Customer Reviews

The Adventure of Working Abroad: Hero Tales from the Global Frontier

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thought-provoking treatment of aspects of living and working abroad from a sociological perspective. Very descriptive of styles of expatriate living with a focus on the success of those who treat the experience as an adventure in another culture rather than isolating themselves from the country's culture in an expatriate community. I'd recommend this for anyone evaluating his or her own suitability for living and working abroad.

Osland shines at listing all the facets of an expatriate's life and evaluating the prospects of different personalities to handle extended work stays abroad. Speaking as a frequent ex-pat who did considerable time in the Balkans, I can confirm that she hits plenty of issues and their corresponding anecdotes dead on (i.e., some still bug me in a good way :-)-- successful strategies as well as failures of immersion in the target culture, adjusting on the return home with a more complex self-identity, identifying areas of personal change and growth, to name but a few.

Osland's other great strength lies in her words of caution to corporate HQ's: they should learn to treat their expat employees better, especially on return, as well as figure out better and innovative ways to incorporate their skill sets and changed personalities.

The downsides of the book are at least two: one, the metaphor of the hero myth gets downright tiring in repetition and doesn't really add much. Second, if the introduction and appendix are any indication, that metaphor was used to justify a research project, to "see whether ... [it] was important to expats..." and if it was indeed "a useful metaphor." In a word, fluff. Nobody I know in social sciences designs research and expects it to be taken seriously if its only probative value is to undergird a personal literary whim. Designing operationalizable logic and testing is hard work, after all. What Osland was really after, but doesn't say so, is a description of common characteristics/issues and categories across expats. Her sample of 35 people is too small for statistical use and carries no qualitative logic as an alternative approach for small "n" studies, so her survey conclusions are at best tentative, but nonetheless somewhat interesting.

Still, I should repeat that as a description of the issues that face prospective and current/past expats, it's a useful, crisp, motivating and nostalgic read (my copy was at the library, so I don't know offhand how much it's worth at places other than Amazon). I'd give it 3.5 stars, but that ain't an option, so I'll round it up to 4.