The country in which you live can be both a homeland and a foreign land. That is, the concepts of "homeland" and "country of residence" may coincide or, conversely, be polar. They are the same if you were born in the country in which you live.
Homeland
The homeland can be both small and large. This division is typical for countries with a federal form of government, where within the federation there are state formations such as republics, states, cantons, and regions. In any case, the homeland is the place in which you were born and lived the first years of your life. This is where your roots are, people speak your native language, traditional dishes seem to be the most delicious. Often, people who have left for permanent residence in another country are drawn to their homeland, since everything is familiar and close to the soul there.
Country of Residence
You can talk about the difference between the country in which you live and your homeland only if they do not coincide. When the country of residence is a foreign state, we are talking about some completely different culture with its own traditions, customs, language. Perhaps you know this country quite well, you have lived in it for a long time and feel comfortable in it. However, this country is not your homeland.
The difference can also be the absence in the foreign country in which you live, soul mates with whom you could have nothing to chat about without any linguistic obstacles. Sometimes this is so lacking, although today you can communicate freely with your relatives, fellow villagers, friends from home on Skype.
It is also common for a person to yearn for their native spaces, for the home in which they lived from infancy, for their parents and even for their native air and smell. There are isolated cases when people who have lived most of their adult life abroad return to live out their last years at home. And this despite the fact that their life abroad was stable, smooth and prosperous. The reason for this is the longing that eats them up.
Basically, people who have left an economically disadvantaged homeland prefer to be bored from afar, write poems, stories, memoirs about it.
The most difficult is for those people who were forced to leave their home, in which their ancestors still lived, not of their own free will, but because of the outbreak of war or natural disaster. There were many of them in Russia, especially in Soviet times.
In a foreign country, orders and requirements are different than at home. You need to get used to them, adapt. And even after years you do not feel completely your own. You live with such a feeling that you are just a guest who has arrived for a long time, but not forever. However, this foreign country may well become the homeland for your great-grandchildren.
