Lifestyles of workers in the expatriation context

Abstract

Purpose: To highlight and analyze lifestyles of expatriate workers. Originality/gap/relevance/implications: Since the expatriation involves processes of deconstructing and reconstructing the self, it is important to recognize lifestyles invented or adapted during an international experience. Key methodological aspects: Exploratory research with qualitative approach. Data collection was carried out through focus group with managers of the same company who shared similar expatriation experiences. The transcribed material was submitted to content analysis. Summary of key results: The ways of moving around the city, the routine and the leisure activities, the sightseeing trips, the expatriation valuation and the abnegation as a way of life were observed according to control-stimulation perception. Such elements highlighted lifestyles based on the former life, in the control, in the abnegation and in the established period of validity. Proved to be consistent with immaterial labor logic that reaches the unprecedented life, requiring intellectual and affective mobilization of individuals to new situations and indicating both intensification of control and submission forms, with so far expected freedom. Key considerations/conclusions: The lifestyles, common to all research participants, were molded, intertwined and intensified in each other. They resulted from the daily shock between the non-normalizing prescriptions and the plurality of possible options lived in expatriation.