Over 18 years. That’s how long I’ve called Barcelona home—longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my adult life. For someone whose career spanned countries like Germany, France, Singapore and Australia, this wasn’t the script I imagined. Like many globally mobile professionals, I spent my early career chasing the next opportunity, the next horizon. Each move promised new challenges, cultural immersion, and professional growth. And they delivered.
But something changed when I arrived in Barcelona. What began as another chapter in a nomadic career gradually became something more: a place to put down roots. Our kids grew up here, building friendships that span years rather than months. My professional network deepened rather than broadened. I learned not just to navigate Spanish and Catalan culture, but slowly to become embedded in it. And in the process, I discovered something the global mobility literature rarely celebrates: the profound professional value of staying put.
The Mobility Orthodoxy
For decades, international assignments have been framed as structured, time-bound career accelerators: one to five years abroad, followed by a return home and a well-earned promotion. This model has become so deeply embedded in our thinking about global careers that we treat it as inevitable rather than as one possibility among many.
The academic literature and corporate practice have reinforced this assumption. We’ve built entire disciplines around expatriate adjustment, repatriation challenges, and the skills gained from serial international assignments. The “global nomadic elite”—professionals who seamlessly transition from one posting to the next—are held up as the gold standard of global talent.
Yet this narrative overlooks a growing reality: more and more professionals don’t return home at all. After a decade abroad, repatriation becomes increasingly rare. Some stay indefinitely in their host country. Others move from place to place, crafting careers that are fundamentally international. In recent research my colleagues Stefan Jooss, Margaret Shaffer, Jan Selmer, and I conducted, we identified this group as “long-term expatriates”—individuals who spend extended periods abroad, whether by design or drift.
Four Paths to Staying
Not all long-term expatriates follow the same trajectory. Our research revealed four distinct types, each with different motivations and implications:
Planted Pioneers move abroad independently and choose to stay indefinitely. They resemble skilled migrants more than traditional expatriates, building careers locally rather than through corporate structures. These are the professionals who arrive in a city, fall in love with it, and decide to make it work—securing local roles, navigating visa complexities on their own, and embedding themselves deeply in the host country.
Stationed Settlers begin on formal corporate assignments but decide not to return when they end. This was my close to my path. What started as a planned international posting evolved into something permanent. Family ties often play a crucial role here—a partner’s career, children’s schooling, or simply a profound sense of belonging that makes “home” feel like the foreign place.
Free Floaters represent the lifestyle-driven segment. They move between countries by choice, assembling careers across borders. This group includes digital nomads, remote professionals, and independent contractors who prioritize autonomy and variety over stability and structure.
Jetstream Leaders are typically senior executives rotating through successive international postings. They provide continuity across regions, acting as organizational glue in complex global structures. Unlike other long-term expatriates, their extended international tenure is often planned and supported by their organizations.
Understanding these different paths matters because each brings different value and faces different challenges. A one-size-fits-all approach to global mobility misses these crucial distinctions.
The Case for Strategic Stability
My own eighteen years in Barcelona have taught me that staying put offers distinct advantages that constant mobility cannot replicate.
Deep Local Expertise: There’s a difference between understanding a place and being embedded in it. After nearly two decades, I don’t just comprehend the Spanish business environment—I’d like to believe that I am woven into it. I know not just the formal structures but the informal networks, not just the official rules but the unwritten norms. This kind of contextual intelligence takes years to develop and becomes exponentially more valuable over time. In an era of distributed global teams and virtual collaboration, having genuine local expertise has become increasingly rare and therefore increasingly valuable.
Compound Network Effects: Professional networks don’t grow linearly with time; they compound. The colleague I met in year three introduced me to someone in year seven who became crucial to a project in year twelve. Weak ties strengthen. Trust accumulates. Reputation solidifies. These deep, long-term relationships offer advantages that broad but shallow networks cannot match—particularly when tackling complex problems requiring sustained collaboration.
Personal Integration and Wellbeing: Watching our children’s friendships mature rather than fracture with each move, developing genuine community ties—these aren’t merely personal benefits. They translate into professional advantages: less stress, more focus, greater resilience during challenging periods. The adjustment fatigue that comes from serial mobility is real and cumulative. Stability eliminates it.
The Double-Edged Nature of Staying
Long-term expatriates bring powerful advantages to organizations, but these benefits can be undermined by a series of challenges—many of which stem from organizational blind spots rather than the experience itself.
From our research, we found that long-term expatriates often face ambiguous career paths, especially when return options are unclear or unsupported. Some grapple with legal and visa uncertainties, particularly those who move independently. Family pressures can intensify over time, especially when partners struggle to find fulfilling work or children face repeated transitions.
Perhaps most significantly, many long-term expatriates report a sense of organizational invisibility. As years pass abroad, they become peripheral to decision-making at headquarters and are overlooked in succession planning. The very expertise they’ve developed—deep local knowledge, strong regional networks—can inadvertently marginalize them in corporate structures oriented toward headquarters.
But here’s the crucial insight: these challenges aren’t inherent to long-term expatriation. They stem from how organizations manage (or fail to manage) these careers. Intentionality matters on both sides. Individuals who regularly reflect on their goals, cultivate support networks, and communicate openly with employers navigate these waters more successfully. Organizations that treat long-term expatriates as strategic assets rather than logistical complications are far more likely to retain them and benefit from their expertise.
When Staying Becomes a Skill
The counterintuitive insight is this: in a world that celebrates mobility, the ability to choose strategic stability may be the rarer and more valuable skill. It requires:
Active Choice Over Passive Drift: Distinguishing between staying because you’re stuck and staying because it serves your long-term goals. Many professionals drift into extended stays without clear direction. Turning staying into a strategic advantage requires conscious decision-making about why you’re staying and what you’re building.
Continuous Renewal: Preventing the stagnation that can come with long tenure. I’ve had to consciously seek out new challenges, new collaborations, new learning opportunities—all while remaining in one location. This means saying yes to projects that push boundaries, cultivating relationships with new colleagues, and resisting the comfort of established routines.
Comfort with Depth Over Breadth: Resisting the fear of missing out that comes from watching others move to exciting new places. Recognizing that depth of expertise and relationship can be as valuable as breadth of experience—and in some contexts, more so.
Strategic Visibility: Actively maintaining connections with headquarters and ensuring your work remains visible. This doesn’t happen automatically, especially when you’re operating in a different time zone and aren’t present for informal corridor conversations.
What Organizations Can Do
Supporting long-term expatriates requires a mindset shift. From our research, several practices stand out:
Open conversations about long-term possibilities. Rather than assuming every assignment ends with repatriation, managers should explore options proactively when employees express interest in staying abroad or moving to another location.
Maintain strategic connections. Long-term expatriates need regular contact with headquarters, inclusion in strategic discussions, and consideration for leadership roles and development opportunities. Organizations that let these professionals drift to the periphery waste valuable global talent.
Support family integration. Many decisions about staying, returning, or moving again hinge on family adaptation. Organizations that help partners navigate local labor markets or assist with children’s schooling signal genuine care for employee wellbeing.
Address financial and legal complexities. Tax implications, pension gaps, and visa transitions can be overwhelming. When organizations provide support structures for these issues, they reduce uncertainty and build trust.
Beyond Either/Or
To be clear, I’m not arguing against mobility. International experience remains valuable—often essential—for developing global professionals and leaders. My own earlier moves were crucial to my development and brought me to Barcelona in the first place.
Rather, I’m suggesting we need a more nuanced conversation about the relationship between mobility and career success. The question shouldn’t be “Should I stay or should I go?” but rather “What does this decision serve?” Sometimes the answer is movement. Sometimes it’s staying. And sometimes—perhaps more often than we acknowledge—the most strategic choice is to plant roots and go deep.
After eighteen years in Barcelona, I can say with certainty: learning to stay has been as valuable a global mobility skill as learning to go ever was. The challenge for both individuals and organizations is recognizing when each choice makes sense, and supporting both paths with equal intentionality.