What motivates young Belgian graduates to go work outside of Europe as Self-Initiated Expatriates? And how do they adjust?

Details

Supervisors

Claes, Marie-Thérèse ; Lejeune, Christophe

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

This thesis is mainly going to focus on the position of the expatriate, more precisely the young Belgian graduates going abroad. There is a growing number of self-initiated expatriates leaving Belgium. So far, no studies have been conducted on the intention of these Belgian self-initiated expatriates. There was a curiosity from my part to understand what motivates them and I wanted to study how they experience the adjustment to their new host country. These are the two main topics of this thesis. Once the intentions and the adjustment of self-initiated expatriates are understood, an analysis will be done on how self-initiated expatriates benefit a company and what their impact is on a country like Belgium.