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Focussing on the stratification of expatriates and the boundaries between different types of expatriates and locals, this study investigates the lived experiences and testimonies of Eastern European expatriates and their relationships in Dubai. The purpose of this article to develop the current knowledge on expatriates cohabiting in a cosmopolitan city by providing empirical evidence on expatriate bubbles in Dubai.

Explorative qualitative research was conducted using online and face-to-face interviews, along with a week-long intensive ethnography with observations, interviews and informal discussions.

Three distinct groups of people live in Dubai, namely, Westerners, expatriates from the East and Emiratis. They hardly mingle with each other on equal terms, but they do work in a complementary fashion. In Dubai, the status of East European experts, a subgroup of Westerners, is similar to their Western counterparts and in that they are considered European. Consequently, they experience a slight status development in comparison to when they work in the West. The research provides evidence on social stratification of expatriate bubbles.

This very short ethnography with a relatively small number of qualitative interviews could be complemented by a further in-depth study.

Expatriate bubbles have not previously been empirically investigated from an Eastern European perspective, nor has the unique case of Dubai been analysed extensively. Distinct expatriate bubbles with their stratified hierarchies have been identified in this study.

This paper aims to discuss multiple uses of the concept of “bubble” as a metaphor to refer to different experiences of foreign working communities and suggests a more flexible and comprehensive approach.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at different locations, the authors propose changing the use of the bubble metaphor from an analogy of living in isolation to a way of conceptualising the changing contexts and characteristics that impact the porosity and permeability of communities.

The paper suggests that when using the metaphor as a concept, the following considerations need to be taken into account: (1) the conventional thinking that “expat-bubbles” are isolated places, (2) any simplistic notion that different internationally mobile workers will be less or more immersed in the local community and (3) the use of the bubble metaphor without a careful delineation and reference to its permeability and porosity.

The paper helps to visualise a different dimension of the traditional taken-for-granted representation of the bubble. The bubble emerges as a rich analogical concept not to explain binomial representations of integration-separation. Rather than a simple “open” or “closed”, bubbles became more or less porous and permeable depending on the experiences of foreign working communities.

Many expatriates have difficulty building a social network that includes locals in Denmark, and they often find themselves in an “expatriate bubble” where they meet mostly with other expatriates. This is unfortunate because much culture learning can be gleaned from interacting with host country nationals, and a lack of contact can negatively influence expatriate well-being and satisfaction. This chapter first focuses on how expatriates build a social network when they are abroad. Interviews with five self-initiated expatriates show key factors that influence the building of a social network, such as attitude and motivation, similarities with the other, location, and cultural differences. Denmark, in particular, seems to be a difficult place to make local friends, compared to many other countries globally. Three main cultural characteristics might explain this difficulty: the homogeneity of Denmark in terms of culture and language, the value of equality that is engrained in Danish mentality, and Denmark being a specific and deal-focused culture. The chapter ends with recommendations for expatriates who do wish to connect with Danes.

The social context of expatriation is crucial for expatriate success, including for building local host country national (HCN) social network support that can facilitate effective adjustment through information exchange. However, expatriates have particular difficulties in breaking out of the expatriate bubble and building social ties with HCNs in certain countries, especially in Scandinavia. This paper focuses on the case of Denmark and explains why many expatriates find it difficult to make social connections with Danes.

This study involves a meta-ethnography of literature on Danish culture, as well as semistructured interviews with a total of 16 expatriates in Denmark.

Three main cultural elements are identified as crucial for explaining the difficulty expatriates face in connecting with Danes, namely homogeneity, the value placed on equality and the public–private divide. The homogeneity and inward-looking mentality make it more difficult for outsiders to break into the social circle. Outsiders have to earn the trust that is difficult to obtain, reflecting Denmark's high score on GLOBE's institutional collectivism.

In light of the challenges that many expatriates face in creating a new social network abroad, organizations can support them in several ways. The authors discuss context-specific strategies for making new social connections in Denmark, which may be usefully applied in other countries.

This study focuses on the context of expatriate social network formation and shows that cultural differences in socializing affect the ease with which expatriates can make connections with HCNs, who can have a positive impact on expatriate adjustment and performance success.

In the context of international assignments, repatriates are confronted with social, organisational and cultural challenges. However, the impact of community and social support on the reintegration process has gone unnoticed. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influencing factors on the reintegration process of expatriates who were sent to Asia, especially considering social support and the role of the community. In the context of the community, this paper discusses which factors influence the reintegration process after repatriates return to Germany.

In order to research reintegration problems as well as social support and the role of the community, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with repatriates from Germany.

The central results of the study show that there are variables in different areas that influence the reintegration process of repatriates sent to Asia, which have both reintegration-promoting and reintegration-inhibiting effects. Furthermore, it was found that a lack of support from social networks in the home country has negative effect on the reintegration process causing repatriates to stay in known repatriate communities.

The results of the study demonstrate that social networks and communities in the home country represent crucial challenges in the reintegration process. Furthermore, it demonstrates the need for future exploratory research into this area to gain further insights into this topic.

While there is anecdotal evidence that internationally mobile workers often form isolated nation-based communities or “expatriate bubbles,” previous academic scholarship on the expatriate communities and their subjective boundaries is limited. The primary purpose of this article is to advance the theoretical or conceptual understanding of expatriate communities as bubbles.

As developed by Lamont and Molnár (2002), the theory of symbolic boundaries is applied and set to scrutinize the production and maintenance of insulated expatriate communities. Empirically, an ethnographic study of a community of Finnish expatriates in a Southeast Asian country is undertaken to describe how symbolic boundaries are constructed.

The main theoretical implication of the paper is the recognition that expatriates themselves are involved in creating the “bubble.” The boundaries separating the national expatriate community are not externally imposed but can be viewed as consequences of the active boundary work of the expatriates. The empirical study demonstrates how the Finnish expatriates negotiated the symbolic boundaries of their community, drawing on cultural, moral and spatial modalities in different levels of boundary work.

There need to be more systematic attempts to develop a theoretically grounded understanding of insulated expatriate communities and their boundaries. This article contributes to the sociological conceptualization of expatriate bubbles by utilizing the symbolic boundary approach, which adds perspective to the embryonic theory of the subjective boundaries of expatriate communities. The multiplicity of different types of symbolic boundaries and their modalities suggests that an expatriate bubble is rarely a finished state or structure.

The qualitative study examines the development of purposely created interpersonal relationships in an intercultural context. Contact with a local host is a way of helping expatriates deal with the challenges of an international assignment. Since the quality of contact with the host is pivotal to benefit most from this experience, the purpose of this paper is to examine which factors influence contact quality.

The authors conducted a case study analysis of 33 expatriates and ten accompanying partners who were put in touch with a local host, with whom they undertook a broad range of activities during a period of nine months.

Nine factors influenced the development of the contact (similarities, motivation, benefits, anxiety, expectations, busy schedules, suboptimal timing, communication breakdown, and cultural differences). Key factors were similarities, motivation, and benefits.

While some of the factors (e.g. similarities) are predictable according to the Social Penetration Theory, four factors were uniquely applicable to purposely created relationships such as contact with a local host: motivation, expectations, anxiety, and suboptimal timing.

The study provides suggestions that could stimulate the contact with a local host, making the intervention more valuable for organisations who wish to support their expatriates in this way.

This longitudinal study is one of the first to examine in detail the process of development of purposely created interpersonal relationships in an intercultural context. Furthermore, the study is new because it also examines unsuccessful relationships.

While there is vast research on expatriate adjustment, it is still known very little on how self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) in particular might cope with identity conflicts and how they engage with identity work. What is more, although there is some literature on the existence of expatriate bubbles, this does not cover how these bubbles might impact identity work. The purpose of this paper is to explore identity work that is taking place within expatriate bubbles and thus advance our knowledge on both expatriate bubbles and expatriate adjustment.

The study reports on the analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interview data collected from 37 self-initiated expatriate engineers from Greece, Spain and Italy, currently residing in Bristol, UK.

Previous studies have argued that expatriate bubbles impede adjustment. The study analysis, however, shows that expatriate bubbles can be not only a powerful mechanism for coping with foreignness and strengthening their sense of belonging but also act as identity workspaces where SIEs engaged with identity work and navigated identity conflicts.

The present study addresses two empirical gaps: the paucity of literature on the identity work that self-initiated expatriates engage with and the paucity studies on self-initiated expatriate engineers. The study also has a theoretical contribution as, drawing upon a Goffmanian dramaturgical framework sheds light on the back regions of performance taking place within expatriate bubbles. Thus, showing how SIEs relax but also rehearse their performances in order to reduce any identity gaps triggered by the new organisational and national context.

Commercially produced educational materials often reflect the pedagogical beliefs and culture(s) of the content developers. While many teachers involved in teaching English as a foreign language have relied on commercially published content in the past, the advent of ubiquitous technology has afforded them the ability to create content that is contextualised and to share it with other educators across the globe. The purpose of this study is to investigate cultural determinants which affect the pedagogical decisions of teachers when designing content.

This case study, conducted at a higher educational institution in the Gulf, addresses the issues that arise when cultures or ideologies of educators as material developers are different to that of the target audience. Three semi-structured interviews with teachers were conducted in an effort to understand cultural determinants that influence decision-making about pedagogy when creating in-house content to motivate undergraduate students on an English language program in the United Arab Emirates.

The results of this study indicated that the participants maintained mainly essentialist perspectives of local cultures and sub-cultures and their thinking in content creation was not all that different to that of commercial publishers.

This study holds implications for awareness-raising and pedagogical training for educators involved in in-house content development.

This case study addresses an area that has been under-researched in the Gulf region.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the effects of early life international exposure on the career capital (CC) of adult third culture kids (ATCKs).

The study adopts a qualitative research design based on 34 semi-structured interviews with ATCKs who have had international exposure in their childhood as members of an expatriate family.

The results show that a globally mobile childhood has extensive long-term impacts on ATCKs' CC in the areas of knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom. Additionally, their early international experience also had several negative impacts across these aspects of CC.

This paper provides a novel understanding of the long-term impacts of early life international exposure on ATCKs' CC, and this paper is the first study to use the CC framework among an ATCK population.