The Bursting of My Expat Bubble

Am I a cool-as-f*ck global nomad, or just a snooty, glorified yuppy with no real home?

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Nicole Kidman was recently slammed for breaking quarantine when she traveled to Hong Kong to work on the TV adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel “The Expatriates”. Well, she is playing a Hong Kong expat so naturally she’d get away with things others wouldn’t be allowed to — because expatriates (myself included) are some of the most entitled people I know.

In 2011 my husband’s job took us from Boston to Hong Kong — one of the world’s most cosmopolitan and most expensive cities. As a global mobility analyst, he had traveled and worked in more than 500 cities across the globe and our favorite post-dinner games were “What’s the capital of (insert name of country)?” or “What’s the currency of (insert country)?” Secretly — and sometimes not so secretly — we took pride in the fact that neither of us identified strongly with the countries of our birth ­or the cultures we grew up in — Singapore for me and America for him — and that we saw ourselves as free-floating, transcultural citizens of the world, untethered to any single culture or country.

Earlier this year, my husband got laid off. We decided to move back to the United States where we figured the lower cost of living would allow us to stretch our savings until he found a new job. We picked Portland…