Background

India plays an increasingly critical role on the world economic stage. Western companies have been hiring Indian professionals in large numbers for work in their own country or abroad; many people from other parts of the world now work regularly with Indian counterparts. At the same time, a growing cadre of expatriate managers and project leaders is being assigned to India in order to assist in building up operations there.

Understanding the term and its Origin

An expatriate (in abbreviated form expat) is someone temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of their upbringing and/or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin ex (out of) and patria (country), and is sometimes misspelled as ex-patriot or short x-pat, due to its pronunciation.

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The term is often used in the context of Westerners living in non-Western countries, although there are many instances of Westerners living in other Western countries, such as Australians living in the United Kingdom, or Britons living in Spain.

The difference between an expatriate and an immigrant is that immigrants (for the most part) commit themselves to becoming a part of their country of residence, whereas expatriates are usually only temporarily placed in the host country and most of the time plan on returning to their home country, so they never adopt the culture in the host country. While Europeans or North Americans living in the Middle East and Asia may marry local people and have children, most see no advantage in adopting citizenship of their host countries, usually because they consider their stay only temporary. In countries like Saudi Arabia, expatriates are required to live in segregated compounds, meaning that integration into their host country's society is not an option.

Challenges...and Concerns

When you hire an expatriate the challenges are multi-fold. Assigning employees to posts outside their home countries raises both strategic and tactical issues for global firms.

At the strategic level, global firms need to ask:

Are overseas assignments right for our business?

How can we contain or reduce the related costs?

Would an expatriate be a better choice than a local hire?

If assignments are critical to meeting global business demands, how can we facilitate mobility and ensure equitable treatment among similarly situated employees?

Currency and mode of payment for these people.

How to charge income-tax?

How to protect their interests in case of exploitations?

At the tactical level, firms must consider how to select the right people for the assignment, manage performance and communication issues, and ensure that expatriates are successfully repatriated or reassigned when their assignments are done.

More then that, when you hire someone, you are not only hiring his knowledge and expertise but also his culture, social beliefs and values.

Just an example: In my previous two companies we had two and five expatriates respectively. They never use to mingle with others and generally tries to be on their own. Some were also of the opinion as if this is a