Australian Expatriates: Who are They?

Abstract

Australia is made up of 20 million people and, interestingly enough, over one million of the total population live overseas. Australians living abroad are known as `expatriates´ and they have a particular profile: highly educated and better skilled than their counterparts at home. Thus, on the one hand, a general division may be established between expatriates and Australians living at home; on the other, a particular division between expatriates themselves, which depends on the individual reasons that push them to leave Australia. At this point, it is important to outline the general reasons that lead expatriates to go overseas. To begin with, in terms of migration, Australia is both historically and contemporarily linked to other countries. Secondly, Australia is geographically isolated and, therefore, far away from the main global markets. Finally, it is quite right to conclude that although the logical assumption of expatriation is distance, expatriates are mentally, and often emotionally, linked to Australia and, therefore, the understanding of their situation is more positive than negative

Keywords

• expatriation
• distance
• history
• culture
• repatriation
• collective consciousness