In recent days on sites like this, people who have chosen to live abroad for whatever reason have been expressing their dismay at being described as ex-pats.
Some say the word expat is loaded with innuendo, insult and whiffs of old spice and colonialism. They see it as a sniffy term conjuring up white linen suits, panamas hats, G&Ts, punkahwallas and privilege in the blistering sun.
It’s a very British word, an insulting cut above being an immigrant or a migrant or even a foreign worker.
So I began to ponder what makes one person an expat, and another a foreign worker or migrant?
And I realised the distinction matters, because the difference in definition can become racist and dehumanising.
It is a way of defining sets of people … one aloof, well-off and nationalistic despite their abandonment of their homeland.
The other – migrants – can be seen as suggesting somebody on the run, a boat person. Broken families at definable borders.
Well, I have spent many decades of my life crossing borders so that I could work in my chosen job. I am a writer, editor and broadcaster.
There is no doubt that in the UK immigration and the movement of workers across borders were two of the defining political issues of the Brexit referendum and in the US, jobs and immigration were at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s sad victory.
And there is no doubt that my job as a travelling writer has become more difficult. Forgetting about Covid for a moment, it has just become harder to get about.
Academics have spent years trying to categorise people like me. Are we ex-pats or migrants, immigrants?
Dr Yvonne McNulty who has been trying to define the terms for at SIM University in Singapore. says: “It’s not about the colour of your skin, and it’s not about the salary that you earn.”
A business expatriate, she says, is a legally working individual who resides temporarily in a country of which they are not a citizen, in order to accomplish a career-related goal no matter the pay or skill level.
But Chris Brewster, another researcher, says she’s wrong. Migrants, by definition “are people who intend to go and live in a county for a long time and they’re not allowed to. They have to go home when they’ve completed their assignment.”
However, Malte Zeeck, founder and co-CEO of InterNations, the world’s largest expat network, with 2.5 million members in 390 cities around the world, says: “It’s all about the motivations behind their decision to move abroad.
“There are many types of expat with many different reasons to do so,” Malte says: “For an ex-pat, living abroad is rather a lifestyle choice. not borne out of economic necessity or dire circumstances in their home country such as oppression or persecution.
“Immigrants are usually defined as people who have come to a different country in order to live there permanently, whereas expats move abroad for a limited amount of time or have not yet decided upon the length of their stay.”
So, in fact I think that calling yourself an ex-pat is just a way of describing yourself as somebody who got lucky and moved abroad.
Yes, it has old cultural implications but so do so many things in the rich world of developing language.
So, what do you think? Do you want to be known as an ex-pat? A migrant? An immigrant? An itinerant worker?
#expat #foriegn #migrant #immigrant #lifestlye
