Self‐initiated academic expatriates: Inherent demographics and reasons to expatriate

Abstract Research on expatriate employees has to date focused mainly on organizational expatriates, so‐called because they have been assigned by a parent company to a host country. Relatively little research has been conducted on self‐initiated expatriate (SIE) employees. Hence, not enough is known about this type of expatriate. This paper examines the inherent demographics of SIEs. Data were collected from 428 expatriate academics from 60 countries, employed in 35 universities in five northern European countries. Results provided support for half of the propositions predicting that SIEs' reasons to expatriate differ according to age and gender. Implications of the findings are discussed.