Stranger in a strange land

In my first post I touched briefly (albeit not very coherently) on the the notion of nationality, cultural identity and, I suppose, the idea of diaspora.  What makes it strange for people like me is that Americans think of themselves of the immigrant nation par excellence.  People, according to this narrative, are literally dying to come to the US.  The notion that Americans would choose to live elsewhere, perhaps permanently, does not register as if it’s some sort of fringe activity.  Yet there are millions of us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_diaspora

If you take the lower estimate, that means are more US diaspora than the current population of the Republic of Ireland.  Nevertheless, even if we take the higher estimate of 9 million, that is a small fraction of the current US population. As globalization continues, the phenomena of US diaspora may one day be more than a blip on the US cultural radar.   My point is that having lived quite a bit in countries that have a very large diaspora population, I know what the general consensus tends to be from the folks in the home country:  Yes, they’re like us, but not entirely.  There’s something a bit off about them and, besides, they aren’t true citizens of (fill in the blank) because they haven’t been living here, sharing our experiences.  This is a fairly common sentiment that I’ve seen in many different countries.  The flip side of the coin is the experience of the diaspora – he or she is the perennial outsider.  They may master the language and culture of the country where they live, they are “not from here”.  And they aren’t entirely accepted back home either.   For now, most Americans don’t have an opinion regarding diaspora simply because they’re not that aware of it and don’t know anybody personally living outside the country.

So, I’m not saying my experience is analogous to an economic migrant.  Far from it, most American diaspora live outside the US due to circumstances other than economic.  For me being the outsider is sometimes curious state of being but it never weighs heavily.  At worst, on a rare trip back to the US I feel like a character from the Twilight Zone – somebody who fell asleep in 1997 only to awake in 2017 to a country that is both familiar but at the same time radically changed.