Why So Many People Move Abroad—And Then Move Back

The difference isn't visas, money, or bureaucracy. It's whether the new place ever becomes home.

There’s a small, but loud movement online of people trying to quantify or qualify why people move abroad then—in relatively short order—move back home. People trying to pinpoint why this happens in an effort—I guess—to help the next round of unserious immigrants—otherwise known as expats.

Quantify it all you want, the answer comes down to life.

Of course, visas, money, and all sorts of objective issues raise their hands and rear their ugly heads to make a move home necessary—or more likely to happen. But, often, it seems that reasons like this are little more than excuses. They’re window dressing to hide what some people seem to view as failure.

Looking at it on the front end, mountains of people said they were thinking or even planning to move when we told our friends and family what we were going to do nearly four years ago. To a person, every single one of them remains in the United States.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this. Which makes it even more curious—why do people, particularly in the United States, feel the need to present themselves on the move abroad bandwagon?

Looking at it on the back end, handfuls of people who make the move and go back did so for no specific reason other than life.

Life happens no matter where you live. When I lose a client or see reduced income in Spain—as I have once or twice during our year-and-a-half here—it’s no different than when it happened in Los Angeles, as early as late 2024, just months before we were set to move.

It all comes back to the words I emphasized: home and expat.

My educated guess—based on my own experience and empirical observations—is that people who treat life happening in a foreign country differently than they would treat life happening where they’re from are:

• Expats effectively passing through a new country, who

• never really considered their new country home.

Where they came from remained their safety net, their nurturing bosom—it never stopped being home.

The longer I live in Spain, the more I think that’s the distinction.

Not between success and failure.

Not even between people who stay and people who leave and the reasons they jot down on the exit survey.

The distinction is whether home changes.

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