We will call this group the non-professional elements. The reason to consider them is that it is hard to have a successful career or enterprise if you are feeling miserable, living in a place you dislike, or in an environment that goes against your values.

In my first book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, I dedicated one entire chapter to exemplify why understanding your own life project is important to succeed as an expatriate. This applies if you are a big-corporation employee, a foreign student, a person moving with your spouse, or an entrepreneur.

Environmental Dissonance

A phenomenon frequently affecting expatriates is what I call environmental dissonance. It happens when your values conflict with the place surrounding you. In my before-mentioned book (Moving Out) I recounted the story of Breno, a colleague I met while living in the Middle East. Even having a good job and working in his field of specialization, he left months after arriving because the environmental dissonance became overwhelming to him.

Just imagine how more complicated is to suffer this dissonance while you hire and motivate a team, establish goals, write a business plan, pitch for seed capital, and so on. For this reason, becomes essential to assert that your target country, if also attractive to your business and career, also matches your life project and goals.

Just be aware that I am in no point advocating you should “follow your heart” or “listen to your feelings”. In fact, to follow your passion is poor advice. What I propose, instead, is to rationalize what your new country offers and how it matches your personal needs. For this, I recommend analyzing the following non-professional elements.

Cultural Distance

Probably the greatest modern researcher in comparative cultural aspects was Geert Hofstede. Starting in the 80s with his book Culture’s Consequences, he developed an extensive bibliography in the area, culminating with the institute that carries his name.

Present in 60 countries, the Hosfted Insights institute developed a model breaking down the cultural distance into 6 major areas. Below, each one of them, with the definitions from the Hofstede-Insights researchers:

· Power Distance – This dimension […] expresses the attitude of the culture towards inequalities amongst us. Power Distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power distribution is unequal.

· Individualism – The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. It is whether people’s self-image translates to terms of “I”, or “We”. In Individualist societies people look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies, people belong to ‘in groups’ that take care of them in exchange for loyalty.

· Masculinity—A high score (Masculine) on this dimension shows competition, achievement, and success will drive the society, with success being defined by the winner / best in field—a value system that starts in school and continues throughout organizational life. A low score (Feminine) on the dimension means that the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of life. A Feminine society is one where quality of life is the sign of success, and standing out from the crowd is not admirable. The fundamental issue here is what motivates people, wanting to be the best (Masculine) or liking what you do (Feminine).

· Uncertainty Avoidance – It is how a society deals with the fact that we can never know the future: should we try to control the future or just let it happen? This ambiguity brings with it anxiety and different cultures have learned to deal with this anxiety in different ways. The score on Uncertainty Avoidance reflects the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and create institutions to avoid risk .

· Long Term Orientation – This dimension describes how every society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future. Societies prioritize these two existential goals differently. Normative societies. which score low on this dimension, for example, prefer to maintain time-honored traditions and norms while viewing societal change with suspicion. Societies scoring high here, on the other side, take a more pragmatic approach: they encourage efforts in modern education as a way to prepare for the future.

· Indulgence – The Hofstede-Insights define this dimension as the extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses, based on the way they were raised. Relatively weak control is called “Indulgence” and relatively firm control is analogous to “Restraint”. Cultures therefore are grouped as Indulgent or Restrained.

When I had my first contact with the research of Dr. Hofstede, my immediate action was to check how the countries I lived before (Brazil, Chile, Qatar, and Poland) scored in each ranking. The comparative results from each one – got from a tool available on his institute website – reflected with Swiss-precision the reality I witnessed living in each of them.

For example, according to the results, the Power Distance in Qatar is very high. This matches my observations of a place where the people take as natural the near immutable social differences. Similarly, the higher levels of indulgence and femininity (as per Hofstede’s definition of femininity) in Chile are noticeable in their capital. At the end, the results from Poland fused two of my biggest impressions from living in this country: it is a non-indulgent society, with a considerable level of risk-aversion.

The two characteristics mentioned above – frugality and risk-aversion – of the Polish people contrasted with my cultural baggage.

As a Brazilian, I grow up seeing people spend a fair share of their income in branded shoes, new cars (paid in installments distributed across years), and eating out. Even though nowadays Poland has a similar income to my native São Paulo, someone will rarely buy a new car, and a 10-year-old vehicle is still OK. Personal anecdote: my wife considers it absurd that someone would spend over 5 times his salary in a new automobile. In contrast, in Brazil it is not rare to see people buying cars with the price tag of their annual salary.

The Latin America vs Europe example

This difference, summarized in the Indulgence factor of Dr. Hofstede research, probably affects not only me but thousands of other expatriates that move between Latin America and Europe. Sean Lana, an expatriate living in Germany, lists how other factors of Hofstede research (Individualism) impact his daily life.

Germany is not a country you want to be if your only major goal in life is to own a Bugatti, Ferrari, Tesla and shows off! Collectivism means the country is trying to redistribute wealth equally, at least in order to mitigate poverty and support low-income earners. Expect high taxes and you will enjoy a high quality of life with infrastructures. So if you are very individualistic, consider the next flight to another country. German organisation system is based on the ideology of Max Weber (bureaucracy), Americans practice Scientific management (Taylorism). If you are not used to obeying rigorous rules, regulations, huge laws, paper works, transparency, slow process, appointments, etc then you shouldn’t stay in Germany.

Cultural differences withing a country

It is essential to remind that cultural discrepancies – of the types studied by Dr. Hofstede and perceived in the two examples above – can exist even inside the same country.

Henry Eshleman, a Park Ranger at Fairbanks North Star Borough in Alaska, USA, explained how he felt closer to foreign students than locals while in Indiana, Midwest of the same country.

In Indiana, being from Alaska made me an exotic curiosity. People would ask me questions I never got in Europe, Canada, or Mexico- “What are you doing here?” “Is it cold there?” “What it’s like when it’s light all the time?” And so forth. As a student, I rapidly realized I had more in common with the foreign exchange students, or with my buddy Angel, from Puerto Rico, than I did with the “regular” kids.

My biggest culture shock was essentially domestic in nature, the result of coming from a state which isn’t directly connected to the rest right into the Midwest Heartland.

Even in a country with the size of a single American state, cultural differences are noticeable. In Poland, the northern region of Gdansk has considerable differences to the Subcarpathian cities in the south. Differences shaped during centuries of partitions between Russia, Austria and Germany. Nowadays, the differences reflect electoral results, practices and consumer behaviors.

Besides cultural characteristics, there are other non-business aspects to consider when doing a professional shift:

· Future family prospects: It is easy to make a decision when it concerns only you. The same is not true when it involves wife and kids. Even if you are single, it is important to reflect on what you want for the next years. If you are planning to build a family, consider this beforehand. This was my case when I decided to move out of Qatar (my previous country). My first thought was to move to Panamá with my then-fiancée, but we had plans to marry and maybe have kids in the next few years. For this reason, we live in Poland, closer to her family.

· The Time zone. I already mentioned how different time zones can create business problems. This also applies to your private life. A person in South Africa, even though is distant from his relatives in Europe, is still inside a similar time zone, but not someone living in the Middle East and with a family in South-America. This was my case years ago. The 5 to 6 hours’ difference restricted the chances I had to keep contact. During my mornings, they were sleeping. During their evenings, I was sleeping.

· How friendly the country is to your lifestyle. For example, if you enjoy practicing outdoor sports, places like Dubai or Doha may not be a good idea, since it is excruciatingly hot for more than half of the year.

To go deeper into this subject, my first book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, has plenty of considerations to reflect on the personal side of expatriation. Still, if there is one positive advice in business and personal life, it is to immerse yourself in the local culture from the beginning. Talk to the grocery store cashier is a good start.

Conclusion of what to consider when moving out:

· Cultural discrepancies: How you will adapt to different degrees of Individualism, Power Distance, Risk-Aversion, indulgence and so on?

· Future personal prospects: Are you planning to marry, build a family, or remain single? How the local offer of schools, nurseries, etc., fit your plans?

· The time zone difference: Is the time difference considerable? How will that affect your relationships back home?

· How friendly the country is to your lifestyle: Of your routine and favorite activities, what you can keep or adapt to your new destination?

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here and his articles here. The inspiration for this article comes from the book Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company in Another State, Country, or Galaxy

Cultural Shock

How to Adapt to a New Culture – The…

Step 1 of How to Adapt to a New Culture: Get over the fact that you will never be 100% native. And you don’t need to.

I start this article making a minor excuse: the title you see above is not 100% true. There are exceptions, subordinated to specific contexts, where expats become like a native. For example, in the French south-west, where some long-term Brits living among wineries abandoned their fish and chips and become more French than the locals, as the blog Bordeaux Expats reported:

58-year-old Darren Taylor moved to the Dordogne from Essex 30 years ago because of his love of the novels of Proust and the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, which he used to borrow from Dagenham Library.
He said: “You’ll have to excuse me, it’s such a long time since I spoke English. What’s happening over there now anyway? Is Sven still England manager? Is Minder still on? I wouldn’t know. I spend my days listening to the music of George Brassens and sipping pastis.”
Pensioner Norman Kemp said, “Don’t be deceived by my prominent bulldog tattoos. That was the old me. Nowadays whenever I’m not preparing magret de canard aux pommes sarladaises, I’m practicing the accordion or playing pétanque in the village square in my favourite beret.

It is refreshing to see cases like this above, where immigrants adapt so flawlessly. However, two points make these exceptions.

1st – The United Kingdom and France are neighbors with centuries of cultural, social, and economical entanglement. Therefore, the civilizational difference decreases thanks to mutual influences, and the expat adaptation is quicker.

2nd – Even in the British-in-France context there are plentiful examples of not-so-smooth adaptation, to the point of existing a mutual-help social network. The name of it is “Survive France”.

Therefore, this advice is for anyone moving (or planning to) between countries not that similar. And if you arrived until here in this article, congratulations: you already know how to go through the worst phases of your new life. The German firm Archer Relocation designed the Expat Adjustment Curve, where the first stages remind what I described in a previous article, but with a different end:

Honeymoon Phase
Initial Culture Shock
Superficial Adjustment
Culture Shock
Recovery
Integration

The fundamental difference here is the sixth phase. Whoever reaches the Integration overcame the culture shock (our previous articles help you with it) and recovered to run the show in their new life. As much as achieving this stage of adaptation is a brilliant victory, there are different levels of it. We can break down the concept of integration in 4 different types.

The 4 dimensions of cultural integration

● Economic Integration—It is when foreigners work and generate wealth for themselves via their salaries and profits, and to their new country by paying taxes. They add their contribution both as supply, by their products, and demand, by their consumption. Skilled expats often achieve this type quickly, but for students or non-working spouses it can take longer.

● Social—When people mingle with the locals, adopt social codes of the new country and its etiquette. Although the personal efforts to achieve social integration are important, how fast you will achieve depends also on how friendly is the population. The portal Internations researched about a similar subject and concluded that in places like Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador or Colombia, to create a social circle can be much easier than in Nordic countries or Saudi Arabia.

● Cultural—This kind of integration is when people adopt the habits and culture of the new place. To reach a full cultural integration, it is indispensable to have a good understanding of the local language and go across all its components (music, literature, beliefs and celebrations). The cultural integration can be even harder than the social integration if your original country and the new one are from different civilizational foundations, for example, India and Eastern Europe.

● Emotional—This is the last type of integration in the list for a reason: it is the hardest. I may take longer to explain emotional integration because it is essential for understanding this entire article. There is a word in my native language called saudade. This term is almost untranslatable, but fits very well in this description. We may define saudade as the presence of absence, the yearning for something or someone that right now is unreachable, and whose absence creates a void in your inner self. It is not only “missing” and does not have a completely negative meaning because it brings sadness and joy together. It is, as deciphered by older generations, the love that remains. We can translate a partial emotional integration as loving your new country and shaping your personality by its influences. The fully integrated, however, will go beyond this and not feel any saudade from his origins.

If you are already living abroad for some time, you probably are thinking how far you are in those four different dimensions. The good news is that you don’t need to achieve all of them. In Chile, I was very well-integrated economically, socially, and culturally. I didn’t need to do much effort since they are close to Brazil in all those components. This similarity plays a big role. That is why in Poland, to reach the same level of assimilation from Chile, it took much longer. In Qatar, I achieved economic integration, but the social and cultural aspects were distant from my daily life.

What about emotional integration? Even though I had part of my personality changed by every country that I lived in, my core is still the same, and it is Brazilian. Therefore, differently than the British mentioned at the initial paragraphs of this story, I am still not 100% emotionally integrated, and maybe I will never be. Maybe I will always feel saudade of the southeastern plains of Brazil.

And this is ok.

It is almost the rule when you are a first-generation immigrant.

In an article of Humanity in Action Denmark, I read two stories that exemplify it. One from Savas Coskun and the other from Sabeena Din, who moved, respectively, from Turkey and Pakistan to Denmark.

It was the experience of travelling back and living one year in Turkey that convinced Coskun that whatever cultural identity meant; he had to have a mixture of both cultures in his identity. “Until ten years ago I said I was Turkish only,” he says, “because saying to say I was Danish seemed a little false to me. And then I went to Turkey for a year and realized that I cannot be just Turkish. I have to be Turkish-Danish. I have to be both. Like Coskun, Sabeena Din, a 21-year-old born in Denmark, has two identities. When she is in Denmark, she feels more Pakistani. When she goes to visit Pakistan, she feels more Danish. However, Din does not feel that it is a crisis for her. “It is not a bad thing”.

To make the best efforts to integrate into a new country is not only good for you. If you plan or already have children, this will have an enormous positive impact on them. Descendants of first-generation, well-assimilated immigrants growing up in the company of local children will carry the advantage of youth years shaping them when compared to their parents. This will allow them to adjust (economically, culturally, socially and emotionally) to a much greater degree.

The upside and opportunities of being peculiar

Even doing your best attempts, still there is a chance you will never be like a native (especially if you are a first-generation newcomer like me). Even after learning the language, you still will speak with an accent that will persist for decades. You will still have your tastes for food, music, and traces in your personality shaped in your fatherland. If you are moving to a homogeneous country like some in Asia or Eastern Europe, you will also be the person looking different.

I have some splendid news for you: all those things can turn into opportunities. Your varied taste for food and music can give way to very interesting conversation topics. Your accent and knowledge of a foreign language can be useful to understand the so common loanwords from a globalized world. Those holidays you celebrated back in your country can double the opportunities for fun. With my wife we celebrate both Valentine’s (14 of February) as her tradition and Dia dos Namorados (12 of June) as mine, so we have twice the amount of romantic dinners than a standard couple!

Sometimes, being the different person opens doors to great opportunities. This is a point that people miss when trying to understand how to adapt to a new culture.

In Poland, it is normal that younger people come to talk to me in English, since I look like a foreigner, and when I answer in their language, I hear nice compliments and salutations for learning their idiom. The same would be if a westerner moved to Thailand and mastered Thai. Inside homogeneous countries, with a quick look people will know you are a foreigner and while this may scary some expatriates, it is a significant chance to surprise and earn the local admiration.

Nobody likes the arrogant expat that prefers to show off his differences at every point while despising the social and cultural features of his new home. On the other side, the complete opposite of him-the expatriate wishing to cut his roots and be like a local in every aspect- also risks entering a road to frustration because of unachievable goals.

You don’t need to lose your roots to be the guy from a snowless country talking about winter sports with his Norwegian workmates, or the American that moved to South-Africa and now invites his neighbors for a braai (South African barbecue). In countries where people expect you to be just another foreigner without interests in common, you will be in high-regard if you go beyond their expectations.

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here and some of his articles here. The inspiration for this article comes from the book Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity: 11 secrets to make your expat life better than you imagine.

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Business

Adapting to Life Abroad – Tips for Exchange Students…

Adapt to the local etiquette, but allow yourself minor concessions.

This is a chapter from the book Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity

At the beginning of my book, I wrote about universal instructions, not restricted to one single area of the globe. However, some rules may apply in more distinct ways than others depending on what is the difference between your current and previous country. This is especially true for what I will tell you in this article: when adapting to Life Abroad, respect the local etiquette but allow yourself minor concessions.

If you, dear reader, moved out from Canada to the USA or from Scotland to England, maybe you will see my next paragraphs and think:

Oh, Bollocks! My adjustment to the local way of life was so smooth, why such a drama?

Well, the adaptation on my first move, from Brazil to Chile, was also not difficult. The few obstacles were only internal (missing family, friends, and all other things from home – in this article I wrote about how to overcome homesickness) because the externals like language or customs were not very different from what I had before. That is because Chileans are not that different from Southeastern-Brazilians, as much as residents from Toronto are not that different from New Yorkers.

On the other hand, if you are moving to a country with a distinctive courtesy code, formalities, and behavior conventions, you may find yourself lost. Without even noticing, you might gain a poor reputation or enter a fight. My whole life I crossed my legs when sitting for longer times. For me, it was just an insignificant gesture done to feel comfortable. I thought that until I move to the Middle East.

In one of my first days in Doha, while I was in the HR department waiting for some bureaucratic procedure, I crossed my right leg over the left, leaving it parallel to the floor and with the sole of my shoe visible to everyone at my left. After a few seconds, a man around his 50s, dressing a typical thawb, told something in Arabic to me in an unpleasant tone.

I realized I made something wrong and later understood that showing the sole of your shoes to someone there is an insult. So, if you are reading this, middle-aged stranger in a white thawb, I am sorry for showing you my shoe’s sole.

There are two great ways to fire up your understanding of the local etiquette. The first one is also the easiest:

Watch other people!

The quickest way to adapt to other cultures is to watch the locals. Do not be cocky and realize that the meaning of certain traditions may be inaccessible to new joiners, particularly if you don’t know the idiom or ethos of the place. Rachel Heller, the author of the page Rachel Ruminations, wrote an interesting story about her time as an American in the Netherlands:

Sometimes the biggest differences are the smallest. It took me a couple of months before I realized that, rather than just placing a plateful of cookies on the table in front of visitors when we sat down to drink tea, I had to explicitly offer the cookies to them. They wouldn’t help themselves to cookies without being offered. I thought they just didn’t want any. And I had to offer them a second cup of tea, rather than expecting them to take it. I sat there, eating cookies and refilling my own tea, and didn’t realize how incredibly impolite I was being! So watch their behavior carefully: notice how they shake hands, how they sit, how they handle food, and so on.

Maybe Rachel could see in the guest’s faces that they were not serving themselves because she was not doing what the local etiquette tells in the Netherlands (explicitly offer it to the guests). When you live outside your country, it can be challenging to interpret facial expressions.

The research of the American psychologists Hillary Anger Elfenbein & Nalini Ambady concluded that we recognize facial emotions better when observing people similar to us in terms of nationality and ethnic group. Therefore, if you are in an unfamiliar environment, with conspicuous differences to your homeland, maybe observing people will not tell much to you. Therefore, as Rachel Heller advises, just ask people what are the local rules of politeness.

Learning the language while adapting to Life Abroad

The second great way to assimilate the local etiquette is more demanding, but (at least for me), very rewarding:

Learn the local language, or at least try.

To learn the idiom of your new country will open a whole new world to you. Not only you will be able to say things like Thank you or Please when shopping at the grocery store or ordering in a café, but you will take the nuances that shape people’s mood in their daily activities. To understand the local jokes and insults will give you a great idea of what is funny and what is outrageous in your new home.

The cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky in her research affirmed that language shapes the way we think. Therefore, by learning the local language, you will be able to think like a local, and that escalates your chances of success (or at least survival) in your new environment. Which incentive can be better than this? As the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

While I recommend you adapt to the local politeness standards, especially in public, it would be delusional to expect that someone simply changes his whole behavior just because he/she is moving abroad. The good news is: you don’t need to.

There are always plenty of concessions you can allow yourself without being rude. I am used to eating pizza with a fork and knife, something common in my region since the pizza dough there is quite thin, so grabbing it can make a mess.

Neither in Qatar nor Poland people eat in that way, but still, all the time when I go to a pizzeria I ask for a fork and a knife. Some people look to me and some probably think that this is weird. However, the comfort of eating pizza in my way outweighs any discomfort from people looking to me and asking themselves “why this guy is doing this?”. It is not impolite, but just weird. And it is not rude to be slightly weird.

The more you adjust to the local customs, the more people will allow you to be peculiar. It is almost like there is an expat behavioral bank account. If you adopt a posture of inflexibility, always answering invitations to traditional dishes with “No, I am not used to that”, or replying questions about local matters with “I am not interested in it”, the balance of your behavioral bank account with people around will be empty. When that happens, even minor signals, like your clothes, may send a message you don’t want to integrate, and people will just give up.

However, if your colleagues or spouse’s family see that you are trying to learn the basics of their language, appreciating their dishes and drinks and even commenting on the local sports news, they will not mind your eccentricities. When I am watching TV, sometimes I like to sit in a lotus position (maybe I am revealing too much in this book, sorry). My wife told me it was weird, but since I was watching their favorite sport and trying to talk in their language, they just were ok with it and thought it was some typical way of Brazilians to sit (it is not).

That is part of the beauty of being a foreigner: others often will think that whatever oddness you have is just a typical thing of your country, and you will not look so odd.

So aim to adjust to the local etiquette, but allow yourself minor concessions.

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here and some of his articles here. This article was inspired by the content of his book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity: 11 secrets to make your expat life better than you imagine.

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Cultural Shock

A Simple but Life-Changing Advice for Expatriates

Vinagrete para churrasco. Imagem de misskursovie2013 por Pixabay . — This is called Vinagrete and in a few paragraphs you will understand why this picture is here.

A Bit of Nostalgia First

Before jumping to the promised advice for expatriates, a small personal anecdote. It will be useful to understand the reason for this post.

Almost everyone has a few family practices perpetuated from infancy to adulthood, which are eventually called house traditions. Mine was the family barbecue. One or two times per month my father turned on the churrasqueira (an intimidating word basically meaning “grill”) around noon, my mom prepared vinagrete, and one or two hours later all of us served ourselves from thin stripes of picanha, alcatra and all sorts of typical Brazilian cuts, together with bread rolls filled with vinagrete. Just by writing this paragraph, I feel the craving for it, something difficult to anyone foreign to my region to understand.

Outside my country is nearly impossible to find the same kind of cuisine, except in places where you have a big Brazilian community or demand for different types of meat. Qatar was in the second case. Two restaurants served those cuts there for rich sheiks willing to taste it. I was not a frequent client of those since I was not willing to pay multiple times more than what I was used to. Thus, there was me, in the middle of the desert, deeply craving the meat and the moments I had during my whole life. That is when I realized I lived with two Argentinians. They knew some restaurants where the price tag was not high, and the best: we had company discounts!

Although Argentinian cuts differ greatly from the Brazilians, the environment and the taste was still fine. Albeit there was no vinagrete, there was another remarkably tasty sauce: chimichurri. Then I saw it was possible to satiate my appetite without emptying my pockets. I also found in supermarket cuts similar to alcatra and prepared it at home. To complete my weekend replicas of childhood rituals, I used to call my parents during those times and have long talks where we updated each other about our lives.

Though I didn’t have my parents present there (as well our typical bread rolls called pão francês, which were impossible to find), the weekends with churrasco-imitation were enough to catapult my mood and make me filled with satisfaction, happiness, and protein.

I told you this story because, if you are already living abroad, probably you met other foreigners constantly complaining about how much they miss what they had back home. Maybe you even are one of them (no offense intended). Food and culinary ingredients are the most common reason for ranting. Looking for an expat products store is valuable when adapting to life in a new country. Usually, those stores will have the most famous food items from selected countries, like condiments, beverages, sweets or ingredients. It is especially convenient for anyone with kids going through adaptation.

Besides food, this dissatisfaction can build up from many other items that are inaccessible abroad. Things like hobbies, sports, climate, your favorite place, drinks and routines. The affliction takes many forms. For example, an article of Worklife described the case of Joe Watson. He relocated to Hong Kong from Atlanta for six years and not being able to watch his sports teams on TV made him yearn for life back home. The consultancy firm Expatica exemplified this problem, and the opportunities derived from it:

When you’re not in your hometown, you need to adapt to what’s available in your new environment. For instance, you may have only ordered coffee from a particular company, but you may have to adjust to whatever type of coffee you can get in your locality. Weird smells? You must just get used to it. Constantly complaining about how you can’t find the same brands as in your country or that you prefer the public transportation network back home doesn’t build a healthy relationship with your new place of residence. Try to focus on the positives and venture outside your comfort zone. Maybe you’ll find an even better brand of coffee in the process.

The Expat ANS Syndrome

The paragraph above describes a pattern I saw among many expats all over the world. A common behavior which I will call here the analogous to nothing syndrome (ANS). It happens when, longing for something they had before and now it inaccessible in a foreign country, the person completely loses the capacity to substitute his previous desire for something similar. As if that dish, hobby, or Wednesday night event was analogous to nothing, an exclusivity only his beloved country had and there is nothing in the universe to substitute it.

Sometimes the analogous to nothing syndrome comes from the pride of what we judge as typical, traditional, or just very cool in our country. Like a Chilean expatriate in France misses drinking Piscolas because of the impossibility to find Pisco (a Chilean-Peruvian national drink) and don’t realize he can instead use Grappa with a similar result. Or a Californian casual-surfer living in Austria, frustrated with the lack of waves (and sea at all) but not realizing how satisfying could be to snowboard in the challenging slopes of Tyrol.

On other occasions, the ANS results from a lack of creativity or knowledge. To exemplify it, I ask your permission to tell another personal story, which will sum in our final advice for expatriates.

Latin-American Expats and the D problem.

During my first winter in Europe, more or less around January, I was feeling tired and demotivated, since it was dark almost all the time. I was also getting sick frequently, and then I realized this was a message from my body. It was almost shouting to me “Hey, there is something wrong! I need sunlight!”. My skin color changed from the usual olive tone to a pale shade. I went to the doctor, and he asked for some exams. When the results came, we understood everything:

Severe lack of vitamin D.

There’s a good reason vitamin D is also known as “the sunshine vitamin”. The nutritionist Ryan Raman explained that When your skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. The sun’s ultraviolet B (UVB) rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy for vitamin D synthesis to occur. Since my genetics provided me with a darker color, ideal for places with strong sunshine like Brazil, it was over filtering the scarce sunlight of the central European winter.

Here we had a problem. I couldn’t bring the Brazilian sunshine to here, and at this point holidays were out of the question. So I needed a bit of creativity and some technology to solve the issue. The solution after all is to take vitamin tablets every morning, and an artificial light imitating the sun. The physiological problems faded and my humor, mood and productivity had a boost.

What this proved is that even the tropical sunshine is not analogous to nothing and can be substituted by something similar if you need it. Eventually, the search for a similar thing can even unveil other opportunities. Mark Callaghan, a British that moved to the USA and was badly craving for his typical “Sunday lunch swimming with gravy”, had his story told by Worklife:

“He did something most homesick expats don’t do — he turned his longing for home into a successful livelihood, later launching British Corner Shop, an online supermarket delivering British groceries worldwide, primarily to expats wanting a taste of home.”

It is likely that, freeing yourself from the inertia and frustration caused by not finding the same you had before, you will find something similar. If you are a Russian in the USA, maybe you miss celebrating Orthodox Easter. In the case your city doesn’t have many of your countrymen, use your creativity and you might find Serbians, Romanians and many other nationalities that share traditions and prepare a delicious kulich.

The same is valid for routines. I remember that during my time in the Middle East, there was a group of jogging expats. A lot of them were Australians, North Americans and Europeans. People from places where jogging is a good way to exercise outdoors and socialize. But outdoor exercising in Doha, where summer temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius, could be a health risk to those daring to do a physical activity outside.

So how those people were jogging?

I read more about this group and realized that they were not jogging indoors, but rather in shopping malls, multi-purpose centers, and other acclimatized environments. The association became so popular that the hotel Hyatt Plaza sponsored a similar initiative in the city.

Jogging in a shopping mall. This is what I call creativity! It is certainly not the same as what they had in their countries, but it is similar and as the success of the group showed, it was also fun.

Conclusion – Don’t look for the same things, Stick to what is similar

This similar you will find may become your new standard, who knows? I would never expect that one day I would be more interested in watching winter sports than a carnival parade. As those examples prove, the sunshine of the tropics, the mild weather of the Mediterranean, the exotic cuisines, the pacific waves or the biggest party on the planet are not unreplaceable by something analogous. So why would you think the thing you are missing is analogous to nothing?

Here is the advice for expatriates reading this post: just look, in your new country, for something comparable to what you had before and embrace it. Instead of look for the same, stick to what is similar, and enjoy it.

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here. This article was inspired by the content of his book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity: 11 secrets to make your expat life better than you imagine

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Cultural Shock

Dealing With Homesickness? Here is a Simple Approach

Dealing with Homesickness.Person looking to the horizon,Imagem de PublicDomainPictures por Pixabay

Dealing With Homesickness? Let me tell you a story. I remember clearly how my last weekend before moving abroad was. It was Carnival, and in Brazil it is celebrated everywhere, although in different manners. I was with a big group of friends in a small city where, during this time of the year, young students from different regions come to celebrate this annual party. We rented a house so during the day we drank beer, made barbecue and swam in the pool (which was tiny for all of us, but it was Carnival, so nobody cares). We gave pre-parties and went to the big celebrations during the night.

It was awesome, and it was supposed to be from Saturday to Tuesday. However, on Monday morning I received a call from the HR telling me that the bureaucratic procedures of my expatriation finished, so I should be flying to my new country next Wednesday. I needed to leave almost immediately to prepare my luggage.

Maybe because this was one of the last moments before I move out, I really missed Carnival during my first two years abroad. When I saw my friends enjoying it, while I was in places where this celebration is virtually nonexistent, it made me feel blue. After some time my pals also moved out, some of them married and had kids, and now, eight years later, I barely remind carnival exists. It is not important to me anymore.

Homesickness when living abroad? The home you left doesn’t exist anymore

I tell you this story to exemplify one thing: Few years after you move, the recognizable scenario you left behind will not be there anymore, or at least not as you had in your memory. This happens for two reasons: the first is that your home changed, the people and the places you used to go change, and even the hobbies and popular trends changed. The second reason is that, after years out, you also change.

The most interesting thing is that you may not even be aware of the transformations you went through, just like when you lose (or gain) weight slowly and the people that notice are not the ones seeing you every day, but the aunt you visit once per year. As the Singaporean expat Bernie Low wrote at the GaijinPot Blog [i]:

Each time I went back to Singapore I would be excited to return to where I had grown up, nostalgia tugging at my heart strings each time I heard the roar of an airplane engine – I was going home! But what happens when home is no longer home? When instead of warmth and nostalgia all you feel is displacement and loss? […] I feel like a foreigner in my own country. There is an echoing bitter aftertaste that I cannot quite identify at the end of each day. I am living there, but each time it grows ever more distant, like the best friend you used to have that you’re drifting apart from and it frightens me.

Some minor differences in your accent will make people laugh. Other differences, like the changes in your personality or habits, will be noticed by your friends or relatives, and their approaches may vary. Some will see those changes as matureness developing after facing difficulties across the world. Others, however, may understand it as pretentious or even fake, made just to impress. Digression: in some cases, they are right. I saw a fair quota of expats that artificially change their accent and pretend to appear cosmopolitan, but just look ridiculous.

By all means, however, the cultural shock you experience will change you.

Homesickness meaning

According to the Cambridge dictionary, homesickness is the feeling of being unhappy because of being away from home for a long period:

The two transformations, the one back in our land and the other inside ourselves, result in one thing: the home you left behind is not there anymore. It still exists and probably is very familiar to you, but it is not the same. People there are not the same, neither you. Some expats don’t realize this and frequently consider going back just because they deeply miss their home. My answer is always the same:

Which home do you miss: the one you keep in your memories or the one that is real now?

If it is the second case, it is understandable. I also miss the place where my family lives and where I spent my childhood. On the other hand, if what you miss are your memories, you must be aware they are just that: memories. To reproduce, or even worse, re-enact memories is not a goal that typically leads to a meaningful life.

But how to deal with this? How to deal with this urge, created in difficult moments, that you should throw everything in the air and go back to the place where you feel safe?

The First step in dealing with homesickness

Don’t Look Back so Often.

The first step is to understand this urge is natural. The same proverb about the greener grass of the neighbor applies here. When difficulties appear in your new country and you think about how would be better if you never left in the first place, remember that you also have no idea how things would be if you were still living there. Time flows and our age is far from stable. Besides, remember your targets, your goals and the reason you moved out in the first place. Chapter 4, rule three, remember?

If there is one trick tremendously helpful and which I recommend is to set yourself a minimum time. It should be at least three to six months, where you don’t allow yourself to think about moving back. During this time, remove any conjecture about how life would be if you were still there or what you would be doing at your previous job. Instead, spend your mental energy learning to love just where you are, and how this new environment supports your goals. This thought will keep you going.

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Brazil

Living in Brazil – Reasons to move to Brazil

Moving to Brazil from the USA or Europe have its particular challenges and rewards.

Moving to Brazil and living in Brazil

If you tell most Brazilians (even myself) that you plan to leave a stable country to live in a developing economy with a shaky history like Brazil, they will get surprised. After the astonishment comes the the question: Why?

While people in cities with higher-living standards – like Curitiba – may give you a few reasons, this will not be the case for most of the country. In fact, it is more likely that they will upfront inform you of some challenges you will face.

And those challenges are not few. The same, however, must be said of the opportunities.

In this article we will tell you:

What to consider first when moving to Brazil.
Reasons to move to Brazil.
Most important costs to ponder.
Best place to live in Brazil for young professionals, families and pensioners.

Moving to Brazil – What to Consider First

1 – Brazil is far, and either you will spend considerable money on airline tickets, or you will see your family and friends rarely.

If you live in Europe, only a few of the major cities (mostly in Western Europe) have flight connections with Brazil. The majority of those flights depart either from São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. If you live outside those two cities, you will need to purchase an additional domestic flight or bus ticket. The roads in Brazil (outside few states like São Paulo) are not in the best conditions and bus rides can be tough.

Americans are luckier since prices from Brazil to the USA tend to be cheaper than to Europe.

2 – It is one of the most diverse countries on the planet, therefore advantages – and disadvantages – often do not apply to all states.

When we say Brazil is like this or Brazil is like that, likely we are rather talking about specific regions instead of general concepts.

Phrases like “In Brazil they horrible highways!” will sound obvious to someone living in Tocantins, but unfair to a São Paulo state resident – used to their world-class, toll-charged roads.

A similar statement applies to popular behaviours. In general, Curitibanos (people from Curitiba) are considerably more reserved than Cariocas (from Rio de Janeiro).

3 – The Shock for most westerners will not be cultural shock per se, but rather a structural shock, be it from the legal or governmental aspects.

Even with all those contrasting characteristics, the biggest reason for the shock is not from the population behaviour alone. Cultural shock, in its 4 dimensions, might be heavier for non-westerners. However, the biggest challenges we – at Colligere Expat Consultancy – solve for our clients are the heavy bureaucracy, complicated tax system and warped sense of urgency from public offices.

Reasons to move to Brazil

1 – Instability creates opportunities

The constant ups-and-downs of the Brazilian economy have its own idiomatic expression by the locals: Vôo de Galinha (chicken flights), due to its short-lived duration.

While this instability creates the need for safeguards like a low-risk (and often dollarized) savings account, varied investment portfolio and multiple sources of income, it comes with few advantages.

Not everyone can protect themselves against one or two economic turmoils per decade. Therefore, after each one of them, the survivors have plenty of good-quality real estate, assets and even companies to invest for advantageous prices.

2 – The exchange rate is very favourable, for now.

The constant economic turmoils, especially in the last two decades, created an opportunity for people with income in foreign currency: the exchange rates.

Brazilian Reais lost near 70% of their value in the last decade. With this devaluation came some serious bargains, like beachfront apartments in one of the best state capitals for less than 500 dollars per month.

3 – Amazing places to retire or relax amid nature.

Beach in Santa Catarina, a favourite among pensioners. Photo by Cassiano Psomas on Unsplash — Beach in Santa Catarina, a favourite among pensioners

With the above mentioned favourable exchange rate, and the recent easing of procedures to purchase real estate, some parts of Brazil are becoming attractive for those seeking a sunny place to escape from the north-hemisphere winter. It is also attractive for pensioners and retirees, which have an additional advantage, mentioned below.

4 – Good quality private healthcare.

Brazil has a universal healthcare system (SUS). Its quality, however, is questionable when compared to international standards.

The same does not apply to private healthcare services in metropolitan regions like São Paulo or cities with high-standards medical universities, like Ribeirão Preto.

The city of São Paulo alone have 2 hospitals among the 100 best in the world.

Brazilians often will say that private healthcare is expensive – especially when considering the local reality – but compared to similar standards abroad, the prices are considerably lower. The cost of giving birth at Hospital Albert Einstein (the 38^th best hospital in the world) is less than four thousand dollars, compared to the 32.140 dollars estimated by Mayo Clinic.

Living in Brazil – Costs to consider

1 – Education

The widespread middle-class habit of send kids to private schools may be a surprise, especially for Europeans used to decent public educational systems.

Brazil also has a public education system with national coverage. But the quality is truly awful (with few exceptions, like schools kept by research centres or armed forces).

It is enough to say that Brazil is among the 10 worst countries in the PISA international ranking.

There are also safety concerns, with many schools harbouring gangs and used as recruitment fields for criminal organizations.

Given the near-necessity of sending children to private education, expatriates must consider those costs. Ideally, education possibilities should be researched in advance (Colligere Expat Consultancy can help you with it).

Another surprise may arise from the lack of vacancies in some private schools and application of admission tests due to the high demand.

2 – Health

The considerations in this point are very similar to the ones regarding education.

Brazil has a free-of-charge and universal healthcare system, but unless you live in cities with high-quality public medical schools, you would be taking additional risks relying on it.

The SUS (Brazil public healthcare system) lags far away from similar systems like the british NHS – what is understandable considering the wealth differences between Brazil and The United Kingdom.

With an ample offer of planos de saúde (the local version of healthcare insurance operators), foreigners living in Brazil should look for one with good local coverage and reviews.

3 – Security

A residential block in São Paulo surrounded by electric fences. Source: Wikimedia Commons — A residential block in São Paulo surrounded by a electric fence.

Unless you lived in a war zone like Iraq or Somalia, it is unlikely that you ever imagined spending money in electric fences, infrared movement detectors or even hiring armed guards for your house or ranch. In Brazil, if you live outside a guarded apartment block in a metropolitan zone, it may be the case.

On the other hand, if you live in a closed apartment block, most of them have fees (taxa de condomínio) to pay for the security and conservation of the common areas.

Additionally, expatriates with children should consider the costs of private transportation to to and from schools in big cities. Rarely is responsible to let them go alone.

Best place to live in Brazil

Hopefuly the extra costs listed above were not enough to make you give up living in Brazil. Now it is time for some good points. Starting by the best place places to live, according to your stage in life.

1 – Best place for young professionals living in Brazil

If you are looking for professional opportunities allied with an entrepreneurial environment and leisure possibilities, coastal cities like Florianopolis – the capital of Santa Catarina is the place to go for Digital Nomads and technology entrepreneurs – and Santos comes first in the rankings.

They have the additional benefit of living standards better than huge cities. However, in sectors like finance, banking and services it is unlikely to escape from the duo São Paulo-Rio.

2 – Best places for expat families living in Brazil

Best place to live in Brazil for families. Jundiai is only 59km from the financial center of São Paulo. Source: Wikimedia Commons — Jundiai is only 59km from the financial center of São Paulo.

Families with working adults will find their place in cities like Campinas or Jundiai. They are close to the economical centre of Brazil, São Paulo.

Their plus?

The price of an apartment in a good neighborhood in São Paulo is similar to a comfortable house there. They are also safer, with a cleaner atmosphere and have cheaper schools.

3 – Best place to live in Brazil for pensioners

Curiously, the same cities that top the list for young professionals are also the first here: Florianopolis and Santos. In the ranking made by the portal Envelhecer Sem Vergonha, completing the top5 are Porto Alegre (capital of Rio Grande do Sul state), Niterói (Rio de Janeiro state), and São José do Rio Preto (São Paulo state). All of them have good scores in terms of quality of life and health services.

Living in Brazil – Conclusions

The idea of a foreigner leaving his country and moving to Brazil may surprise Brazilians more than other nationalities.

In part, due to self-depreciation, in part due to an idealization of life out of their own country made by telenovelas.

Brazil has a continental size and continental contrasts. The idea of moving should must balance with a careful provision for the additional costs (namely: education, health and security) and particular characteristics of each region. While northern regions are rich in natural gifts, the southern portion tends to better standards of life and infrastructure.

Overall, there will be a region in Brazil matching your current professional needs and stage in life. With favourable exchange rates and the recent turmoils, there are plenty of investment opportunities, affordable real-estate and business possibilities.

What are your thoughts? Are there any other cost you think people should consider when living in Brazil or moving to it? Any other city you recommend?

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist for the world´s greatest airline, co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw and author of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity. You can check some of his articles here.

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Cultural Shock

Quiz – Which country better suits your goals?

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Cultural Shock

Cultural Shock and questions for expats & digital nomads.

(Part of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, written by Levi Borba. Levi is also a consultant and founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy).

The majority of the first questions when moving out are about living costs, language, bureaucracy, etc. For this reason, many groups of foreigners at social media will already have a FAQ or index for questions like:

How long it takes to have my resident card?

What is the best health insurance?

Which cellphone company is better?

I will not reply those questions here. Not only because they differ from country to country, but also because it is straightforward to find those answers, since they are the things that everyone asks. The way to find those answers is the same explained previously: ask the locals in social media.

However, there is another group of questions, and those are barely asked. As a consequence of not answering them, so many expats experience frustration and regret. Those are the questions that Breno should have asked before going to Qatar. They are about the cultural shock.

The dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede^[1] organized a study of national cultures using group dimensions which should quantify core values of a society. Hofstede’s research examine national and organizational settings, tracing a general guideline about how different cultures would act in social and work environments. The findings of his study let us compare the cultural attitude of different countries, including the one we are living and the one we are moving to.

There are few fields that can cause cultural shock, and four of the most significant are^[2]:

1^st – The Rules. The approach to rules and regulations can be significantly different between certain nations. Germanic and Japanese cultures, in one side, value procedures, systems and control, focusing on getting things done how they were planned. At the other side, romance cultures like Iberians or Italians tend to give greater value to ad hoc problem-solving, relationship building and adaptation to circumstances. Now you can imagine how misunderstandings can appear when a Swiss border official questions a laid back Latin American student, or an Austrian client can be impatient in a Portuguese café because the waiter is talking too much.

2nd – The Time. This is one of the earliest sources of cultural shock. I experienced it profoundly. The different perceptions of time can make an inexperienced expat deeply frustrated and be a common source of friction. In Latin American cultures punctuality is not that important for social gatherings or informal occasions. An Anglophone that shows exactly as invited, for example, at 9PM for a party or at 8AM for the company breakfast, may find himself completely alone in the room and confused. In the same way, my wife was surprised that in Brazil would not be a problem to arrive to a doctor appointment five minutes late (because the doctor would just call my name ten minutes late).

To understand how society handles deadlines is useful to your professional life too. Contrary to some stereotypes, laid back nationalities like Greeks and Mexicans are among those that make more over-hours in the planet, while Germans are the ones doing less. Try to seek more information about how the people of your new country deal with time, how strict they are with deadlines and if the dentist will still see you if you are five minutes late. This analysis will be very useful to you sooner than you can imagine.

3^rd – The Humor. Some cultures, like the Irish or Latin Americans, have humor as a constant component of their behaviour, and jokes may surge even when things are not going well. Others, like the British, may use humor as a conversation starter, to break the ice or even to grant some loans from the US to save their economy (like princess Margaret done in 1965^[3]). At the other side, jokes at Swiss business meeting can backfire because they may see it as a waste of time. In Slavic countries, to laugh with people that didn’t get the joke can be understood as you are laughing at them. I cannot recount how many times people asked me in Poland why I was laughing for things like a baby throwing his cap on the floor (it was really funny).

4^th – The Communication. As the consultancy firm Expatica explained in their page: Differing communication styles can be a ticking time-bomb, especially in the workplace. Plenty of cultures prefer to engage in lengthy hypothetical discussions with few concrete conclusions; meetings with French colleagues, for instance, might lack structure or even an agenda altogether. Others prefer discussions with a clear and well-defined structure that allows participants to easily compartmentalize everything that was said. People who speak with a great deal of ambiguity or subtlety in their speech (the British are notorious here) may frustrate those that prefer clear and direct communication, though they may also impress their colleagues that have trouble working out complicated situations.

So, here we come to the question made some paragraphs ago: to do a proper research that goes beyond asking about internet providers and insurance plans, you must also know those cultural shock differences. Preferably before you arrive or as soon as you land in your new country. If you are already living abroad, it is still a very interesting exercise and you can discover a lot by doing it.

^[1] Research available at https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/

^[2] Other details about culture shock and differences can be found in this article: https://www.expatica.com/moving/integration/how-to-manage-culture-shock-108735/

^[3] You can see more details of this story at this link: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/crown-true-story-behind-princess-20868858

A Recipe to Avoid IA Syndrome and Reduce Culture Shock Problems

Talk to the Grocery Cashier

Environmental Dissonance

Cultural Distance

The Latin America vs Europe example

Cultural differences withing a country

Conclusion of what to consider when moving out:

Step 1 of How to Adapt to a New Culture: Get over the fact that you will never be 100% native. And you don’t need to.

The 4 dimensions of cultural integration

The upside and opportunities of being peculiar

Adapt to the local etiquette, but allow yourself minor concessions.

Learning the language while adapting to Life Abroad

A Bit of Nostalgia First

​ The Expat ANS Syndrome

Latin-American Expats and the D problem.

Conclusion – Don’t look for the same things, Stick to what is similar

Homesickness when living abroad? The home you left doesn’t exist anymore

Homesickness meaning

The First step in dealing with homesickness

Moving to Brazil from the USA or Europe have its particular challenges and rewards.

Moving to Brazil and living in Brazil

Moving to Brazil – What to Consider First

1 – Brazil is far, and either you will spend considerable money on airline tickets, or you will see your family and friends rarely.

2 – It is one of the most diverse countries on the planet, therefore advantages – and disadvantages – often do not apply to all states.

3 – The Shock for most westerners will not be cultural shock per se, but rather a structural shock, be it from the legal or governmental aspects.

Reasons to move to Brazil

1 – Instability creates opportunities

2 – The exchange rate is very favourable, for now.

3 – Amazing places to retire or relax amid nature.

4 – Good quality private healthcare.

Living in Brazil – Costs to consider

1 – Education

2 – Health

3 – Security

Best place to live in Brazil

1 – Best place for young professionals living in Brazil

2 – Best places for expat families living in Brazil

3 – Best place to live in Brazil for pensioners

Living in Brazil – Conclusions

(Part of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, written by Levi Borba. Levi is also a consultant and founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy).

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The Expat ANS Syndrome