A groundbreaking new global expat survey by i-World Research confirmed that a new American expat generation has been on the move for the last five years and is primarily populated by the millennial generation.

Called the Expat Survey 2013, just under 8,000 expats from 128 countries were researched for their opinions and attitudes on a variety of topics. The overall survey included separate studies on Migration & Lifestyle, Retail & Finance and Travel & Health.

MYIA spoke with i-World Research Project Director Emma Wood to get all the details, mainly from the Migration & Lifestyle study.

“This is the largest independent global expat study of those living outside their country of origin,” Wood said. “It gave us more than 60,000 pages of data to pour through based on the 150 open-ended questions we asked. About 60 percent of the respondents were women and a broad range of the expat population from all over the world was represented.”

A key finding that jumped out from the research was the emergence over the last five years of a new American expat generation, confirming what we have reported in our articles “The New American Expat Generation” and “Which Americans Are Moving Abroad.”

“There also is a youth element to moving abroad, particularly from America,” Wood said. “Ten years ago Americans were not really up there. The American element was not strong, but it has opened up in the last five years with the younger generation of Americans adopting a much more adventurous attitude, a much more inquisitive attitude on foreign cultures. There was a younger element in there below the age of 30 that has adopted the attitude ‘If I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it?’”

We asked Wood what specifically she found out about Americans. “They set out on a mission to find out if the grass is greener on the other side,” she said. “About 70 percent said that it is, so they are lured to move on by greater lifestyle enhancements and increased pay, generally. Around 8 percent of them said they are actively looking for their next spot at the moment. That 8 percent makes up part of the 22 percent who are considering where they would like to go next. So they are adventurous and really quite brave. A lot of them, once they get the bug, enjoy it. And in a way, they find challenges, even language challenges, part of the excitement. That is their outlook on life.”

Wood told us that many young Americans are still moving to Europe. “It all depends whether they are in a position to be roaming and exploring or if they are moving for their careers,” she said. “There is a lot of activity into Europe, despite the language barrier.”

Many American millennials have an entrepreneurial bent and will be heartened at the survey’s findings on starting a new business abroad. “There was a large proportion of expats who do run their own businesses where they are,” Wood said. “Where there are language barriers and huge bureaucracies, there is a tendency for self-employed expats to network amongst themselves because that is where they find the solutions to the problems they are facing. And that is particularly prevalent in Southern Europe, countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Croatia.”