Expat bars and why we love to hate them
When I grew up in Orange County, California there was a small windowless bar near my high school where Mexicans were the main clientele. Only recently did it occur to me that it was an “expat bar,” because we normally use that term to describe a place where better-off foreign residents congregate in so-called ‘developing’ countries.
I suppose there must be expat bars in London and Paris where Polish or African people go and they really all serve the same purpose regardless of economic status.
We all go through a long phase in our lives that sometimes last into our twenties where we are very concerned over how we are perceived by various people and cliques around us. The usually-funny blog called Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like (styled after Stuff White People Like) is all about how expat aid workers in developing countries spend much of their time posturing to each other and people back home.
A recent post about how “disparaging the expat bar” is something expat aid workers like is a good example of the love/hate relationship many of us have with these sorts of things, whether we are willing to admit it or not.
Expat aid workers are not typical expats
One thing I find interesting about the blog is the way the author portrays these EAWs as young people trying to score credibility points for a short time before they move back home for good. It’s a very different outlook than permanent or economic expats who aren’t living abroad to build a CV or look cool back home.
Nevertheless, many topics resonate almost as well with any expat. A previous post about having mixed feelings regarding the nearest large city (where familiar food and products are available) is something I’ve heard many permanent expats discuss as well.
Enthusiasm for the expat bar can come across as weakness
While aid workers and permanent expats are very different in many ways, it’s still true that any expat who seems to have a permanent seat at the expat bar can be labeled as someone who is otherwise unhappy in their new country. If you move to Mexico or Thailand and spend most of your free time in the only spot where English and foreigners dominate, your friends are going to wonder why you left home in the first place.
Even those of us beyond our twenties have to think twice about spending too much time in the only little “comfort zone” in our new city. Maybe we don’t even care what our expat (or local) friends think, but you do have to wonder if there are more interesting (if less comfortable) places to go.
A complete dependence on the expat social scene is a signal that you aren’t assimilating well at all. This might be different in a place like Dubai where there really is no truly local scene that would welcome you, but even there you can find different groups of expats to hang around so escaping your bubble can be fruitful and rewarding if you are open to it.
The familiarity of an expat bar or the general expat scene is welcoming and hard to get beyond, but those of us who don’t manage to do it are likely worse off for it.