Friendship Formations of Expatriates in Asia

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The hyper competitive global arena of the twenty-first century requires companies to look for business opportunities beyond their national boarders. With the increased overseas operations there is also a rise in the number of personnel sent for overseas assignments. The increasing number of highly qualified European expatriates in Asian cities is also a manifestation of such activities. However, companies operating abroad report that their global strategy is undermined by expatriates’ failure. These high failure rates, measured by early returns are often connected with the private life of expatriates - the ineffective management of intercultural relations - as experts in this area call it. Despite the critical role of the expatriates’ private life on the success of their overseas assignments, so far, the subject matter has not received enough attention from social scientists. Therefore, this study attempts to contribute towards bridging the gap by focusing on one part of the expatriates’ private life, which is the ‘friendship’ aspect. The study mainly intends to discuss the friendship formations of European expatriates based in India and China. In particular, this qualitative study highlights the role of various cultural aspects and socio-economic factors on intercultural friendship formations. The interviews conducted with a sample of European expatriates working in New Delhi and Shanghai demonstrated that European expatriates mainly tend to develop friendships among each other. Further, the results showed that different cultural, social and economic aspects and various external conditions (like the existence of expatriate communities and the living conditions of expatriates) are in many cases major impediments in the development of closer relationships like friendships between European expatriates and host nationals. Introduction: Increasing interconnectedness, as one aspect of globalisation has led to a greater variety of possible social relationships. Out of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the move of production from Western countries to developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa new forms of labour migration have developed. Nowadays, labour migration is not limited to workers or unemployed individuals from developing countries or countries in transition. Rather, another group of migrants has become more prominent – the expatriates. The group includes highly qualified scientists, managers, [...]