Who Am I Here? Identity Loss After Immigration

Feel­ing like you lost your­self after moving to a new coun­try is ex­treme­ly common, and it doesn’t mean some­thing is wrong with you. When you move, your work, your lan­guage, and the people who used to re­flect you back to your­self all change at once, so the ev­ery­day ev­i­dence of who you are goes miss­ing for a while. Your iden­ti­ty isn’t gone. It’s being re­built, and there are con­crete ways to help that along.

Back home, you were some­one spe­cif­ic. The doctor people waited a month to see. The friend who could make a whole table laugh and always knew who to call. Here, you’re the woman who asks the cashier to repeat her­self, who search­es for words in a parent-teach­er con­fer­ence, who hes­i­tates at the “oc­cu­pa­tion” line on every form. The ques­tion “Who am I here?” rarely shows up on day one. It tends to arrive once the boxes are un­packed and it’s quiet enough to notice how much you left behind.

What actually goes missing

We’ve writ­ten about the stages of ad­just­ing to a new cul­ture in our piece on cul­ture shock. This is a dif­fer­ent, deeper layer. Not frus­tra­tion with how things work here, but the sense that the ground your iden­ti­ty stood on has shift­ed, and a move tends to shake every part of it at once.

Your pro­fes­sion­al iden­ti­ty. For many women, work isn’t just a pay­check. It’s the answer to “What am I good at, and what am I worth?” When your degree isn’t rec­og­nized, your ex­pe­ri­ence “doesn’t count,” and the first job you can get is far from the one you had, it’s not only your budget that takes the hit. It’s your basic sense of your­self as a ca­pa­ble person.

Your lan­guage self. In your first lan­guage you were quick, pre­cise, funny. In Eng­lish you may sound sim­pler, slower, some­times almost child­like, and it can feel as if people only ever meet that re­duced ver­sion of you. In the early 2000s, lin­guists Jean-Marc De­waele and Aneta Pavlenko sur­veyed more than a thou­sand bilin­guals, and rough­ly two out of three said they feel like a some­what dif­fer­ent person in dif­fer­ent lan­guages [1]. You didn’t get less in­tel­li­gent. Part of you just hasn’t learned to speak in the new lan­guage yet.

Your social mirror. Over a cen­tu­ry ago, so­ci­ol­o­gist Charles Horton Cooley de­scribed the “look­ing-glass self”: we come to know our­selves large­ly through how others see us. Back home, dozens of people con­firmed who you were every day. In a new coun­try those mir­rors are mostly blank, and the few you have may re­flect “the im­mi­grant with the accent.” If you’re work­ing on re­build­ing a circle, we’ve shared what helps in how to make friends after moving.

And if you moved for your part­ner’s job or career, there’s often one more layer: the feel­ing that your own life has been put on hold. We look at that in our piece on being a trail­ing spouse.

Acculturative stress and Berry’s four strategies

Psy­chol­o­gists call the strain of adapt­ing to a new cul­ture ac­cul­tur­a­tive stress. In a widely cited 1997 paper, Cana­di­an cross-cul­tur­al psy­chol­o­gist John Berry de­scribed how people answer two ques­tions dif­fer­ent­ly: How im­por­tant is it to keep my orig­i­nal cul­ture? And how im­por­tant is it to build con­nec­tions with the new so­ci­ety [2]? Com­bin­ing the an­swers gives four strate­gies:

• In­te­gra­tion: keep­ing your own cul­ture while also build­ing a life in the new one.
• As­sim­i­la­tion: trying to become “like the locals” and let­ting the old cul­ture go.
• Sep­a­ra­tion: stay­ing within your own com­mu­ni­ty and avoid­ing con­tact with the wider so­ci­ety.
• Marginal­iza­tion: losing touch with the old cul­ture with­out find­ing a place in the new one.

That “I’ve lost myself” feel­ing often re­sem­bles the last box, where the old life no longer holds you and the new one hasn’t taken you in yet. That’s a stage, not a per­son­al­i­ty flaw. Berry em­pha­sized that the strat­e­gy people end up in de­pends not only on them but on how open the re­ceiv­ing so­ci­ety is. Re­search build­ing on his model has often linked in­te­gra­tion with smoother adap­ta­tion, though most people get there grad­u­al­ly, not overnight.

You may also come across the term “Ulysses syn­drome.” Span­ish psy­chi­a­trist Joseba Achotegui coined it to de­scribe how people react to chron­ic, mul­ti­ple stres­sors of mi­gra­tion under ex­treme con­di­tions: forced sep­a­ra­tion from family, a mi­gra­tion plan that has failed, a daily strug­gle to sur­vive [3]. He places it at the bound­ary be­tween mental health and psy­chopathol­o­gy. It isn’t an of­fi­cial di­ag­no­sis or a label to try on after read­ing an ar­ti­cle. But the idea behind it is worth keep­ing: a heavy state can be an un­der­stand­able re­sponse to heavy cir­cum­stances, not a sign that you’re weak.

When you have the degree but not the job

Losing pro­fes­sion­al status after a move is so common that re­searchers have a word for it: deskilling. Econ­o­mists Mehtap Akgüç and Jaai Paras­nis an­a­lyzed Eu­ro­pean Social Survey data from 31 coun­tries be­tween 2002 and 2020. Im­mi­grant women were no­tice­ably more likely than native-born women to work in jobs below their ed­u­ca­tion level: 23.1% versus 14.3%. The gap nar­rowed but held even after ac­count­ing for parental ed­u­ca­tion, work­place char­ac­ter­is­tics, and des­ti­na­tion coun­try [4]. Those are Eu­ro­pean fig­ures—they don’t de­scribe the US today or ex­plain any one woman’s story. In the US, a 2021 Mi­gra­tion Policy In­sti­tute es­ti­mate put about two mil­lion col­lege-ed­u­cat­ed im­mi­grants as either un­em­ployed or work­ing in jobs that re­quire no more than a high school diplo­ma, in part be­cause of li­cens­ing and cre­den­tial-recog­ni­tion bar­ri­ers [5]. The OECD tracks the same issue in a full chap­ter of its In­di­ca­tors of Im­mi­grant In­te­gra­tion 2023 [6].

Those num­bers aren’t a reason to give up. They show that the gap be­tween what you can do and where you work now is large­ly built into the system, not proof that you’re not good enough.

Imposter syndrome after starting over

Even once you land a job in your field, a strange fear can creep in: “Any minute now, they’ll figure out I don’t know what I’m doing.” Psy­chol­o­gists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes first de­scribed this in 1978 [7]. They spent years talk­ing with more than 150 suc­cess­ful women, in­clud­ing stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and pro­fes­sion­als, and no­ticed that de­spite clear ac­com­plish­ments, many be­lieved their suc­cess was a fluke or a mis­take on some­one else’s part. They called it the “im­poster phe­nom­e­non.” Clance later stressed that it’s an ex­pe­ri­ence, not a pathol­o­gy.

Start­ing over in a new coun­try gives that feel­ing fresh ma­te­ri­al. You really are new: to local rules, in­dus­try vo­cab­u­lary, un­writ­ten norms about how meet­ings run and how di­rect­ly to dis­agree. It’s easy to con­clude you’re not a “real” pro­fes­sion­al and that your years of ex­pe­ri­ence some­how don’t count. But not know­ing the con­text and not being com­pe­tent are two dif­fer­ent things. The first fades with time. The second most likely has noth­ing to do with you.

If you notice that you brace for ex­po­sure every time and ex­plain away every com­pli­ment as luck, you might find why we keep doing what we know doesn’t help useful. Old pat­terns get louder in un­cer­tain sit­u­a­tions.

What helps you find yourself again

1. Name what you lost. Get spe­cif­ic on paper: your pro­fes­sion, your status, your lan­guage, your people, your city, the clothes you used to wear, even the food. Losses with­out names have no shape, so they just feel like a gen­er­al “some­thing’s wrong with me.” Named losses can be grieved, and grief even­tu­al­ly eases.

2. Keep one thread of your old self. You don’t have to pre­serve ev­ery­thing. One thread is enough. If you used to sing, find a choir. If you taught, offer a class online. If you loved host­ing, invite the neigh­bors for dinner. That thread is a re­minder that you’re the same woman, just in a new place.

3. Trans­late your com­pe­tence. Your ex­pe­ri­ence has to be made leg­i­ble to a new market, not just “proven.” Look into how your degree can be eval­u­at­ed here. In the US, cre­den­tial eval­u­a­tion ser­vices such as WES or ECE can assess for­eign ed­u­ca­tion, and many em­ploy­ers and li­cens­ing boards ask for such a report. Re­write your résumé for local ex­pec­ta­tions and talk to people in your field who’ve done this before. Keep in mind that a cre­den­tial eval­u­a­tion is not a pro­fes­sion­al li­cense. From there, it helps to pick one of three routes. A reg­u­lat­ed pro­fes­sion (doctor, nurse, ther­a­pist, lawyer, teach­er): find your state li­cens­ing board’s re­quire­ments—exams, su­per­vised hours, course­work. Un­reg­u­lat­ed work (mar­ket­ing, design, tech, man­age­ment): a port­fo­lio, local ref­er­ences and first projects matter more. A bridge job: work­ing out­side your field is a rea­son­able choice if you set a date to re­vis­it the plan.

4. Take on a small public role. Vol­un­teer at your kid’s school, start a book club, help out at the li­brary, write a gen­uine­ly useful post for a local women’s group. A small role where people see you and thank you starts to refill that social mirror. Others begin to rec­og­nize you, and so do you.

5. Lean on your body and a rou­tine. When ev­ery­thing inside feels un­steady, rhythm gives you some­thing solid on the out­side. Going to bed around the same time, walk­ing the same route, moving in a way you enjoy, eating reg­u­lar meals. A body that knows what comes next helps your mind tol­er­ate what it doesn’t.

6. Know when to see a spe­cial­ist. Feel­ing lost and sad after a move is nat­u­ral. But if the heav­i­ness lasts for weeks, gets in the way of sleep, work, or caring for your­self and your family, if noth­ing in­ter­ests you any­more, or if you have thoughts that life isn’t worth living, please reach out to a li­censed ther­a­pist or your doctor. Many ther­a­pists work in lan­guages other than Eng­lish, often online, and talk­ing about the hard­est things in your first lan­guage can be a huge relief.

You haven’t disappeared

A move doesn’t erase a person. It takes away the back­drop you were used to seeing your­self against and leaves you on an empty stage for a while. That’s fright­en­ing, but it also lets you choose what to bring along and what to leave behind. The woman who an­swers “Who am I here?” a few years from now won’t be a copy of who you were. More likely, she’ll be bigger: two lan­guages, two sets of habits, and a kind of self-knowl­edge you can only get by start­ing over.

What from your old life do you most want to bring into the new one?

Read next:

• Cul­ture Shock: Why Life After a Move Can Feel So Hard—and How to Get Through It
• Lonely After the Move: How to Make Friends as an Adult Woman in a New Coun­try
• Moved for His Job and Lost Your­self? Life as a Trail­ing Spouse

Sources

[1] Pavlenko, A. (2006). Bilin­gual Minds: Emo­tion­al Ex­pe­ri­ence, Ex­pres­sion and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Mul­ti­lin­gual Mat­ters (chap­ter “Bilin­gual selves,” draw­ing on the De­waele & Pavlenko web ques­tion­naire, 2001–2003).

[2] Berry, J. W. (1997). Im­mi­gra­tion, ac­cul­tur­a­tion, and adap­ta­tion. Ap­plied Psy­chol­o­gy, 46(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1997.tb01087.x

[3] Achotegui, J. (2006). Ex­treme stress and mental health: Im­mi­grant syn­drome with chron­ic and mul­ti­ple stress (the Ulysses syn­drome). Mi­gra­ciones, 19, 59–85. Ar­ti­cle

[4] Akgüç, M., & Paras­nis, J. (2023). Oc­cu­pa­tion–ed­u­ca­tion mis­match of im­mi­grant women in Europe. Social In­di­ca­tors Re­search, 170, 75–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03066-0

[5] Mi­gra­tion Policy In­sti­tute (2021). Brain waste among highly skilled im­mi­grants in the United States: A per­sis­tent prob­lem with in­creas­ing costs. Page

[6] OECD/Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion (2023). In­di­ca­tors of Im­mi­grant In­te­gra­tion 2023: Set­tling In. Chap­ter “Im­mi­grant skills and labour market in­te­gra­tion.” Report

[7] Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The im­poster phe­nom­e­non in high achiev­ing women: Dy­nam­ics and ther­a­peu­tic in­ter­ven­tion. Psy­chother­a­py: Theory, Re­search & Prac­tice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006 · Full text

This ar­ti­cle is for in­for­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es only and is not a sub­sti­tute for pro­fes­sion­al advice. If you’ve been strug­gling for a long time, please reach out to a li­censed ther­a­pist or your doctor. If you are in crisis in the US, call or text 988.

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