Expatriation and careers: perspectives of expatriates and spouses

The relationship between foreign assignment and career development has been stated to be unclear, and further research has been called for with regard to career challenges and career management programmes of expatriates. Furthermore, today an extensive proportion of marriages are dual‐career partnerships with both partners employed, and thus a need to take this into account has been stressed in expatriate literature. The present study covers these issues based on the experiences of about 300 Finnish expatriates. Career arrangements after repatriation was a very prominent concern among expatriates. On the other hand, the results also indicate that career‐related support practices were not very common in this sample, but there was clear inconsistency between perceived necessity and actual use of these programmes. Dual‐career couples’ career considerations played a central role as in the case of expatriates. However, dual‐career support was not commonly available although it was again seen as necessary.