Where is home

The answer to the question of where home is is pretty obvious to some people.

For a young child, home is where the parents are.  For others, home is where they go to after school or after work, where they were born, where they grew up, where they normally live, etc.

Karl Dahlfred says that it is not so easy with missionaries.

At the early stage of living in a foreign land, "home" is where they have come from.  They have stories from "home" that the locals do not relate to.

Then, when they return for their home assignment, they have stories from abroad that their peers at home do not relate to.  When people talk about how nice it is for them to be "home", they get a funny feeling, as they agree with the person, and also see it to be nice where they were settled for their mission.  The early stages of home assignment is nice for catching up with family and friends, but once that has happened, there is also a longing to be back out there with the friends that they have in their place of ministry.

In a sense, these guys are home at the place they return to, to an extent.  To another extent, home is where their ministry is.  And in another sense, these guys are at home in neither place, as the worlds have changed in their absence.  They are like third culture kids, who are not exactly of the culture of either place, but have a unique culture of their own.

(And to a sense, there are variations of these too - as people have different "home culture" and "host culture" experiences depending on where they live and where they serve.  Some missionaries have served in more than one host country - so that would be yet another phenomenon.)

I reckon this phenomenon is not limited to missionaries doing overseas service.  Expats managing multinational organisations abroad, school teachers abroad, etc. would probably relate to this equally well.  Also immigrants, refugees, and other people who have moved to live in another city or another state.

What do you think?

Are such people ever at "home" anywhere?  What does "home" mean in their context?  Can they ever be "home"?