Immigrant vs ex-pat

mikemac1

I see it all the time in various newspaper online comment sections of British papers

People who move to the UK but we'll say Ireland for my thread are immigrants

Brits who move abroad call themselves ex-pats


Now it was my understanding that ex-pat was a person in a permanent job, like you are an engineer in Ireland and your company sends you to maybe Canada for a few years on some big project

But many of the commenters seem to have just moved away permanently or maybe retired like to the south of Spain.


Now if I headed off to Australia or wherever to look for employment, I'm an immigrant in Australia. That's me, that's the term. I emigrate and I immigrate.

Is immigrant a dirty word? Why do many insist on being called ex-pats?
And just wondering if you moved to a new country would this be something you think of or is this maybe for class conscious people? I think it might be class



Just asking would you insist on calling yourself a certain way. Not the kind of thing that would come up in every day conversation but maybe on a message board.

Not sure if this will get a debate, just something I've been wondering
I just see commenters on message boards have some sort of set rule and I'd like to learn more

P. Breathnach

I think of an immigrant as somebody who enters a country with the intention of settling there, and an ex-pat as somebody who expects to remain in the medium term, but does not intend to remain indefinitely.

Emergent facts might overcome original intentions: the immigrant might move away, and the ex-pat remain.

And, of course, people do not all use language in the same way. I sometimes suspect that people choose to call themselves ex-pats in order to distinguish themselves from "the natives"; it might imply a notion of superiority, or it might indicate an unwillingness to integrate, or it might be simply an unconsidered choice between available terms.

looksee

This discussion is a total non-event. The term ex-pat has been used for a long number of years - I was an ex-pat when I went to Africa in the '60s. The locals would not call you that because it is a term that meant 'away from my country' to the people who used it. Its as simple as that.

Anyone living in other than their own country for whatever reason might be called an ex-pat because that is what they are: ex-patriots.

You might be on contract or you might be an immigrant - whether you use the term depends on your sense of contact with your homeland, if you wanted to think about it that deeply. White Africans would not call themselves ex-pats because they were in the country they considered their home. Tho' perversely some would talk about 'going home' to the UK in much the same way as Irish Americans talk about Ireland as 'home'.

Ireland uses 'diaspora' to suggest Irish people abroad, Brits have ex-pats. You would have to work very hard to find a reason for assuming snobbishness or imperialism in the phrase.

The Corinthian

looksee wrote: »

Ireland uses 'diaspora' to suggest Irish people abroad, Brits have ex-pats. You would have to work very hard to find a reason for assuming snobbishness or imperialism in the phrase.

Diaspora refers to a scattering or dispersion of a (large part) population, it should not be confused with either ex-pat(riot) or immigrant.

I would agree with Breathnach's general definition of an ex-pat being in another country for a temporary period of time, while an immigrant being more permanent. For the latter, they in many ways cease to be ex-patriots because the new country becomes their new home, new patria.

Of course it's probably not as simple as that and definitions have a tendency to morph and change. Notably, I have noticed a tendency to differentiate ex-pat and immigrants on the basis of social, educational and (often) racial grounds. Educated, Western professionals are ex-pats. Uneducated, non-Western, lower skilled workers are immigrants. This attitude may hark back to nineteenth century British mentality, when many British ex-pats travelled across the British Empire to modernize and 'civilize' the natives.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts and hardly definitive. Except for the first bit; diaspora really is another type of term altogether.

looksee

The Corinthian wrote: »

Diaspora refers to a scattering or dispersion of a (large part) population, it should not be confused with either ex-pat(riot) or immigrant.

I would agree with Breathnach's general definition of an ex-pat being in another country for a temporary period of time, while an immigrant being more permanent. For the latter, they in many ways cease to be ex-patriots because the new country becomes their new home, new patria.

Of course it's probably not as simple as that and definitions have a tendency to morph and change. Notably, I have noticed a tendency to differentiate ex-pat and immigrants on the basis of social, educational and (often) racial grounds. Educated, Western professionals are ex-pats. Uneducated, non-Western, lower skilled workers are immigrants.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts and hardly definitive. Except for the first bit; diaspora really is another type of term altogether.

You have just (mostly) restated my argument. I did not say that expatriot and diaspora were the same thing, I was saying that Ireland came up with a word like diaspora - there are Brits all over the world, but they do not describe themselves as a diaspora, in the same way that there are Irish who live elsewhere who would not describe themselves as ex-pats, even though both these words are available to both groups. It is a matter of colloquialism.

The main reason I imagine that the 'uneducated etc' workers don't describe themselves as ex-patriots is that in their uneducated state they are not accustomed to using latin phrases. Or they are not Brits, or English speaking - it is after all an English term.

This attitude may hark back to nineteenth century British mentality, when many British ex-pats travelled across the British Empire to modernize and 'civilize' the natives.

:rolleyes:

Brits who move abroad call themselves ex-pats

Not all of them, but what if they do?

Now it was my understanding that ex-pat was a person in a permanent job, like you are an engineer in Ireland and your company sends you to maybe Canada for a few years on some big project

Well your understanding is wrong. A person in that situation could describe himself as an ex-pat if he wished, but the conditions you describe are not essential.

Now if I headed off to Australia or wherever to look for employment, I'm an immigrant in Australia. That's me, that's the term. I emigrate and I immigrate.

Good for you, no one is arguing

Is immigrant a dirty word? Why do many insist on being called ex-pats?
And just wondering if you moved to a new country would this be something you think of or is this maybe for class conscious people? I think it might be class

And this is where you are muck-stirring, trying to get a bit of Brit bashing out of a perfectly innocent term that you don't understand.

Who suggested that immigrant is a dirty word? And anyway expatriot has a different meaning. Maybe you are just not picking up that subtlety.

doctor evil

looksee wrote: »

Who suggested that immigrant is a dirty word?

Same people who think asylum seeker is a dirty word?

Whenever I hear expatriat I think of someone who hasn't fully integrated, as if still holding on.

The Corinthian

looksee wrote: »

You have just (mostly) restated my argument. I did not say that expatriot and diaspora were the same thing, I was saying that Ireland came up with a word like diaspora - there are Brits all over the world, but they do not describe themselves as a diaspora, in the same way that there are Irish who live elsewhere who would not describe themselves as ex-pats, even though both these words are available to both groups. It is a matter of colloquialism.

They do not describe themselves as a diaspora because the levels of their emigration would never qualify as a diaspora. Diaspora is a far better defined word than either ex-pat or immigrant if you care to look it up.

:rolleyes:

I simply suggested an influence on how the term began - it's not exactly a far fetched idea.

Anyhow, this is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate

looksee

The Corinthian wrote: »

They do not describe themselves as a diaspora because the levels of their emigration would never qualify as a diaspora. Diaspora is a far better defined word than either ex-pat or immigrant if you care to look it up.

Australian Bureau of Statistics: 2006 -
Country of Birth - UK Estimated resident population 1,153,264
Country of Birth - Ireland Estimated resident population 57,338

Even in the US, in 2000, 30 million claimed Irish ancestry, 25 claimed English (not British) ancestry, so there is a similar size.

The word diaspora does indeed have a different meaning, my point is that it is used in Ireland (since it was made famous in a particular Presidential speech), as a description of a circumstance. It could be used by British people, but by custom and practise it is not. Same argument, in reverse, with expatriot.

Your loaded observation

This attitude may hark back to nineteenth century British mentality, when many British ex-pats travelled across the British Empire to modernize and 'civilize' the natives

is completely irrelevant. They were ex-pats because they were not in their own country. Your reasoning of why they were in other countries may well be true, but it is not part of or relevant to the argument.

My argument is that the OP has taken a simple descriptive word and tried to load it with imperialist/racist/classist implications that are simply not there, a kind of Humanities forum upmarket Brit-bashing attempt that is just silly.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

MrTsSnickers

looksee wrote: »

My argument is that the OP has taken a simple descriptive word and tried to load it with imperialist/racist/classist implications that are simply not there, a kind of Humanities forum upmarket Brit-bashing attempt that is just silly.

I would have to disagree. I didn't get that at all. I get the feeling that this is simply about language usage. Ireland uses diaspora British people use ex-pat (or "I moved for a better life"). Again, I don't think this is or should be about racism/classism and I would be extremely hesitant to suggest that this is an "upmarket brit-bashing attempt". Just a question.

Ickle Magoo

mikemac1 wrote: »

Brits who move abroad call themselves ex-pats

MrTsSnickers wrote: »

Ireland uses diaspora British people use ex-pat (or "I moved for a better life").

As one of those British people posters seem to be assuming to speak for, I'd have to disagree that it's a universal term. IME it is more often used by those who are temporarily away from their native country and often by those who are in a community of people from their native country within another country ie ex-pat community.

I think the difference between immigrant and ex-patriot in terms of usage comes down mostly to assumptions about he socio-economic situation of that person. I suspect it also has to do with the wish for that person to become fully integrated with their new country as opposed to one from another country who just resides there. I don't ever refer to myself as an ex-pat - but equally I have no wish to hand over my British passport, apply for citizenship or be considered Irish.