A bubble in the making: symbolic boundaries in a Finnish expatriate community

Abstract

PurposeWhile 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.Design/methodology/approachAs 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.FindingsThe 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.Originality/valueThere 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.

Vulnerability in the Global Tropics? An Ethnography of the Experiences of International Managers in Venezuela and Mexico

“…The work of Lee (2013) on the case of leadership power recognition among the management in a French multinational corporation located in Singapore, shows that local and foreign managers negotiate 'assertiveness' when leading depending on the circumstances and organisational changes. When analysing a Finnish community of expatriates living in Laos, Peltonen and Huhtinen (2023) found that symbolic boundaries separating local and foreign managers are not rigid but permanently negotiated.…”