Expats vs. immigrants
Expats are immigrants who take themselves too seriously
I ‘ve long wanted to write this post. Even more so, since I realized that my writing revolves around expat life, because that means that this post touches one of the core values of this Substack.
If you search online, you will find many explanations of the etymologies of the words expat and immigrant1. You will also find a bunch of articles comparing them. Some will point out that the main difference is the reason a person has moved out of their country, for instance due to economic or political reasons; others will focus on the duration of the migration.
This post is not about the etymologies of the two words. Let me repeat that:
This post is not about the etymologies of the two words.
This post is about how, in my experience, we have ended up using these words in practice, regardless of their definitions, as you may find them in dictionaries. However, definitions can serve as a good starting point. According to merriam-webster, an immigrant is defined as:
immigrant: a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence
Expat (short for expatriate) on the other hand, is defined as:
expat: a person who lives in a foreign country
I don’t know about you, but they sound pretty close to me. And even if they do not have identical meanings, we can agree that by and large, the difference is pretty insignificant.
People were moving around regions and countries since… well, forever. They were migrating. And they still do. Somewhere during the last 15 years2 or so however, the fact that people migrate, mainly in pursuit of better living conditions, has been normalized. We all have a friend or a relative who at least tried it at some point in their life.
Technology and globalization have played a major role in this. Technology, because it has created new jobs that are needed around the world and made online collaboration easier. Thanks to technology, we can also work remotely, i.e. not have physical presence at the location of our work.
Globalization on the other hand, has made the world smaller, i.e. it is much easier to research new places, travel and communicate. To put it simply, if I am interested to immigrate to another country, someone has probably done that before me. That makes it easier for me to do it as well.
Starting from the end, the two words differ in the sense that, expat is often used to describe a well-educated person, working in a well-paid job, most likely as a white collar. Immigrant on the other hand, is used to describe a person that has moved in order to secure a better future (just like an expat), but without a set of skills that will set them apart from the rest of the crowd. Hence, they are usually targeting unskilled, blue collar positions3. This distinction is already unfortunate, if not outright wrong.
To make things worse, my experience is that the term expat is used by the first category of people (white collars), in an effort to differentiate themselves from the term immigrant. That is because, being an expat implies better educational background and potentially a better paying job, than being an immigrant. And since these are two factors that are used to define social status, we try to show them off whenever possible.
In short, expats are immigrants who take themselves too seriously.
Ok that might be a bit too harsh, so let me elaborate. The term expat is trending for quite some years now and it makes sense that, just like the term immigrant, it can be used to describe everyone living in a foreign country4. That is how it should be.
The problem arises when people push back against being called immigrants and insist on being called expats, because that implies there is something in the term immigrant that they do not want to be associated with.
If both words mean the same, why would you care not being called an immigrant? If I am right, it is because it is in our nature to show off our successes. It could be that we are showing off by buying an expensive car, ordering an expensive bottle of wine, or by letting people know we are friends with someone famous.
Similarly, you might want to hint that you are not an unskilled worker that gets paid minimum wage, because you consider yourself better than that. Instead, you want to make clear that you have a degree from a good university5 and you are making good money. And you want to do that without saying it out loud, because it would be… lame.
So what do you do? You use an existing word (expat) in a way that it means something different. And if a lot of people do that consistently, the word changes meaning, maybe not in the dictionaries, but in our minds, where it matters most.
The result unfortunately is that, being an expat, ends up meaning being an immigrant with more money:
Expat = immigrant + good education + good salary
Instead of trying so hard to differentiate from immigrants, we should try to do the exact opposite; that is, realize that if you are an expat, you are most likely also an immigrant and embrace both terms. As I said before, the problem is not the words themselves; the problem is when we get offended when someone calls us immigrants.
In this post, I explained that this Substack started off by being quite broad and recently found its way towards the niche of expat life. Its description is now “Reflections of a millennial immigrant”. Well, now you know why it is not “Reflections of a millennial expat”.
Naive Ignorant, proud expat and immigrant, over and out.
There is also foreign worker, but I will skip that to keep the post short.
Don’t quote me on the number.
If you are unfamiliar with the terms white and blue collar, this post from Investopedia might help explain the meaning and history behind them. In a nutshell, the terms derive from the 1920s, when office workers were required to wear shirts, usually in white color, while employees performing manual labor, were wearing blue overalls. Even though the difference between the two terms is not so clear nowadays, white collar is used to describe an (office) position, that would usually require more years of education than a blue collar job. Blue collar can be considered an offensive term, but rest assured, it is not how it is meant in this post.
Refugees are a different story, that I will not touch in this post. The main difference, is that the term refers to people who flee from their country, often due to political turmoil or natural disasters.
Or college, for my US friends.
Very interesting that the definition of migrants and expats are not that different.
Looking at how I see the word being used, I feel that also the political economic situation of the “home” country plays a role.
I think that we use migrants for workers that are economically and or politically pushed out of there country to find - almost out of necessity - better standard of living, whereas expats might come from countries with political economic situations where they don’t necessarily have to leave from have a comfortable future. Instead expats might choose to maximising there political economic situation.
Now you see with the above that we almost would divide migrants and expats according to the north/west south/east divide I.e migrants come from the economic south and political east, and go to the political west and economic north. Expat on the other hand move within the economic north and political west.
Now, indeed I see also the term expat being used for people from the political east/economic south. In these cases there is a differentiation whether they did their studies already abroad or whether they had some experience in the “home” country before migrating. i.e the term expats refers to the migrants with skills that are requested by the new country. Instead when the whole bachelor is done abroad, more often the term migrant is being used. Again here I feel the political economic situation plays a role in the sense that doing the whole studies abroad could reflects a situation of the “need” to go abroad to secure a better future.
Especially in this situation where there seems to be a thin line between the use of expats and migrants from the same country, the term braindrain is often coined. This concept of “braindrain” could maybe be interesting to look at in your future post!
This is an excellent commentary on the difference between the terms. I stopped calling myself an expat years ago when I realized the privilege that it connotes. And while I do need to acknowledge and honor the fact that I do have extreme passport privilege as a Canadian (for now anyway), it's not something I like to go around broadcasting or bragging about. And the very idea of calling myself something that others who want to do the same type of thing as me, move abroad, don't qualify for because their passports don't let them into as many places and perhaps they come from a poorer country where access to education was significantly more limited than mine, makes me cringe to no end. You call it white collar here, but it screams white privilege to me. And that's not to say that only white people can be expats, but there are definitely some similarities there. And for that reason, I think the term borders on racism.