It’s no secret that Americans leaving the U.S. has been on the rise over the last 20 years. Their reasons will vary from person to person and across time periods. The 2008 housing crisis brought about its own wave of expatriates seeking stability overseas. Political shifts in the U.S. during the last decade have certainly played a major role; data like the Expatsi Pride Report 2026 illustrate just how tied political relief can be to American migration.
To a large extent, it’s a matter of coming to terms with American exceptionalism—a factor that’s driven select citizens abroad over the decades. A recent Bitter Southerner article featuring Expatsi highlights some of these individuals. German poet Hans Enzensberger left in 1968 due to the U.S. conflict in Vietnam and civil rights suppression. Harlem Renaissance icon James Baldwin believed the only way to get an unfiltered view of your home country was from somewhere else entirely.
Another reckoning for this escape from American exceptionalism could be tied to social media and global connectivity in general. It’s difficult to argue that your country has the best healthcare in the world when it’s the only one where medical bankruptcy is a common fear for many families. The Bitter Southerner writer describes commiserating in her French neighborhood cafe when news of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting occurred, at a loss to answer the European’s question: “How is it possible in a powerful country like the U.S.?”
For Expatsi, that cultural awakening arrived in June 2022 when a SCOTUS decision jeopardized women’s reproductive rights for the first time in nearly 50 years. “Our site exploded after Roe v. Wade,” our co-founder Jen Barnett explained. “Women want to start families in places where their children’s reproductive rights will be respected.” As of July 2026, that particular freedom continues to be at risk in the U.S., along with a number of others like gender self-determination.
But if Americans are fleeing the U.S. in times of strife—60’s civil rights struggle, ‘08 financial crisis, rising authoritarianism in ‘26—will those same Americans return when better times return? Some number of them will; the desire to return home can be a powerful one. For others, though, their mind may very well be made up after they decide that life truly is better abroad. Start that journey yourself by taking the Expatsi Test and joining our Sunday webinar.
