None of the following is written by me, but lifted from somewhere else. It talks about the supposed 2 groups of expats that can be found living in a country foreign to them.
"1. THE SELF-EXILE: This type has voluntarily left a position in his home country, often but not necessarily a position of some advantage, to live abroad in a nation which is not his own- in which the language, the culture, and the physical environment are unusual to him and cause endless trouble as he adapts- but where he finds any or all of the following:
a. interesting new kinds of people and things
b. freedoms (and restrictions) unlike those in his own country
c. the psychic freedom to escape an identity entangled with the citizens of his home country
d. an absence of the noxious elements of the home country
2. THE EXILED: This type has run away or escaped from his home country, usually either to escape a bad situation or after repeated failures of various sorts, sometimes resulting from psychological or sociopathic problems. It's usually not perceived as being his own fault- "all these Brits have it in for me"- but acknowledged that the change of scene will lead to personal advantage. The good points for this type are:
a. Nobody knows exactly how screwed up they were back home
b. It's very hard for foreign nationals to tell how screwed up they are when speaking a second language
c. The opportunity to disguise sociopathy as "foreign difference"
d. There's always another country to run to when [country name] doesn't work out.
The ironic result of this is that most long-term expats avoid meeting unfamiliar faces, because they're afraid of meeting the opposite type. The Exiles don't want to run into the chronically sociopathic Exiled, who don't want to meet the Exiles in turn (whom they secretly know expose them for the screwed up types they are- even if the Exiles are too polite to say anything, the feeling of exposure seems bad enough for some of the Exiled).
Some of my best and most interesting friends have been among the former group. And some of the worst and most troubled, nightmarish souls I've encountered were among the latter"
A13