It’s funny, many people I know who live in South Asia are very much occupied with how they fit into society there. How different they are from some people, how similar they are to others. Geography, religion, caste, traditional, non traditional. Etc.

It’s interesting to think that if they immigrated to the States, those differences might become less important compared to their differences from people born in the US.

Yet, as I think back on my experiences living in Germany for 5 years as a young man, that sort of thing happened to me a little. I sometimes felt a bond with expat Americans whom I wouldn’t have wanted to be very close to if we were back home.

If I’d had children there, they probably would have integrated fairly easily given they would at least outwardly look similar to most Germans (given my whiteness), but I wonder how they might have felt about the differences between the culture of their father and the one one they were born in.