An Expat Manifesto: 10 Rules to Respect Your New Country

Being an expat means belonging to a very privileged class in the world. Here comes a basic ethical guide for the foreigner worker in the 21st century.

The Expat life, in one of its most iconic (non-)places.

Expat from all over the world, unite: under an umbrella of common (civic) sense and good education. Too often, Western leaders and entrepreneurs tend to assume a neo-colonial posture when they are in a country where they have been sent to (or have chosen to) work. The further the destination country — geographically but above all culturally, from that of origin — the higher the risk.

There are obviously countries that are naturally more keen to this game: places in which a European or an American feels — unjustifiably, and often precisely out of ignorance — a sense of cultural and sometimes even anthropological superiority that often leads to some sort of racism. To avoid these hateful phenomena, here is a list of tricks to develop sensitivities that should be natural, but rarely are.

1.Treat all colleagues equally: it should come without saying, but experience shows that there is a need to repeat it. The other expats are not “more colleagues than others”, and the teams that really work are the truly multicultural ones, which embrace the contribution of local members and other nationalities, not necessarily only from G7 countries. Say “No” to this…