How do migrant IT wives deal with stress after moving
'31.05.2018'
Source: Sergey Korol, RBC Style
Spoolers are the wives of migrant IT people. How they deal with stress after moving, says the journalist Sergey Korol.
Not only wives, but also the husbands of IT-specialists, once abroad, sometimes cannot adapt to a new life. How do they find a compromise and how do they live in immigration?
Olga is now 34 of the year. Four years ago, my husband found a job in a large foreign IT-company, and Olga was pregnant with her second son. With the move and the birth of a child, life changed, but not in the way she expected: instead of museums, Olga goes to children's circles, and instead of coffeeshops - to stores with Russian food.
The wives of IT people in the West are called spoolers (from the English abbreviation "wife of a Google employee"). Their life is a unique phenomenon that is rarely spoken and written about. I know about him firsthand, because the spooler itself.
Every year, thousands of Russian IT specialists move to the West: they are going to try their hand at large foreign companies, earn money and achieve stability. Usually these are men over thirty, with a wife and often with a child. I moved with my programmer wife, so I became a bobber. Despite the fact that behind me - creative work, status and social connections, I drank plenty of psychological characteristics in the status of an immigrant spouse.
After moving and entering a new job, a Russian employee is expected to adapt: language courses, a mentor, and smooth entry into work. Working abroad is a new classroom experience, even for those who three times a year confidently flew to Europe or the USA and speak English quite well. However, the wife of an IT specialist does not meet any adaptation. After moving her world suddenly collapses and plunges into endless boredom.
The city around seems beautiful, but inaccessible. Its ideal inhabitants ride bicycles, dress in woolen suits and trendy designer clothes, often have some easy dope, drink coffee in coffee shops beautifully. Next to them, you feel like an ugly swan: you are a migrant who does not know the language, cannot properly eat oysters and was last at the club at school, in 2000-s, in Rostov. The people around are united by some carefree happiness, and for the second month you cannot rent a permanent apartment, your cat is sick and your husband is at work from ten to ten. In fact, his working day ends at six, but in the evenings always there are Dutch courses, barbecue and craft tastings. Adaptation, you can understand.
Spoolers almost never work like their husbands: they don't have the language, qualifications, or visa requirements for this. It’s not the family that moves overseas, but the man, and without which it would be bad for him to live there. Formally, the spooler wife is not much different from the cat.
Abroad, an IT partner loses what was a significant part of his life in his homeland - the struggle. There is no need to fight for a place in a kindergarten or a queue for a doctor for a sick father, it is not necessary to know good plumbers and be friends with a hairdresser. Work is also not necessary (or not). As a result, the fight is replaced by ersatz, spoolers say about it - “CCC”: kindergarten, dentist, sour cream. Finding sour cream really becomes a big problem. I personally could not find it.
Immersed in stress, spoolers find salvation in the company of other Russian-speaking wives of IT people. Usually, in all major relocation centers, programmers already have communities of their wives: they exchange baby carriages, bring drugs from home that are strictly prescribed here, and go to home parties to diligently discuss the CCC theme in detail.
Very rarely a woman can rise above the emigre hopelessness and socialize a little. Usually, those who were at home in proactive work, designers, managers, photographers, illustrators, cope with this: it is easier for them to find a job and find new acquaintances among local residents.
For most boogers, the dream of a nanny in a Russian-language kindergarten will be the ultimate dream. In addition, over the year, children quickly learn a new language and often work as translators for parents.
Families of Russian migrants usually have been in a deep cultural crisis for years. The fear of socialization immerses them in a community that is rarely filled with new meanings. The inability to deal with stress leads to depression, which is dealt with in collective therapy sessions, with tea and waffle cakes, for which condensed milk has been cooked, like at home.
It is worth at least once to attend a party of spoolers to feel the brunt of this state. I, a thirty-year-old man, without children, with creative work and good English, hardly cann’t plunge into the routine of household chores: I’m happy to go around the house with a vacuum cleaner and make sure that my favorite ipad is charged while she is at work. The tax consultant stated bluntly: “Sergey, your status is a householder.” I am a householder, I am a householder, I ... Damn it, where to buy real sour cream, like at home?
When the conversation about the sparking comes in the circle of friends, childless comrades begin to wave their hands: they say, the mother closes with the birth of the child, and then there are Russian comrades with similar misfortunes nearby. They say, they say, you need to communicate more with interesting foreigners and stay away from typical mothers, who in their homeland are called ovulyashki.
I profess an interim recipe for fighting spongy - I try to communicate more with compatriots, not abroad, but in Russia. This is a great way to come home to talk, share problems with a glass of wine or a glass of craft beer. People are breathing easier without boring hothouse conditions of IT-based abroad, it is easier to find a common language with them, without pupation in children and problems, without discussing dentists and prices for hot water. However, on regular trips to Russia, resources are needed, and here the spouse-IT specialist, with his salary, will be just the way. In the end, both of us need psychological relief, and I’m working for two.
