The expatriate dilemma: When geopolitical conflict brings migrant workers into the office

Rothstein is the pseudonym of a participant in our ongoing study of diaspora workers, but his experience is one that many workers across Canada will recognize.

Rostam kept checking the news to piece together what was happening. The conflict has escalated rapidly since the United States and Israel launched a joint strike against Iran in late February. It was 4 a.m. and he had been awake for two hours. This is hypervigilance: the body monitors a threat that it cannot act on, but refuses to stop.

When the call actually comes through, the physical relief eases. They are still alive. They spoke carefully, partly to protect him and partly because the calls could be monitored. He heard his father’s voice and thought it might be the last time.

In the morning, he has to go to work. He would attend meetings, contribute to the agenda and make sure his expressions didn’t give away how he was feeling – an ability that always served him well.

He never talks about it at work. Talking about the issue could be seen as representing a country for which he has mixed feelings, or as introducing politics into a space where politics is not needed. So he said nothing. This silence is the problem.

Hidden costs at work

Decades of research have confirmed that code-switching—the constant calibration of self-presentation across cultural contexts—can take a real psychological toll on employees. It can lead to stress, anxiety, burnout, and costly errors in judgment at work.

These impacts are often invisible to employers until the damage is done to individuals and organizations.

Distressed expatriate employees don’t signal in a way that causes organizational concern. They did it, but at considerable personal cost. These costs accumulate in a slow way and are almost always misattributed. Decline in engagement is interpreted as a change in attitude, whereas withdrawal is interpreted as a change in personality.

In some cases, employees don’t quit at all. Instead, they hunkered down at work and by every visible metric, they were thriving. Managers have no reason to look more closely until a break occurs.

This is not an issue that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs can address because it has nothing to do with inclusion or diversity. It’s a perception issue: Leaders can’t see what employees overseas are managing and therefore can’t respond.

condition without name

The challenge extends far beyond Canada’s Iranian community, which according to the 2021 census numbered approximately 200,000 people. Many other diaspora communities, including Ukrainians, Palestinians, Sudanese, Afghans and Syrians, are experiencing similar situations.

A 2025 study found higher rates of severe depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder among Tigrayans in the Australian diaspora than among those within the war zone.

People in conflict zones often suppress their fears to protect family members who are experiencing the conflict with them. In contrast, members of the diaspora are often unable to provide meaningful assistance to those in immediate danger, creating a deep sense of helplessness.

At the same time, those around them may be unaware of their hidden fears and pain.

In April, Iranian-Canadian Aitak Sorahi tried to explain his experience to a reporter from The Canadian Press, when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to destroy Iran unless it agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. She couldn’t find the right words to describe it. “I don’t even know how to describe what I’m feeling,” she said, “because I don’t know what to call it.”

We present one: the diaspora dilemma, a framework that has emerged from our ongoing research and organizational practice.

Expat Dilemma

Diaspora pain is the psychological burden carried by people living in a country where their homeland—and the family, friends, and memories buried within it—is actively threatened by geopolitics. Often, this burden is exacerbated by host government policies or rhetoric.

This feeling is closest to sadness, but that’s where the comparison ends. Grief has a fixed point—a death, a diagnosis, a loss that has occurred and can be named. It has a recognized social script: people sit together and are able to share memories of the deceased.

Diaspora suffering offers no similar ritual, as one anticipates a loss that may or may not come.

Furthermore, expat communities are not monolithic. Outsiders often see both sides as united, but geopolitical crises often deepen existing internal divisions over what intervention means, who is to blame, and what liberation looks like. People who are meant to be a community of one another’s grief often find themselves on opposite sides of an argument.

As a result, expatriate employees often face this situation alone in every setting they find themselves in: at work, at home, and in the communities that are meant to support them. This isolation is the peculiar nature of the diaspora’s plight.

What should organizations do

Developing the capacity to identify diaspora plight does not require expertise in geopolitics or new policy infrastructure. It requires language: an organization decides to name something that certain employees carry as a recognized condition.

Institutional confirmation works differently than other supports because it removes the requirement for employees to claim the items they are carrying. It gives them a name for the thing they live with.

In practice, this can take three forms: a leadership message acknowledging that some colleagues are under stress due to events happening back home; a line added to standard manager check-ins asking whether things outside of work are affecting employees; or supplements to existing employee assistance programs and benefits communications that clearly address the plight of expats.

Rostam will turn on her phone again tonight at 2am. In the morning, he would switch the code from the person who read the news all night to someone his organization knew. The question that remains is whether his organization will adopt this language to view it, and whether his leaders will decide to consider it part of their job. SCY

SCY

This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.