Paul Theroux, celebrated American author and travel writer, makes the claim in a recent guest essay for the NY Times, “Anyone with money can live abroad.” I click on nearly any article concerning expat life, so delighted to see any version of myself represented in the media. And this guy knows what he’s talking about. He’s lived the life; he has the bona fides. But something in that one sentence immediately tripped me up.
The thrust of the piece is that since November’s election in the United States, which will send Donald Trump back to the White House in January 2025, another chorus of voices in America has risen, threatening to leave the country, and Theroux presents an argument detailing how the very same thing that draws so many foreigners TO the United States also draws so many citizens “home” again following a time of living abroad. He focuses on what Henry James described as American society being “loosely hung together”.
Let me get a couple of points out of the way before continuing on to pick this bone. Theroux briefly addresses a few things which really resonate with me. I appreciate him drawing the distinction between “just” living somewhere or really wrestling with the bureaucracies and systems there. I recognize myself in the description of rootlessness, spectatorship, alienness. I also believe he is experienced and smart enough to understand what I’m about to bring up, so I wonder at the lack of balance in the essay.
Now back to the sentence. “Anyone with money can live abroad.” Theroux’s expressed core belief about expatriation makes the decision to live abroad seem like part escapism and part adventurism with a good dose of self-fulfillment seeking. It sounds like a decision rich people take flippantly, on a whim, the adult version of a gap year or a way to live out modern-day Lawrence of Arabia fantasies. While he admits that life in another country can be very difficult, he ultimately concludes that what leads to expat exasperation is not loneliness or discrimination, but the tight strictures of trying to fit our American selves into more rigid societies. Apparently we aren’t built for that. Luckily for the rich, they can just go home. How convenient.
Theroux notes near the end of his piece that many of the millions of people contriving ways to come to America, as he puts it, are among the poorer citizens in their home countries, driven to the United States by the same “looseness” that American expats, according to him, come to appreciate after some time abroad. These are, then, not the same people on a journey of self-discovery.
As I read it, Theroux acknowledges that both the wealthy and the underprivileged experience similar challenges following migration – passing driving tests, navigating culture, etc. He misses the opportunity to point out two important differences. One is that only the rich expat has the option of returning home just because it would be more comfortable. Many of the less wealthy people who leave their home countries are fleeing something – violence, persecution, climate crisis – or looking for better economic opportunities. It would not be more comfortable, if even possible, for them to return home.
The other distinguisher Theroux omits has to do with why so many people want to get into the United States in the first place. He claims it has to do with the looser structure of our society. I interpret that to mean where there is more room for socioeconomic movement, reinvention, risk taking, development, freedom of self. Remember my dissatisfaction with the idea of a flippant decision to emigrate? The poor that Theroux mentions in passing certainly weigh that decision more carefully. While the shiny bauble of a “loose” society may be what attracts both new immigrants and returning citizens, I believe the significance is completely different. For those taking the hard decision to leave everything they have known behind and start over, it represents the American dream and the chance to get ahead. Theroux makes it sound like for repatriates, it’s just more comfortable. What privilege.
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