Inbound Repatriate Cultural Adjustment

by Robert E. "", President
ExpatRepat Services


It is often helpful to identify and to describe the steps or stages in a total experience. That has been one aspect of the expatriate cultural adjustment process for a long time among persons working with those outbound to an expatriate assignment. Perhaps you have heard some speak of the stages of:

  1. Unconscious Incompetence;

  2. Conscious Incompetence;

  3. Conscious Competence; and,

  4. Unconscious Competence

In working with persons passing through the coming home process identified as repatriation, I have identified four stages experienced typically by those persons. I have described those steps as follows:

  1. Unaware Stranger: Repatriates usually expect to come home to things as they were when they departed on an international assignment. Many things will be the same, but many things will have changed. Being unaware of changes in self and others, the repatriate for a time may be unaware he or she is a stranger at home.

  2. Cognizant Stranger: It usually does not take long for a repatriate to become acutely aware, "I am a stranger in my culture of origin." Candidly, suffers in this stage tend to include most repatriates. It is challenging to realize, "I am home, but I feel closer to people in the host culture and to friends I just left than family I've just rejoined."

  3. Deliberately at Home: Cultural adjustment to one's home culture at re-entry is often more demanding than adjusting to a host culture. At first, progress will be made by a conscious effort "to accept what I find here without approving or disapproving of things I like or dislike." This stage can be painful and take much longer than expected.

  4. Instinctively at Home: Feeling at ease as a repatriate does not occur automatically in the same way that one does not adjust immediately to a new culture in a host country. Adjustment to a host culture and readjustment to the culture of origin both take time and require going through a process of learning how to be able to respond instinctively.

If you have experienced inbound cultural adjustment after an expatriate assignment, your comments on the four steps suggested for the repatriation process would be welcomed. If you have a corporate responsibility for expatriates and have not shared their experience, it is hoped these steps will equip you better for helping meet the needs of those employees when they go through the coming home experience in repatriation

Contact us soon for information or assistance.

Browse more articles on repatriation.