Where is Home?
Exploring what it means to be an overseas American
I have been thinking a lot about diasporas lately.
What it means to live long term in a society outside the one you were raised in.
Diaspora
Diaspora refers to a large group of people who share a cultural and regional origin but are living away from their traditional homeland. Diasporas come about through immigration and forced movements of people.
We’ve only lived in Berlin two years, so I don’t consider us part of an American diaspora. I feel like that comes later - when you have been a part of an expatriate community for a generation or more.
But it has been on my mind as we prepare to vote absentee in this particularly fraught U.S. presidential election.
What does it mean to be an American who doesn’t live in America?
U.S. law requires me to pay income taxes as long as I remain a citizen. It allows me to vote in all federal and some state elections. But what role should overseas Americans have in shaping the public life and laws of a country they no longer live in and may have no plans to return to?
It’s something I think about often.
When most Americans think of diaspora communities, they think of distinct groups of people who have come to the United States to live permanently. The U.S. is overwhelmingly a country of immigrants, with fewer than two percent of the population having any verifiable Native American ancestry.
Our modern nation is comprised of a series of successive communities of immigrants who moved there - multiple diasporas. The U.S. remains a country that sees far more immigration than emigration - more people moving in each year than moving away.
But there is also a U.S. American diaspora - groups of citizens who live, either permanently or for many years - outside the country.
“Immigration, settlement, and assimilation are central themes in the American narrative,” writes Sheila Croucher, a professor of American Studies at Miami University, in her 2012 journal article, Americans Abroad: A Global Diaspora?. “But equally prevalent in the country’s history, albeit less celebrated, are [themes of] emigration, mobility, and the maintenance of transnational ties.”
When George Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, among those celebrating were a “colony” of Americans living in France, she notes. And the “trend of Americans emigrating for a mix of political, cultural, and, increasingly, economic reasons” continued through different periods in U.S. history up to the present day.
“Founding fathers” like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson resided for extended periods in Europe to pursue diplomatic aims. Both men sought to promote the interests of their country and their compatriots abroad—regularly hosting Americans living in Europe for dinners and Fourth of July celebrations and, in Franklin’s case, printing a daily newspaper in French and English for the benefit of Americans living in Paris.
A hundred years later, at the end of the American Civil War, thousands of Confederates left the US—the largest numbers settling in Mexico and Brazil. These migrants continued (in some cases for generations) to identify with the culture, history, and language of the Southern United States. In the Brazilian town of Americana, residents with surnames such as Butler, Jackson, and Stonewall still “make pecan pies, hold debutante balls, and sing Southern hymns in their Protestant church.”
…
Authors, artists, and musicians have also figured prominently in the population of Americans abroad. Painter Mary Cassatt left Philadelphia to settle in Paris in the early 1870s and rarely returned to the US. Yet she was known to regularly remind her French friends, “I am an American—definitely and frankly an American.”
Perhaps most well known are Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and other members of the “Lost Generation” who lived in Europe after World War I. Stein’s famous claim that “America is my country and Paris is my hometown” offers an early illustration of American transnational belonging.”
—Croucher, Sheila. “Americans Abroad: A Global Diaspora?” Journal of Transnational American Studies. 2012:4:2.
Immigrant community versus the ‘expat bubble’
Reading Croucher’s descriptions, it’s hard not to think of stereotypical American ‘expat’ (scare quotes intended) – the one who doesn’t learn the local language, only socializes with other Americans, who, basically, wants to create little ‘Americas’ wherever they are, while reaping the benefits of the local economy and culture.
But that’s what a lot of immigrant communities do.
Here in Berlin - where almost a quarter of the population are not German citizens - there are churches, synagogues, temples and mosques, as well as cultural associations and community groups that cater to immigrants from different countries.
I don’t think anyone thinks the vendors at ThaiPark or customers perusing the books at African Union are are holed up in an “expat bubble,” for instance. But the United States’ global dominance - politically, militarily, and economically - sets the American diaspora apart from those of other countries.
In Germany, the United States and its allies in World War II occupied and governed West Berlin and West Germany for seven years following the end of the Second World War. The U.S. continues to maintain a military presence here.
To the rest of the world, American expatriates will always carry the whiff of U.S. hegemony. You’ll often hear other Americans talk about the need to get out of their “expat bubble” or advising others to leave theirs. That we even think we could take it or leave it is evidence of our privilege.
But the longer I am here, the more I think it is important to also maintain social ties with other Americans. That will do the most to help combat the isolation that many immigrants feel when they move here.
If you have children, they will need to be around other “people like them” even as they make friends from the local culture and other cultures.
No matter how many years I live here, or how fluent I become, even if we become citizens, I’m never going to be seen by Germans as ‘German.’ And I will always feel American, think like an American and care about America - even as I try to make a life, a home and a future in Germany.
A ‘hybrid identity’
Other communities have learned to embrace the duality of living outside their home country.
The largest ethnic minority group in Berlin–as well as Germany as a whole–are people of Turkish ancestry, many of them descendants of the hundreds of thousands of “guest workers” recruited to help rebuild West Germany after the end of the Second World War.
Although many returned to Turkey after their contracts ended, thousands stayed and had families here. Now, many in the Turkish diaspora feel strong ties to both places.
In June, when Germany hosted the Euro 2024 soccer championship, its national team was captained by, Ilkay Gündogan, a player of Turkish ancestry. Conversely, several members of the Turkish national team were born in Germany and even continue to play for German soccer clubs, but chose to represent Turkey on its national team.
“For us, for people with a migration background in the third or the fourth generation by now, it’s a European Championship in our own country too, after all,” Osman Eroglu, a coach with Türkgücü Ratingen, a community soccer club located on the outskirts of Düsseldorf, told the Associated Press. “It’s double the joy because Turkey is represented this year, too, so there are two teams straight away that you can support and cross your fingers for.”
“Having two hearts in one chest is not unusual for migrants anywhere in the world,” Aladin El-Mafaalani, a professor of the sociology of migration and education at the Technical University of Dortmund, told the New York Times. “One thing that connects the different generations of Turkish immigrants is Turkish soccer: club soccer, but of course also the national team,” he said. “It is part of your identity, your social bond. Most people of Turkish origin tend to support Turkey, but that does not mean they are against Germany.”
Diaspora outreach
The Turkish government encourages close ties between its diaspora and the population at home. Since 2014, Turks living abroad have been able to vote in Turkish elections - and many political candidates actively campaign in these diaspora communities. (This is not without controversy in many of the European countries with large Turkish communities, due to conflicts with the current Turkish administration.)
Diaspora communities can be beneficial in many ways to the sending countries, though emigration is often characterized negatively by some, writes Amanda Klewkowski von Koppenfels, a scholar with the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).
“The [sending countries’] focus on the diaspora often emerges only when there is a significant difference in economic strength between sending and receiving countries or when a potential brain drain is detected, as in the case of New Zealand’s recent outreach efforts,” she notes. “At the same time, however, there is a growing recognition of the soft power potential of diaspora members as cultural bridge builders. This recognition is not yet as widespread as it could be: even as the U.S. government focuses its diaspora policy on engagement with immigrants and their offspring resident within the United States, it has paid little heed to its own diaspora of—by its own accounting—more than seven million overseas U.S. citizens.”
A 2014 MPI survey of 1,400 U.S. citizens and 140 former citizens living abroad found that many remained very engaged with their home country: 68 percent of the citizens reported voting in the 2012 presidential election and 60 percent reported visiting the U.S. within the previous two years.
Many indicated they felt they served as “informal ambassadors” for American interests in their host countries.
“I think we Americans living abroad play a much more important role in building cultural bridges than we are given credit for,” one respondent said. “All due respect to diplomats, but I have been informally representing my country abroad for almost 20 years.”
There is a growing recognition of the soft power potential of diaspora members as cultural bridge builders.
Blending in
With all of this in mind, I think that I am going to adopt a new approach from now on–unapologetically staying connected to and involved in what is happening in the United States, honoring my American heritage, while also working to integrate into German society.
When we lived in the U.S., our next-door neighbors for many years were Vietnamese immigrants who became citizens. They enthusiastically celebrated American traditions and holidays, while also continuing to celebrate Vietnamese holidays and cultural traditions.
So, while I am embracing Martinstag, Erste Mai/Tag der Arbeit, Weihnachten and, then, der Zweite Weihnachtstag, I’ll also get together with American friends for the Fourth of July.
It’s too soon to say whether our kids will want to remain outside the United States and remain part of the American diaspora or return to our home country.
But I hope we can give them the understanding that they can be involved, informed and vital participants in the communities where they live and the one they are from.
Stay Connected
If you’re also an American living abroad, there are several private organizations with long histories, working to engage and connect U.S. citizens living outside the country.
In addition to each of the 50 states, the American Legion maintains departments in France, Mexico, and the Philippines as well as smaller posts in 11 other countries.
The Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO), which is headquartered in Paris, was founded in 1973 as a “nonpartisan service organization representing the interests of more than 6.32 million U.S. citizens living and working abroad.”
The Federation of American Women's Clubs (FAWCO) is an international network of independent volunteer clubs and associations comprising 58 member Clubs in 29 countries worldwide working to “improve the lives of women and girls worldwide, especially in the areas of human rights, health, education and the environment; [and] advocate for the rights of US citizens overseas.”
A Quick Note
This week’s issue was delayed due to technical issues of my own making. To improve the newsletter’s discoverability on search engines + make the homepage more user-friendly, I decided to go back to using my blog’s original domain - www.diealtefrau.com - but host it on Substack. I hope it will make it easier to find and access older articles you might be interested in. I hope all the changes will play nicely with everyone’s email programs, and we won’t get sent to the spam folder. It would help if you whitelist this email and the domain diealtefrau.com, if whatever email, feed reader, or web client you use.
Of course, you can still easily read and share in the Substack app.
