An economist with a Louisiana doctorate and a Mississippi drawl, he shocked his friends when he left a tenured job in Virginia for the American University of Sharjah, a school conjured from nothing by a sheik in the suburbs of Dubai. But when he lists the benefits of working abroad, Mr. Mitias crows.
He has free housing and utilities. (“Sweet!”) He has international experience on his résumé. (“Huge!”) He has cheap household help, good schools for his children and a BMW and a Mercedes he was able to buy by paying no income tax. Not to mention plenty of American fast food.
“Papa John’s delivers to my house,” he said. “It’s all here!”
This is migrant work, Ph.D.-style — a lesson about labor, a comment on class, a window onto globalization and a phenomenon on the rise.
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He describes life abroad as a successive discovery of freedoms: freedom from taxes, freedom from mortgages, freedom from crime, freedom from the sex and violence his daughters would see on American television. He and his wife have taken them to places as different as London and Vietnam, and to Thailand three times. “The world’s at your fingertips,” he said.
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