Revisiting expatriate bubbles: strategic engagement and distancing among self-initiated expatriates

Purpose Expatriate literature has long been concerned with expatriate adjustment and the role that expatriate communities, sometimes referred to as “bubbles”, play. While prior research highlights the benefits and drawbacks of such bubbles, much less is known about why expatriates, and especially self-initiated expatriates (SIEs), choose to engage with or distance themselves from them and the factors that shape their decisions. Our paper aims to address this gap. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon 37 semi-structured interviews with SIE engineers from Greece, Italy and Spain in Bristol (UK), this study focuses on SIEs' experiences of moving in and out of nationality-based expatriate bubbles and analyses the reasons that led to such decisions. Findings Our findings show that SIEs' engagement with expatriate bubbles is a strategic and dynamic process shaped by their experiences of inclusion and exclusion in the host country and by their evolving needs at different stages of expatriation. This process is also influenced by expatriates' intersecting identities, including gender, social class, professional identity and parenthood. Originality/value While participation in expatriate bubbles is typically presented in the literature as resulting from either the integration or separation of expatriates from the host country, our paper emphasises the dynamic nature of SIEs' experiences within the bubbles they create. By foregrounding agency, intersecting identities and temporality, the study shows that SIEs experience and navigate nationality-based expatriate communities as dynamic and flexible social resources rather than static or isolating communities.