As COVID wears on, we’re seeing an increase in enquiries from very well-established expat New Zealanders plotting a return home. These people are in secure senior roles or own businesses. Many have spouses and children who are not New Zealand-born. Yet they are making an active choice to repatriate.
I was in a similar situation in 2003 when we made the decision to return from Singapore - it was almost as if there was a tipping point, which came quite suddenly, where home was where we wanted to be.
To be honest this came as something of a surprise. I’d always wanted to live and work overseas, and had happily been an expat for over 10 years..
Interestingly we’re now seeing the same scenario with many of our Kiwi clients planning to return over the next few months.
Reflecting on what they’ve told us, and my own experience, two factors stand out as the drivers of the decision to come back:
Pandemic-induced social isolation is harder when you’re offshore
Like COVID for the current batch of Kiwi repatriates, the Singapore SARS epidemic was a major factor in our return to New Zealand.
Overnight the vibrant city shut down. Schools, social life, travel were all restricted and I was working from home with two small children.
One of the joys of expat life is meeting and socialising with people from all over the world and that stopped.
It was very isolating to realise you were far from home. And if something did go wrong and we ended up in hospital, who could we rely on to help?
Political instability
For us, the Bali bombing was a deal breaker - in New Zealand terms that was like having a terrorist attack on the Coromandel.
Life suddenly felt unsafe and unstable.
Living overseas had never made me nervous before. I’d not been put off by riots during my time in India, or suffering a tropical illness, but this was different.
Maybe it was the fact I now had two children?
This is very much what we hear from Kiwis leaving particularly the US, and also the UK. The idea of New Zealand as a safe haven.
What next?
Our current Kiwi expat brain gain is at the early stages of settling into New Zealand. With my personal move now some years distant, I wanted to share some reflections on the consequences of making that gut decision to relocate back.
With the benefit of hindsight, our move back to New Zealand was a bit of a gamble - and I’m not a big risk taker!
Neither my husband or I had secured jobs before arriving. I was 7 months pregnant. We didn’t own a home here anymore. And we were completely out of touch with family life/schooling/healthcare as our children had been born and raised offshore.
The most valuable thing I did both before returning, and once I got back, was reconnecting with old friends and colleagues.
That’s how I got work, through old Uni mates. It would have been very difficult otherwise as I’d had a career shift from the public to the private sector while living overseas so lacked a local professional network in my new field.
One mistake we did make was assuming that our Plan A of buying a house in Auckland and settling down there would be the end of our homecoming story. Within a year we were onto Plan B, buying a business and then needing to relocate domestically.
The learning here is to remain flexible, so you can be open to opportunities. That capacity to seize the day is a feature of expat life, and what attracts many of us to it. Coming home doesn’t necessarily mean the end of that mindset and it makes sense to set your life up accordingly.
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Bridget is a New Zealander who has lived and worked as a diplomat in Singapore and India. After experiencing all facets of the relocation experience, she founded Mobile to work with private individuals moving to NZ and leading local and international businesses bringing in offshore talent. bridget@mobile-relocation.com
Amanda is a former US immigration attorney who moved to NZ with her Kiwi partner and three children during COVID. She enjoys making the journey easier for those following a similar path; helping explain the benefits of working with Mobile and providing the perspective of someone who’s recently been there. amanda@mobile-relocation.com
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