Expatriate or expat, from the Latin roots for “out of the fatherland”, just means living outside your country of birth. The difference between expat and immigrant “on paper” is at broadest nonexistent, and at narrowest expats are temporary and immigrants are permanent — but the difference between expats and immigrants “in practice” is really just that expats are white and immigrants are not. So expat is basically a “LinkedIn euphemism” for a migrant worker, because migrant worker is too “Kenyan taxi driver, Filipina maid, Polish construction worker, Chinese cashier”-coded, sorry, I mean, “unskilled taxi driver etc”-coded. I actually have a family anecdote of my mom once meeting an “anti-immigrant” politician’s spiel with “I’m an immigrant, you know!” only for the politician to snap back, “I’m not talking about immigrants like you!” — so just as racialized people are generally barred from the label of expat, unracialized (“white”) people might even experience being barred from the label of immigrant in turn, because politicians want to charge expat with “good vibes” and immigrant with “bad vibes”, and how dare you not put yourself on a pedestal!
But yeah, in any case, as I’m saying, it’s important to give people some leeway with this — a raised eyebrow and nothing more until you get to know the person. Not everybody has put so much thought into this topic, or noticed these things.
Wait, I thought the word expat meant someone living in a country that they weren’t a citizen of?
Am I using the wrong word? D:
Expatriate or expat, from the Latin roots for “out of the fatherland”, just means living outside your country of birth. The difference between expat and immigrant “on paper” is at broadest nonexistent, and at narrowest expats are temporary and immigrants are permanent — but the difference between expats and immigrants “in practice” is really just that expats are white and immigrants are not. So expat is basically a “LinkedIn euphemism” for a migrant worker, because migrant worker is too “Kenyan taxi driver, Filipina maid, Polish construction worker, Chinese cashier”-coded, sorry, I mean, “unskilled taxi driver etc”-coded. I actually have a family anecdote of my mom once meeting an “anti-immigrant” politician’s spiel with “I’m an immigrant, you know!” only for the politician to snap back, “I’m not talking about immigrants like you!” — so just as racialized people are generally barred from the label of expat, unracialized (“white”) people might even experience being barred from the label of immigrant in turn, because politicians want to charge expat with “good vibes” and immigrant with “bad vibes”, and how dare you not put yourself on a pedestal!
But yeah, in any case, as I’m saying, it’s important to give people some leeway with this — a raised eyebrow and nothing more until you get to know the person. Not everybody has put so much thought into this topic, or noticed these things.
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