'Women in the West Are So Demanding': The British Passport Bros Abandoning the UK for Traditional Wives Abroad

Scott Walker had been going to Tenerife for years. Then one January, the self-employed painter and decorator from Inverness tried Thailand and never really came back. He is now married to a local woman named Jaa, living in a small rural community near the Cambodian border, running a launderette and helping out at her grocery store. His two-bedroom home in Scotland is rented out.

'I don't want to sound sexist, but she's more caring,' Walker said. 'Women here are more old-fashioned, more feminine. Women in the West are so demanding. One friend comes out for two weeks of fun. He has no interest in dating local Inverness women. They give nothing and expect everything. They play games.' Walker is, by his own admission, what the internet has come to call a 'Passport Bro': a Western man who travels to Asia or Latin America in search of a partner who embraces what he considers a more traditional relationship.

The Movement Behind the Men

The term, popularised on TikTok and Instagram, refers to men who leave their home countries partly out of frustration with Western dating norms and partly in search of a lower cost of living. Dating coach Eddie Hernandez has described the trend as one in which men 'often blame feminism and impossible standards by US women as the reason for them seeking out relationships overseas,' with Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America emerging as the most common destinations.

The movement is not limited to British men. David White, a 40-year-old web developer from Las Vegas, told reporters he had 'filled up three passports' and dated hundreds of women across Asia, Brazil and Colombia over the past decade. 'Men on average are attracted to women who are physically attractive, aged 19 to 30 and not fat,' he said. 'Going to places where it is easier to achieve your goal is not bad, it is smart.' White has since married a 22-year-old Filipino woman, Jess, to whom he gives a $100 (£79)-a-week personal allowance and tells to focus on 'being a mum, being a girl, being pretty.'

The Numbers Behind the Exodus

The Passport Bros phenomenon sits within a wider and measurable shift of younger people leaving Britain.According to the Office for National Statistics, around 75,000 more people aged 16 to 34 left the UK than arrived in the year to June 2025, a gap that has grown every year since 2022. A little over half of all British emigrants in 2025 were estimated to be aged between 16 and 34, with qualitative research suggesting they often move for career or lifestyle reasons.

For Ryan Nettleship, a 34-year-old from Folkestone who now livestreams from Pattaya under the name 'Travel Glitch', the decision was straightforward. 'Britain looks miserable,' he said. 'It is bleak, lots of people are struggling financially — you see it in people's faces, and the vibe is just not happy.' Nettleship flew to Bangkok on a one-way ticket at the age of 30 after finding himself single, jobless and still living at home.

A Generational Divide Playing Out in Real Time

The movement is not just about geography: it reflects something deeper happening between young men and women in the West. A survey of more than 23,000 adults across 29 countries, conducted by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London, found that around 31 per cent of Gen Z men agreed that a wife should always obey her husband, while 33 per cent agreed that husbands should have the final say on important decisions, roughly twice the rate of Baby Boomer men.

Kelly Beaver, chief executive of Ipsos in the UK and Ireland, said the findings point to 'a great re-negotiation of how both men and women inhabit gender roles in today's society,' noting that Gen Z men simultaneously held the most traditional views on marriage and the strongest belief that women with successful careers are more attractive.

Kay Lekan, a women's activist in Thailand researching transnational relationships, offered a more nuanced reading. 'We should not deny the economic issue, but it is much more than that — it is about opportunity, new experiences, new lives,' she said. 'If a passport bro comes looking for a submissive woman, he might not find her. But if you are honest that you are looking for a new life, you have good intentions, you might find a partner.'

Not Everyone Is Convinced

The movement has drawn significant pushback. A Refinery29 report on the harassment of women by tourists in Latin America found that as the region underwent a tourism boom, an increasing number of visitors were American and European men looking to date or engage in casual sex with local women. Women interviewed for the piece said visiting men approached them through ethnic stereotypes, with yoga instructor Andrea Guzmán of Mexico City describing men who reduced her to a caricature, saying: 'They don't see you as their equal. They're consuming you based on a stereotype that is completely erroneous, and we can't allow this to continue happening.'

For Jess, White's Filipino wife, the picture is more complicated than either side of the debate tends to acknowledge. She said she had initially avoided foreign men entirely after seeing older men using money to attract younger women. 'His aura was sexy, he had a bad boy vibe which I liked — before he went into dad mode,' she said of her husband, adding that she holds a 'traditional view of men' but would go 'wherever he chooses' for their family.

The Passport Bros movement is not simply a niche online trend — it is a visible symptom of a deepening gender divide that researchers are now tracking across multiple countries. As younger men and women pull further apart in their views on relationships, independence and gender roles, the question of where and with whom people choose to build their lives is one researchers and policymakers are beginning to take seriously.