Business Visa: Paid Tourists
This section looks at those that get paid while traveling. It explores issues such as work visas, seasonal jobs, brain drain, and the motives for some recent university graduates to become English teachers in Asia.
Global tourism is often understood as brief interactions. The majority of tourism remains short term and seldom lasts more than a few weeks. However, many travelers can work overseas for years and form expatriate communities that fluctuate as employees come and go. This section focuses on individuals who have taken tourism one step further by obtaining a work visa. Anyone can take a vacation but it takes great skill, patience, and endurance to actually live a few years overseas. It is a test of one’s strength to not just travel but to thoroughly emerge oneself into a different culture, without being capable of returning home when desired. Still, at any given moment millions of people are willing to leap at the opportunity.
Across the world there is an inter-flow of migrating workers. Some can work in resorts that directly cater to the tourism industry. For example, I have previously been employed along with dozens of seasonal international laborers in the Grand Teton National Park and Mount Rainier in the United States. With these jobs I meet with tourists and foreign workers at a time before I could even imagine traveling overseas. I could afford to tour the United States in this way. I traveled as summer help in national parks while other workers preferred to labor as winter help at ski resorts, and others combined the two in a migrating loop. A few of my friends also found jobs in theme parks, cowboy camps, and summer resorts for children.
In recollection, this employment was like a huge, non-stop, party: hike in the day, work in the evening, and camp during weekends. At night it was common to drink alcohol and to imbibe in other activities with your colleagues. At times it was hard to distinguish who was on vacation, the employees or the tourists. Unlike the foreign workers, my domestic travel was simple and did not require a visa. Nonetheless, it was my precursor to tourism related employment. National parks, ski resorts, theme parks, and summer camps are big business in tourism and should never be underestimated.
More important to my research, however, is employment that demands that one obtain a work visa and to migrate overseas for a year or longer. Many Asian professionals come to the United States with employment in mind. These trained professionals gravitate to higher paid jobs in North America causing “brain drain” – the loss of a developing country’s much needed labor force of doctors, professors, computer programmers, engineers, and other technicians. Meanwhile, western expatriates flow in and out of foreign nations for employment and business. Westerners fly overseas to seal a quick business deal, train locals to operate new technology, provide disaster relief, or contribute to development projects. Related are the thousands of individuals who work overseas in the military or for volunteer groups. Although the motive might be economic, they are all tourists if they find spare time. All can be spotted in the global village. Tourists interact with expatriates, soldiers on leave, Peace Corp volunteers, and Red Cross staff in a global stew.
The multi-national corporations (MNC) are perhaps the most obvious of global businesses. Conglomerates of factories, stockholders, and human capital have a grip firmly on the earth. MNCs feed off of cheap labor and foreign natural resources. Although the multi-national corporation clearly reflects globalization, it is not a human entity – despite the generous tax breaks that governments give them. Therefore, this book declines to discuss these corporations in the context of tourism. I do, however, acknowledge that many of those who labor for these money-factories are westerners with work permits that travel whenever time allows. The various types of business related tourism is too large to discuss in full. Therefore, I focus primarily on English teachers. It would be worthwhile to discuss the role of the military, independent businesspersons, foreign engineers, journalists, and computer programmers. These are important occupations because they contribute to globalization and they make an unmistakable presence in Asia. However, I chose to limit my discussion to that which I have experienced most directly: tourism as an English teacher.
I have spent the past few years working in both Europe and Asia as an English teacher. There are many certified professionals on the teaching circuit who attend ESL workshops and seminars on TOEFL. However, I am not one of these. I represent part of a larger, rapidly growing, phenomenon: the gen-xpatriation of overseas English teachers. There are many young, overeducated, graduates from affluent western universities who, after majoring in the social sciences and humanities, find that they are unemployable. The fields of computer programming, medicine, law, and engineering are of much higher value today. The unfortunate ones, like myself, who did not study the right academic discipline, find our selves trapped into a world of low wage jobs and temp employment.
We can’t find economic stability, despite the fact that we are comprised mostly of young, single, and childless individuals. The greatest burden comes from the repayment of student loans. We indebt ourselves to attend college, but have difficulty obtaining jobs to pay off our loans. In consequence, we are forced into migrating overseas for employment (or the possibility of deferring student loans).
Luckily, there is a great demand for English teachers. It is not difficult to find work overseas. There are many web sites and recruiting agencies to find English jobs with. The global village promotes English as its foundation. Being native speakers we are considered qualified to teach. Many English teachers love to travel. Thus, they can combine the two and pay off debts while working their way around the world. For many globetrotters, English teaching funds their wanderlust. Inexperienced teachers can teach a few months at a time, going from country to country, getting hired and fired along the way (a process known as “Cowboy” teaching). More experienced teachers will sign contracts and reside in a host country for one or more years.
Either way this trend is worth paying closer attention to. The chapter about Korea has been created with this goal in mind. The role of migrating English teachers is crucial to understanding globalization. It is in the private classrooms throughout the world where locals, students, businesspersons, and laborers come together with tourists and expatriates best. My employment visa remains my ticket to the global village.
Global tourism is often understood as brief interactions. The majority of tourism remains short term and seldom lasts more than a few weeks. However, many travelers can work overseas for years and form expatriate communities that fluctuate as employees come and go. This section focuses on individuals who have taken tourism one step further by obtaining a work visa. Anyone can take a vacation but it takes great skill, patience, and endurance to actually live a few years overseas. It is a test of one’s strength to not just travel but to thoroughly emerge oneself into a different culture, without being capable of returning home when desired. Still, at any given moment millions of people are willing to leap at the opportunity.
Across the world there is an inter-flow of migrating workers. Some can work in resorts that directly cater to the tourism industry. For example, I have previously been employed along with dozens of seasonal international laborers in the Grand Teton National Park and Mount Rainier in the United States. With these jobs I meet with tourists and foreign workers at a time before I could even imagine traveling overseas. I could afford to tour the United States in this way. I traveled as summer help in national parks while other workers preferred to labor as winter help at ski resorts, and others combined the two in a migrating loop. A few of my friends also found jobs in theme parks, cowboy camps, and summer resorts for children. In recollection, this employment was like a huge, non-stop, party: hike in the day, work in the evening, and camp during weekends. At night it was common to drink alcohol and to imbibe in other activities with your colleagues. At times it was hard to distinguish who was on vacation, the employees or the tourists. Unlike the foreign workers, my domestic travel was simple and did not require a visa. Nonetheless, it was my precursor to tourism related employment. National parks, ski resorts, theme parks, and summer camps are big business in tourism and should never be underestimated.
More important to my research, however, is employment that demands that one obtain a work visa and to migrate overseas for a year or longer. Many Asian professionals come to the United States with employment in mind. These trained professionals gravitate to higher paid jobs in North America causing “brain drain” – the loss of a developing country’s much needed labor force of doctors, professors, computer programmers, engineers, and other technicians. Meanwhile, western expatriates flow in and out of foreign nations for employment and business. Westerners fly overseas to seal a quick business deal, train locals to operate new technology, provide disaster relief, or contribute to development projects. Related are the thousands of individuals who work overseas in the military or for volunteer groups. Although the motive might be economic, they are all tourists if they find spare time. All can be spotted in the global village. Tourists interact with expatriates, soldiers on leave, Peace Corp volunteers, and Red Cross staff in a global stew.
The multi-national corporations (MNC) are perhaps the most obvious of global businesses. Conglomerates of factories, stockholders, and human capital have a grip firmly on the earth. MNCs feed off of cheap labor and foreign natural resources. Although the multi-national corporation clearly reflects globalization, it is not a human entity – despite the generous tax breaks that governments give them. Therefore, this book declines to discuss these corporations in the context of tourism. I do, however, acknowledge that many of those who labor for these money-factories are westerners with work permits that travel whenever time allows. The various types of business related tourism is too large to discuss in full. Therefore, I focus primarily on English teachers. It would be worthwhile to discuss the role of the military, independent businesspersons, foreign engineers, journalists, and computer programmers. These are important occupations because they contribute to globalization and they make an unmistakable presence in Asia. However, I chose to limit my discussion to that which I have experienced most directly: tourism as an English teacher.
I have spent the past few years working in both Europe and Asia as an English teacher. There are many certified professionals on the teaching circuit who attend ESL workshops and seminars on TOEFL. However, I am not one of these. I represent part of a larger, rapidly growing, phenomenon: the gen-xpatriation of overseas English teachers. There are many young, overeducated, graduates from affluent western universities who, after majoring in the social sciences and humanities, find that they are unemployable. The fields of computer programming, medicine, law, and engineering are of much higher value today. The unfortunate ones, like myself, who did not study the right academic discipline, find our selves trapped into a world of low wage jobs and temp employment. We can’t find economic stability, despite the fact that we are comprised mostly of young, single, and childless individuals. The greatest burden comes from the repayment of student loans. We indebt ourselves to attend college, but have difficulty obtaining jobs to pay off our loans. In consequence, we are forced into migrating overseas for employment (or the possibility of deferring student loans).
Luckily, there is a great demand for English teachers. It is not difficult to find work overseas. There are many web sites and recruiting agencies to find English jobs with. The global village promotes English as its foundation. Being native speakers we are considered qualified to teach. Many English teachers love to travel. Thus, they can combine the two and pay off debts while working their way around the world. For many globetrotters, English teaching funds their wanderlust. Inexperienced teachers can teach a few months at a time, going from country to country, getting hired and fired along the way (a process known as “Cowboy” teaching). More experienced teachers will sign contracts and reside in a host country for one or more years. Either way this trend is worth paying closer attention to. The chapter about Korea has been created with this goal in mind. The role of migrating English teachers is crucial to understanding globalization. It is in the private classrooms throughout the world where locals, students, businesspersons, and laborers come together with tourists and expatriates best. My employment visa remains my ticket to the global village.
Tags: brain drain, business travel, English teaching, seasonal jobs, work visa