It's all in the past: how do colonial legacies between host and home countries affect the expatriate experience?

Abstract

PurposeWithin the expatriation subset of the wider IB literature, the focus of research has been on contemporary contextual factors. The purpose of this paper is to link the present to the past by investigating how the individual expatriate experience may be affected by a colonial legacy between host and home countries.Design/methodology/approachGiven the exploratory nature of this study, a qualitative interview-based approach eliciting thick, detailed descriptions of the practical experiences of seven Japanese expatriate managers working in Malaysia was adopted. These were supplemented by additional interviews with three host-country nationals who work alongside some of the expatriates. The data were analysed through a two-stage coding process.FindingsThe expatriate respondents were largely unanimous in their view that the colonial past between the two countries had no negative impact on their experiences in Malaysia, and the Malaysian interviewees corroborated this. On the contrary, the majority of the expatriates actually spoke positively about their experiences. This was especially true for expatriates in both the tourism and education/research field whose work was linked in some way to the period of Japanese occupation.Research limitations/implicationsThe small, single-context nature of the investigation limits generalisation. There are also many particularities in this study (the nature of Japanese-Malaysian postcolonial relations, cultural values of the Malaysians and Japanese, and so on) that are perhaps not easily relatable to other contexts. Having said this, qualitative research is not always geared towards generalisability but rather towards contextual intricacies and nuances.Originality/valueWhile most of the extant literature on expatriation has examined largely contemporary factors, this paper explores the impact of more historical events on the expatriate experience. Although such events may seem distant from an expatriate's current activities, this study suggests that in certain circumstances, they may have a lingering effect.