Immigration is considered among the most stressful experiences in the life of an individual with the risk of affecting their mental health status. When leaving their countries, migrants face various forms of losses, be they tangible or immaterial, such as contact with their mother tongue with the consequent risk of language attrition (Grosjean, 1989), their social network, their cultural values, and behavioural codes (Bhugra & Becker, 2005).

The challenges, on the other hand, encountered by long-term expatriates, similar to migrants, when returning to their home countries have been widely investigated (Sussman, 2010). The expatriates’ challenge is represented by the geographical distance and its impact on the perception of their migratory experience face to the types of losses that occur when leaving the home country for a prolonged period of time.

 

The vast majority of expatriates have family members in their home country, and usually, the main driver for leaving the home country is to find better professional development and better opportunities for their children (Casado et al., 2010). Yet, expatriates have to face several challenges in their lives abroad, not unlike migrants. The Ulysses syndrome (the tendency to idealise either the home or the host country), for instance, is experienced by many migrants, not excluding those for whom mobility was a choice, hence the expatriates (Huff-Müller, 2021). First described by the Catalan psychiatrist Achotegui in 2002, it tends to distort the immigrant’s memory of their country of origin, creating a disruption in the cultural values guiding their actions (Ferrarello, 2021). Moreover, in the case of expatriates, whose economic conditions and general life perspectives are favourable, the grief is socially less recognised and accepted, hence accentuating the impact of what Doka (1989) calls “disenfranchised grief”, indicating the specific mourning process that does not deserve any social support, any recognition nor the possibility to express the grief in public. The so-called “disenfranchised grief” (Doka, 1989) indicating the specific mourning process that does not deserve any social support or recognition might be at the basis of a certain reticence to express strong feelings against their mobility experience.

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Extract from the study: "Investigating migratory grief in self-directed academic expatriates" (G. Pandolfelli, P. Marcotti) conducted within the context of my MSc. Psychology (Universit of Essex, UK).