Expats Not Immigrants

[digitalbuddha]

Don’t Call Them Expats They're Immigrants Like Everyone Else
By M.R. Koutonin

In the Western lexicon of human migration there are still lot of remnants of a white supremacist ideology, with hierarchical classes of words created to differentiate White people from the rest of humanity, with the purpose of putting White people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word “expat.” What is an expat? And who is an expat?

According to Wikidpedia, “An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (“out of”) and patria (“country, fatherland”).” Defined that way, you should expect any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat regardless of his skin color, country, etc. That is not the case in reality: expat is a term reserved exclusively for western White people going to work abroad.

Africans are immigrants.
Arabs are immigrants.
Asians are immigrants.

However Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for inferior races. In fact, saying you are expat means you subscribe to racism because “expat” is of a White supremacist vocabulary invented to differentiate White people abroad from other races also living abroad.
Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they have featured a story “Who Is an Expat, Anyway?”. Here are the main conclusions:
“Some arrivals are described as expats; others as immigrants; and some, simply migrants. It depends on social class, country of origin and economic status. It’s strange to hear some people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with roots in a Western country is considered an expat. … Filipino domestic helpers are just guests, even if they’ve been here for decades. Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats. … It’s a double standard woven into official policy.” – Wall Street Journal
This reality is the same in Africa. White people want to differentiate themselves and have their superiority recognized in using words like expat and other similar words. If you call them immigrants, they’d feel insulted. Top African professionals going to work in Europe are not considered expats. They are immigrants. Period.
“I work for multinational organizations both in the private and public sectors. And being Black or Coloured doesn’t gain me the term ‘expat.’ I’m a highly qualified immigrant, as they call me, to be politically correct” wrote an African migrant worker.
Most White people are in denial of the racist system they enjoy. And why not? And yet our responsibility is to deny them these privileges, directly related to an outdated supremacist ideology, and a mindset that many people still want to keep active in the world. If you see those “expats” in Africa, call them immigrants like everyone else. If that hurts their white superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there! The political deconstruction of this outdated worldview work must continue!

 

[Matt84]

I think the difference is pretty straight forward: an immigrant not only plans to live the rest of his or her life in the country of destination, but might also not be financially or legally able to go back.
An Expat is someone who not only can go back to the country of origin, but is expected to, regardless of social standing (money, race, whatever)
I believe all temporary workers from India/Bangladesh in the Arabian Peninsula call themselves expats.
If you search for the word expat, temporary workers mostly from Southern Asia residing in one or another rich Arab country trump the list of results. The second most popular result is, in fact yes, the British Expat.

Why would you call someone who's in Africa for a 6 month or 6 year contract anything other than an expat when he or she has no plans or perhaps even option to stay indefinitely?

 

[nlaruccia]

I don't think Argentines analyze that much. That's one of the pleasant things about living here. People don't worry so much about political correctness and are more natural and don't put people into groups like North Americans do. There's no such thing as an African/Argentine or an Irish/Argentine. There are people of Polish, Italian, French, Russian, Armenian, Asian, African, Jewish descent in Argentina but they generally just call themselves Argentine. They don't use the word expatriado o imigrante so much as they say extranjero, regardless of their economic level or if they plan on staying indefinitely or returning to their home country.

 

[rrptownley]

As far as I am concerned, expats are just diplobrats and multinational-ers.

I personally have been an illegal immigrant until recently. Now I'd call myself Anglo-Argentine immigrant.

 

[ElQueso]

I'm an expat because I'm living here temporarily. I'm not a citizen and I have no intention of staying here (immigrating) for the rest of my life. It's not because I'm "white" and "western". I've always considered everyone who comes here temporarily (or any other place) for more than a visit, as expats. I consider my wife an expat. Naming myself as an expat has nothing to do with how I feel about any country outside of the US. If I was living in the UK without intent to stay there permanently - guess what? I'd still be an expat.

And what about all "non-white", "non-westerners" on this forum who either have no intention of staying or are not sure if they want to stay? Maybe there aren't many (non-westerners anyway - I'm sure there are many non-whites, or do all non-whites get lumped into "white westerners" because they're "western"?), but I wonder if you all feel like you're expats or immigrants, particularly those who came to study and plan to leave afterward? I don't think these folk fall under diplobrats or multinational-ers and more than I do

I like word definitions because that way people all have a common frame of reference instead of someone all of the sudden standing up and saying the word means something else.

It sure as hell isn't my problem if there are white supremacists in the world that use the term "expat" or "expatriate" to "differentiate" themselves from people they consider inferior.

As far as actual migrant workers - that's not necessarily so clear cut. They are not necessarily going to a place to live for awhile and then return - they are going for the express purpose of working for a specific period of time, usually a harvest or something that is seasonal. While they are still expats, they are also migrant workers. Definitions also often have more than one set of boundaries (two or more sets with a union between the definitions), and this is one of them. Migrant workers merely explains what they are doing. And unless you think that migrant work is something that is undignified and somehow of "lower class" than any other kind of worker, calling migrant expat workers what they are cannot be racist. And BTW - you can actually be a migrant worker without being an expat.

But I can say that anyone who goes to live temporarily (defined as intention, not period of stay) is an expat, not an immigrant, although while that person is there they could also be a worker (migrant or other), a retired person (from any country) or ethnic background, and so on.

Anyone who wants to call themselves anything they want is fine with me. In the end, it doesn't change how you think of yourself (or how other people think of you), if you're a racist and you immigrate to a country and call yourself an expat you're still a racist, it will be obvious because most likely, no matter what you call yourself, you will still isolate yourself from the community outside of what you're comfortable with.

I am definitely out of my country. Ego sum ex patria. If I ever have another country to call home permanently, I'll call myself immigrant then.

 

[Montauk_Project]

I call myself an immigrant because I plan to stay. I call other people expats if they move around a lot.
Interesting note: most "immigrants" to the USA in the immigration heyday planned to return home. Many never did.

 

[Dublin2BuenosAires]

Expat does have the ring of people posted out here by their company / govt for an finite posting. I interviewed for my job after turning up jobless clutching a marriage license and speaking pigeon spanish.

Suppose that makes me an immigrant, I'd never thought about though. Cool.

 

[camberiu]

I don't think Argentines analyze that much. That's one of the pleasant things about living here. People don't worry so much about political correctness and are more natural and don't put people into groups like North Americans do. There's no such thing as an African/Argentine or an Irish/Argentine.

No, but there are Paraguas, Perucas, Bolitas, etc....

 

[Crema Americana]

To me it's about the reason for the move. Race has nothing to do with it, but socioeconomic reasons and class do. If you're fleeing a country because of a poor economy, crime, persecution, or a tyrannical government, you're an immigrant. If you are traveling to live it up or on a work assignment, you're an expat. To me it's about choice vs need. And plenty of white people were immigrants in years past... from Swedes to Russians. Irishmen, and Italians. Even Germans and Brits. Today most of those countries are doing fairly well (comparatively speaking) though there's still emigration, it's not in the numbers it used to be. I don't think it's accurate to lump someone who comes to retire or live (who has foreign income and funds) in with those looking to make a life with little more than the shirt on their back. Maybe it's classist, but it's not racist.

Immigrant, especially for Americans, has the connotation of leaving everything behind, performing back-breaking work, and struggle. My great great-grandparents were immigrants. I'm definitely not. A lot of expats don't even bother to learn the language and many don't work in the local economy. To deny there's a difference between someone who comes from an educated upper-middle class background with a remote white collar job to someone from a poor country looking to work in housekeeping or construction is denying a reality.

I'm not sure why people get bent out of shape about this. I don't use either term really and prefer the term foreigner. Now alien... there's an insulting term.

 

[ElQueso]

I had another thought that Magico made me remember today.

There was another thread about this not too long ago and it was posited there that perhaps a person becomes an expat after a set period of time (if they are not "sent" by a company or government). The problem I see with that is that this is usually an arbitrary figure - what should it be: 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5? And who makes that decision? A government that creates a law and says it's so? Governments have made many arbitrary things laws, and as an example no one can make a law that says the Sun revolves around the Earth and make that reality because obviously the real world says otherwise.

Being an expat or immigrant is actually all in the mind of the person who lives somewhere other than the country of his or her origin. It's as simple as that. There may be many motivations, and I'm positive that some of those people who make that distinction for themselves are indeed racist.

Until a person is ready to call a place where he or she lives home, to identify with that nation, they are expats. No matter what anyone else thinks. Racists will be racists and no law is going to change that (be it some sort of "common law" between people, or an actual governmental law). The problem with saying that everyone who lives for an extended period of time somewhere, when it is their own choice, must call themselves immigrants or they are racist is that it does not actually take into account that individual's motivation and puts feelings onto others which may well not be accurate at all.

This thread stuck in my mind and I thought about it quite a bit last night. The reason is because I have lived here 8 years, I have permanent residency, and I'm not a racist - but I don't consider myself an immigrant. I started thinking further about the article and thought "wow, maybe I am simply using a racist phraseology without realizing it."

Rubbish. Poppycock. BS.

I'm not an immigrant because I don't plan to stay here for the rest of my life. Simple as that. For whatever reason, I have not made a personal decision that I have adopted Argentina as a permanent home, a country that I would like to call myself a citizen of. Just because I haven't made that particular decision doesn't mean I'm racist. It simply means that I am not comfortable calling myself "Argentino".

There are many reasons for this. Personally, I don't like the instability. I don't like the idea that from one month to the next, on a nearly continual basis over the last few years, I've seen money hard to get into the country (and I depend on my money from outside of Argentina - that's not racist, it's reality. I will not live on what people make here, even at a high level of earnings here. It's not enough to do what I want to do with my life.), corrupt politicians trying to exploit the poor and screw the rich (unless they're allied with the people in power) and so on.

Making a decision to immigrate means that I have accepted all of that and am willing to call myself "Argentino". Argentina isn't a race, it's a country. Do I have misgivings against the politics of Argentina and by extension a mistrust of how the people of Argentina govern themselves? Yeah, absolutely, I make no bones about that. Hell, I just spent 3300 pesos in Carrefour yesterday, buying the same amount of food that I had bought about 6-7 months ago at the same place for 2400.

Does that make me racist? I don't think even with the most PC approach to defining racism could that be defined as such.

Meanwhile, I have permanent residency, I follow the laws, I speak the language, I don't isolate myself from the society around me...but I think about one day maybe finding another place to live. It may even be the States one day. Fact is, I think at this point, if I could bring all of my girls with me I'd probably go back today. If my oldest girl wasn't in a better university for her career than we could find in Paraguay, there's a real good chance we wouldn't be here any more.

You don't need to be racist to have a reason not to want to call yourself an immigrant to a place where you live, no matter how long you've lived there. Trying to claim racism for that reason is simply not accurate. Someone who refuses to call themselves an immigrant simply for racist reasons is indeed racist, but that's what that person is already. However, it doesn't make everyone a racist who doesn't call themselves an immigrant.