A concentration on the economic, social, and political impact of new arrivals on the United States has obscured understanding of the departure of United States middle-class cohorts abroad. This article claims that United States emigration and expatriation are relevant to understanding the United States nation-state. This human geographical displacement remains understudied by researchers and unnoticed by policymakers. Addressing two research questions—Who are the United States nationals abroad? And how do they experience otherness?—the article offers a roadmap for enhancing research on emigrant populations to guide policymakers on how to better understand the expatriates. First, we overview existing knowledge on this population from several perspectives, and then we provide descriptive and thematic anthropological analyses of a sample of United States nationals in Buenos Aires, Argentina. An explanatory framework interweaving three conceptual frameworks: dark anthropology, searching for elsewhere, and mobility, is suggested to contribute to understanding the social category of expat and further the understanding of the United States middle class abroad to benefit research, policymaking, and civic education.
While analysts and practitioners today recognize that heritage entails processes of both "preservation" and "innovation," most face challenges when it comes to finding methodologies capable of capturing these apparently contradictory and elusive attributes. The problem lies, in part, in reconciling notions of a stable, authorized past, on the one hand, and dynamic constructions of the past, on the other. Erve Chambers addresses this duality by dividing heritage into two types-one, public, and based in "authenticity," the other private and grounded in "significance" (2006:33-35). In the first usage that which is called the "past" serves as a fixed referent that may be valued for its iconic role. In the second usage, heritage is recognized as dynamic and emergent.
In a recent plea for immigration reform, President Obama called for lawmakers to endorse policy that would encourage highly skilled workers to stay in the United States (Yellin 2013). Yet, favorable legal policy is no guarantee that these skilled and highly mobile international professionals would choose to stay. Skilled workers are generally able to move in and out of the broad current of immigration flows, without causing the disruptive ripples that generate nation-state/media attention. In fact, it is often assumed that they integrate seamlessly (Favell, Feldblum, and Smith 2007; Freidenberg 2011). More research is needed to identify this population and to understand their motivations, needs, and experiences. Through an in-depth examination of life courses, the study reported on here seeks to acquire better knowledge of this population in order to determine whether their stays might be permanent or transitory and to inform appropriate policymaking.
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