Emigrant tends to have more permanence than expat does.Originally Posted by Flixy
I grew up as a British expat living in Australia, we were there on a temporary residence visa on a temporary posting by my dad's work and when that finished we returned to the UK. We never had permanent residence or right to settle downunder.
The word expat is a perfectly valid word to use.
Interesting numbers. There's been a real turnaround in these figures compared to the figures quoted twelve months ago on hypothetical future votes.
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I think the twin factors of the world not ending and Project Fear being ridiculous nonsense, combined with the UK's and EU's very different vaccine responses have really changed some people's impressions.
Sure, but that's not related to whether you were coming or going, but on how permanent it is.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Both expat and emigrant are words for going, just different perspectives of going.
Immigrant is a word for coming.
For some reason some people have an aversion to the word expat and want to replace it with the word immigrant, perhaps because in their eyes the word "immigrant" is 'dirty'. Its not, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being an immigrant. But expat and immigrant mean different things. Replace expat with the word emigrant if you like, but the latter is rarely used and generally has a greater level of permanence than expat does.
Much the same as myself and my siblings: born abroad, brought up in different corners of the world through my father's work. The word expat was ubiquitous amongst the ... errr ... expat communities ... with which we mingled to some degree wherever we were.
After going through, and continuing to go through, the administrative, bureaucratic, expensive and generally pain-in-the-arse steps of separating themselves from the EU, I shouldn't think many Brits polled would be terribly favourable of rejoining at this point.
Give it 10-20 years when people tire of being poorer than they were - the polls would make for more interesting reading then.
Indeed. People temporarily being abroad but keeping connections with their home country are perfectly reasonably "expats".
People who move to a new country permanently and make it their new home country are perfectly reasonably "immigrants".
The two words mean different things, they're not Yes, Minister style "irregular verbs".
Expat is not just used for going, also for coming. Being in another country I can assure you the term expat is not just used for people who left the Netherlands, but also got those who came here. Except if the reasoning is that if you're from the UK you're an expat, in which case for you that would be correct.
And your explanation about permanence is also a bit BS, since e.g. Polish people working in the UK are generally called immigrants and not expats. While I heavily suspect that e.g. Americans would be called expats in the UK instead of immigrants (if not permanent).
Over here, generally speaking, expat is used more for higher educated or from western countries, immigrant for the rest. I don't think it's a stretch to note that immigrant has more negative connotations and expats prefer to see themselves more positively, especially while complaining about immigrants to their own country (insert stereotypical Dutchie/Englishman complaining about immigrants not integrating from the Spanish costa while eating and drinking their home food).
And yes of course you are right there isn't something wrong with being an immigrant, but you know as well as I do that not everybody feels that way.
I also think it's a bit of a silly discussion, but your claim that it's only for those leaving is just plain wrong. Unless when you're from the UK/western country, which is exactly the point for those who correct expat to immigrant. I can see a comparison to other 'privileges'.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Actually, the word expat expresses a notion of entitlement. I refuse to use it since these people don't have any special to distinguish them from other immigrants. Using it would be tantamount to accepting them calling themselves 'the superior race' or some such.
Congratulations America
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-opinion-poll/
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/5ucho4l0...uestions_W.pdfAs of March 4, 2021, 45 percent of people in Great Britain thought that it was wrong to leave the European Union, compared with 41 percent who thought it was the right decision
How well or badly do you think the government are doing at handling Britain's exit from theEuropean Union?
well: 40%, bad: 47%
Polls eh?
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Its all relative.
I don't read Polish media, or speak the Polish language, I would imagine that Polish people speaking in Poland about Poles overseas might use an equivalent word to "expats" when speaking about Poles abroad. Though since English isn't the first language in Poland its unlikely to be that word in their own language, whether they have an equivalent word I don't know.
From a UK perspective Polish people working in the UK are immigrants. From a Polish perspective they could be expats or emigrants depending upon the language used over there.
I haven't heard anyone who has immigrated here from any other country being referred to as expats, the word emigrant or expat is used to refer to people who are abroad from a country, not for people who have come to a country.
If someone from the Netherlands comes temporarily to the UK they'll be an expat from the Netherlands, and an immigrant to the UK. If someone from Poland comes temporarily to the UK they'll be an expat from Poland, and an immigrant to the UK. If someone from the UK goes temporarily to the Netherlands they'll be an expat from the UK, and an immigrant to the Netherlands.
The media and English speakers in England use expat more for the English not because of some form of discrimination, but because we're looking from that perspective. That's all.
It is debit vs credit, it depends what side of the ledger you're looking at.
Who in the Netherlands is being referred to as an expat? And who by? If you mean UK people referring to themselves as expats then yes, they're looking from their own perspective. If you mean the Dutch using it then its being used different to how I'd normally see it used. If an American migrated to the UK they'd be an immigrant from a British perspective. From an American perspective they might be expats. Again its all about perspective, are you referring to where they're from or where they've gone to, the words are opposites so can't be used interchangeably.
Last edited by RandBlade; 04-12-2021 at 09:27 PM.
High income, white and English speaking. Both in Amsterdam and Istanbul. I don't use the term.
In the mean time the EP will not vote on ratification of the CTA this month.
Congratulations America
So only the English speaking are using an English term in the way it is defined in plain English?
Oh the horrors.
The word has a meaning, its being used correctly.
The latest ONS figures for trade are out and show UK exports to the EU increased in February by 46.6% meaning that UK exports to the EU are now already back to the same levels they were at during most of the pandemic.
Meanwhile EU exports to the UK barely recovered in February interestingly enough. EU exports to the UK are below what they were all of last year apart from the troughs of the first lockdown.
So the UK's balance of trade which was already over a billion pounds better off in January is now further better off.
Still very early days but the macroeconomic figures are very good for the UK and not so good for the EU. It looks like the border pedantry the EU is undertaking at the moment is as expected cutting off their own nose to spite their face. Almost as if engaging in border pedantry with a country you had a major trade surplus with is not the smartest move, who could have expected that?
All this without considering the fact the UK is a billion pounds per month better off not paying into the EU budget too and so far Brexit is going great.
Yeah it's great to spot racist attitudes.
I see you still religiously follow briefings for Brexit.
Congratulations America
There's nothing racist about using words correctly.
I follow politics for the same reason I always have. Couldn't care less about what the European Parliament does or does not vote on, unlike you, it doesn't affect us anymore. But exports being back up to pandemic levels is great news. Supposedly the EU's border pedantry was supposed to be a problem for the UK but it isn't preventing exports, and a few people didn't realise like I did that the January figures were exceptional but that's been shown to be true now.
Hopefully soon we can put the pandemic behind us and have a full recovery, but our exports might be stymied by the fact that the nations we export to will still be in a pandemic even while we aren't, which will need to be remembered for the next few months.
Discussion of the discrepancy between the technical definition and real-world connotations stemming from people's real-world understanding of the term:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...igrant/570967/
Tbf there are non-white people who preferentially describe themselves as expats as well—afaict it's more about cultural ties to the Anglosphere and socioeconomic/class characteristics, along with the presence of an established "expat" community that sustains the conceit. In Sweden, the most notable example is the large and steadily growing community of tech-workers from India.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Absolutely Indian workers in a community in Sweden, keeping ties with India, are expats from India.
That's what the word means. That some people object to perfectly valid words is just illiteracy, but to be fair to Hazir English is his second language and his English is far superior to my Dutch so I won't call it that from him.
Do you have to "keep ties" to be an expat?
Yes, its part of the meaning of the word.
If you've severed your ties you're an emigrant.
Its a key part of the difference between emigrants in general and expats.
I lived in Australia for seven years doing my high school there. We never severed our ties with the UK and when I returned home and was going to university the uni originally wanted to class me as an overseas student. My dad provided a body of evidence that we were only ever temporarily in Australia (and on a temporary visa), that we'd kept our house in the UK and rented one in Aus and were always returning etc etc. I got reclassified then as a home student not an overseas one. We were expats not emigrants.
See eg. one technical/academic definition offered in this article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...igrant/570967/
More detailed account here:But what defines an “expat”? Does it matter whether you are coming from a richer country, or how long you intend to stay? At what point are you an “immigrant” instead? “The technical definition of an expat is someone who lives and works abroad for a temporary period of time but plans to return to their home country,” Sophie Cranston, a lecturer in human geography at Loughborough University, told me in an email. Unlike an immigrant, who moves to another country with the intent of staying permanently, being an expat is defined, in part, by a lack of permanence—whether an expat has lived abroad for 10 months or 10 years, he or she still has the intention of returning home.
In practice, however, the word means many different things to different people—much like the terms refugee, migrant, or immigrant. And the case of this one word illustrates how the language of migration is influenced as much by context and associations as by formal definition.
Yvonne McNulty, a senior lecturer specializing in human-resource management and expatriation at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, developed a definition of the word in 2016 with her colleague Chris Brewster, outlining a series of “boundary conditions” one must meet in order to be classified as an expat: In addition to living outside one’s home country on a non-permanent basis, an expat must also be legally employed to live and work in the country where they are based. They must also not be a citizen of that country.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/...2.2016.1243567
The Atlantic piece touches on the inconsistent, socioeconomically biased, and somewhat racist ways in which these terms are used. Going back to my example of Indian tech workers above, Indian workers employed in less prestigious and lower-skill jobs in Sweden do not tend to refer to themselves as expats—even though a technical definition of the term may indeed be more applicable to them than to higher-paid workers in higher-skilled jobs who are more likely to settle here.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Less skilled originally third world workers having migrated tend to settle down because they can get a higher paying minimum wage-ish job (higher compared to what they'd expect at home) that they have no intention of ever returning home or moving on from where they are. There's little reason to keep moving. Thus they tend to be migrants more, in mindset as well as fact.
Highly skilled workers can be more mobile, hence being more expats. A highly skilled Indian tech worker might work in Sweden now, but be in the Netherlands in 3 years time and then on to Germany. They're expats going were the highly paid highly skilled demand is.
The word has a meaning, there's nothing racist about it which is why Indians can be happy to use the term too.
So by "severed your ties" you mean that at some point in the undefined future you intend to return to your native country. Is that right?
How interesting.
I can't recall our gutter press, or even our politicians making any kind of distinction like this. Maybe because it's impossible to know?
I think you mistyped that. By severed your ties I mean you don't intend to return to your native country.
Of course its impossible to know, but the term is probably primarily used by expats themselves more than the press or politicians.
I have no idea what proportion of people do or don't return back to their native country but those who always do intend to I would consider to be expats.
I did. Good spot.
Given that we don't know, I'm not sure how we (you, me, the press, our politicians) can or should ever use the term immigrant or expat to describe somebody who chooses to live here until a.) they die or b.) some undisclosed date in the future.
Guess we need another term.
Or, it really doesn't matter in the slightest and it pointless to even try.
Expat is primarily a word people use about their own circumstances. EG my family were expats in Australia. Tim and his family were expats too and mingled with an expat community (I didn't so much, we were pretty integrated into the Australian community until we returned home - but in some countries expat communities are far more common).
Since people know what their own circumstances are, it seems reasonable for them to use a word about themselves. No big deal really, its a rather silly thing to get excised over.
My cousin is an expat in the Emirates teaching English at a school over there. Same thing.
Immigrant is a more general term to refer to people who have come here. We don't tend to use emigrant very much and expat is an alternative word to emigrant remember, not so much immigrant.
I get that. My point is that it's pointless person A describing person B as either an expat or an immigrant unless they are certain of person B's plans. Assuming person B has plans.
Person A can describe person A however they please.
Well yes. And Person C shouldn't judge Persons A or B on what they say.
I'm not judging anyone, Randblade, but thanks for the poorly disguised dig at me.
I've learnt something today. You've educated me on something and I'm simply expressing my thoughts on why the terms immigrant and expat are a bit problematic.
It wasn't a dig at you and I am surprised you took it as one.
I was referring to people like Hazir above calling the term racist, there are absolutely no racial connotations to the word whatsoever.
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