The Pros and Cons of Working Abroad (via Backpackers’ Travel Blog).
Now this isn’t a topic I know anything about 
When I was in high school and college I said that my dream was to live and work abroad. I’ll never forget when a student told me, during my first time in Japan, “You need a new dream, you did that one.”* Of course I knew I was living and working in Japan, but it hadn’t really hit me-if that makes sense. While I enjoy the occasional quickie vacation that’s just that, a vacation, I tend to want to travel for longer periods of time and that’s where the ability to work while travelling comes in handy. This is, of course, a separate issue from moving abroad for the sole purpose of work. I was glad to see this issue being tackled because it’s one I’m also working on for my Applied Research class.**
I found the author’s comments on the issue of the work visa to be quite interesting:
Why get one at all? Well, many “regular” jobs require you to have one in order to legally employ you, your job pool is increased by being able to legally work and the ease with which you’ll be able to find employment will increase with the amount of jobs available to you.
I think this has a definite correlation with work location-not just which country you’re working in but also the region of the particular country. With my limited work visa (good only for four months due to the crazy relationship between the US and Australian governments when it comes to visas) I found it challenging to get office temp work in Brisbane because most of the agencies wanted me to be available for a greater period of time. In the end I found work at a bookstore run by Lifeline. Although I don’t usually care for retail work, this position had a couple of advantages:
- it was a great opportunity to meet people. It was a decently busy store on a main thoroughfare, plus people know the brand. They were often surprised to hear the American accent and we’d talk about why I was in Australia, working in Brisbane, where I should go, etc.
- it paid a living wage. I can’t remember exactly but it was between $17 and $18 AUD per hour.
I was only able to work there for about six weeks before my Visa ran out, but it was a lot of fun. In this case, I needed a Visa. However later in my trip once I was on a tourist visa and ineligible for work, there were opportunities for money to be made. This was most common ‘under the table’ work but I did have several opportunities for office work as well. As the article I indicated, I did get my taxes refunded, in addition to the Superannuation (think FICA). It was a nice amount of cash to have in hand for my departure to Japan.
The following, however, is the central tenet and IMO, should be the focus of a job taken while travelling:
It’s always useful to draw on your experience, interests and talent, but don’t be afraid to leave you comfort zone and try something new.
If nothing else, a weird and wonderful job will make a great story to take back home.
I met several people over the course of my trip who were working 40-50 hours in an office because it was what they knew. Now I don’t knock people for their choice in work, but I can’t imagine travelling halfway around the world to work your tail off doing something you could do at home. You’ve made the choice to move, why not consider other job opprtunities while you’re at it?
Some of what I did in WA led me to the program I’m in now. See, it’s not all just flittering around the world for no good reason!
*New Dream: All 7 continents by the time I’m 30
**My project is nowhere near done, though I may post the Lit Review once I’ve cleaned it up some. I have an extensive list of journals on the topic if anyone is interested.
