In recent discussion with Stanley Frielick
http://www.flexilearn.com/, he suggests relocation and migration could be seen as being part of an evolutionary process, essentially fulfilling a need (a basic desire?)to ensure the progression of culture and knowledge.
Certainly the international business world sees value in professional international transfers. Many large companies offer corporate level schemes whereby executives are given the opportunity to live and work for an overseas branch of their organisation for a limited time (eg. 2 years).
One major, overt aim of such schemes is creating opportunities for shared knowledge and expertise within global organisations. Secondary aims include the advancing of global knowledge base of the organisation, as well as with the particular individual. Motivating factors for employees may include moving to higher ranked positions, ex-patriate benefits and perks and the chance to live and work an experience another country and culture.
But on a societal level, there is also an ongoing extra-curricula sharing and exchange of cultural knowledge and awareness, throughout the entire transfer period. The transferee, and often the accompanying family group are faced with making major and rapid changes as they settle into their new country; adjusting to differences in both the corporate and general lifestyle, values and physical environments.
One of the first adjustments, by necessity, is the home environment. A temporary 'home' must be found to replace the more permanent one (in the home country). And the requirements for this more temporal dwelling are subject to an entirely new set of criteria.
This is a focal point of my interest in studying relocating persons- how they choose and create their new homes and how their criteria, judgements, choices and success are influenced by the nature of their temporary relocation.
Through my own past work with relocating personnel on internationl transfers, I observed some positive and negative influences (as perceived by the transferees themselves) that people experience in setting up temporary 'home-base' in NZ.
One positive aspect of having a finite period seemed to be that transferees perceived a degree of free to experiment with a new (maybe long-held desire?) an entirely new and different lifestyle than they would otherwise be comfortable with.
In some instances they made choices in direct contrast to their permanent physical home, such as city dwellers from large urban areas like London or Paris might choose to live right on the beach- something that would not only be impossible financially back home, but impractical due to eg. the distance ratio of coast to work!
One of the perks of being an ex-pat on inernational transfer is often a reasonable- high level of financial support eg. a housing budget for fully funded company rent, which forms an integral part of the criteria for choosing a new type of 'home'.
In advising transferees about how to choose the best, most suitable type of accommodation for their temporary relocation to NZ, Geraldine Speed director of Relocations International Ltd
http://www.relocate.co.nz/, suggests they consider their move as an opportunity to experience the best they possibly can of all the wonderful benefits a NZ lifestyle has to offer.
Her trained consultants discuss with transferees the differences between the type of permanent dwelling they have left behind and the practical, logistical and social criteria coming into play for their family situation in NZ. They focus not only on the necessary practicalilites of choosing a home (such as nearness to suitable schools), but also on how well their new home base can best benefit them in making the the most of their short time in NZ.
A Thai couple in their 30's, transferring to Auckland from Bangkok, for example, chose the beachside suburb of Mission Bay as the most postitively different environment in which to make their temporary home. They loved the extreme contrast offered by a spacious brick townhouse, compared to their own Bangkok city apartment. Here they could live only metres from the coast, rather than a huge inland city... They felt they were being given the chance to live in 'paradise.'
I wonder if the modern corporate world now places more positive value on aspects of the nomadic lifestyle? Maybe as long as it's strictly regulated and nomads are confined by finite time zones...
A short stint as a nomad could be seen as greatly beneficial to both personal and public spheres of knowledge within a corporate environment.
Culture transfers itself in sometimes unseen, yet vital manner through contact with the 'other', much as pollen catches on passing skin, clothing, hair as we move through the bushes... an unnoticed, yet integral part of the evolutionary process of furthering our development.
People grow, change and evolve through contact with others, and foreign assignments offer limitless opportunities for both deliberate and serendipitous 'cultural transfer'.
In many countries of Europe and the UK, where the nomadic populations such as gypsies have long existed, they have also long been denigrated as basically unstable and therefore suspect.
Bruce Chatwin,
The Songlines (1987) explores the mysteries and motivations behind nomadic societies, and comments that although authorities such as psychiatrists, who
...are forever assuring us that the wandering life is an aberrant form of behaviour; a neurosis; a form of unfulfilled secual longing; a sickness which, in the interests of civilisation, must be suppressed......Yet, in the east they still preserve the once universal concept: that wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.Chatwin goes on to quote Baudeliare (from 'Any Where Out of This World') who expresses a more introverted take on this strange, human desire to be constantly on the move ...
I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul. In a recent Sunday Star Times column
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4340136a20517.htmlPaul Little described the contrasting joys of his chosen caravan park in a remote coastal location, as an experience of the real NZ holiday lifestyle, where the priorities of 'permanent' life are turned upside down, albeit temporarily:
I like that it does not have a games room, good TV reception, trampolines, mini golf nor a swimming pool and it does have respect for everyone who turns up there.I'm thinking that the choosing of holiday accomodation, which brings its own set of alternative priorities and criteria for a temporary 'home away from home', is not dissimilar to those applied to transferees, relocating to other countries to enjoy the benefits of a temporary, drastically contrasted living experience.
Paul Little does point out one rather more frustrating aspect of his temporary caravan home:
If you want to open the fridge you have to make the dog lie down.
