(Im)Mobility and the emotional lives of expat spouses

- Discourses on mobility tend to portray the emotionality of expats.
- These discourses unfold in expat spouses' subjective experience.
- People (dis)engage in “emotion work” when narrating their feelings about im-mobility.

Discourses circulating among various social fields where so-called expats meet (e.g., blogs, social networks, associations), tend to portray the experience of mobility by defining how people on-the-move are expected to feel. Moving to a new place is portrayed as an “exciting” yet difficult experience, and a set of solutions based on feeling and display rules to handle the challenges of mobility are provided. Based upon ongoing qualitative research in Switzerland, the paper explores how these discourses unfold in the subjective experience of professionals' partners, when migratory experiences are enmeshed with conditions of work stasis, social immobility and related distress. It focuses on the way two women narrate their feelings about (im)mobility while engaging and disengaging in “emotion work”. Considering the tensions and proximity between how the emotional impact of mobility is publicly portrayed and how it is described at the individual level can shed light on the mutual relationship between prevailing normative frameworks, and the more personal experience, understanding and display of emotions.