I’ve just read an article in The Guardian titled ‘Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?‘ and I find myself saying “hey, hey, ho, ho, wait just a minute, you’ve got it all wrong!”
The premise of the article, written by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin is exactly what the title implies: what’s up with white people who work in foreign countries being called expats, whilst Africans, Arabs and Asians are called immigrants? He says that white expats are enjoying the “privileges of a racist system” that is directly related to “an outdated supremacist ideology.”
I’m white.
I’m an expat.
I am not a racist.
Nor do I consider myself to be participating in an inherently racist system. I have lived in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and I have friends from all of those regions, and others. My husband works for a company where geographical mobility is supported and encouraged. His colleagues hail from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Angola, Kenya, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Turkey, and numerous other countries from both the developing and developed world. In our world, whether or not you are an expat has everything to do with your long term intentions, and absolutely nothing to do with your country of origin or the colour of your skin. If you move to a country for work or personal reasons, and have the intention of eventually leaving, you’re an expat. If you move to a country for work or personal reasons to put down roots in that country, with no conscious intention of leaving again, you’re an immigrant.
My parents moved to South Africa when I was twelve. I took my first Afrikaans language test about a month after we arrived. Of course I couldn’t answer any of the questions, and my paper was returned to me with ‘Immigrant’ scrawled in red writing across the top. ‘Immigrant’ because that is exactly what I was. My parents intended to stay, and did. I’m an expat today because we go where the work is, and the work is constantly moving.
But alas, our world is not so cut and dry and the moniker ‘expat’ has valid social and economic connotations that are different to those of ‘migrant worker’ or ‘skilled migrant’ or even ‘immigrant’, although I disagree that it should have racial connotations too. The picture used in Mr Koutonin’s article is of a white ‘expat’ family being served tea in a garden, waited upon by an Indian lady and young boy. It perfectly fulfills the outdated stereotype of what many people think being an expat is all about: G&T’s in the garden, being waited on hand and foot by the natives; spoilt, bored housewives who turns their noses up at the locals and spend their boozy lunches complaining about how challenging their lives are.
But this is not the real expat world, people! And if either of the above analogies rings a bell, shame on you!
I come from a country where race was and is an issue, where the economic and social divides are so enormous it’s as if there are two worlds existing in one country. But I can assure you that the ‘us and them’ attitude of the near past is no longer welcome, and is no longer tolerated. The younger generation, my generation, are different. We’re inclusive, tolerant and inquisitive; we’re progressive, proactive and unshackled by the petty restraints of skin colour. I started my expat journey at the tender age of twenty-four, too young to be satisfied with G&T’s on the lawns of the club, too inquisitive to separate myself from the local culture, and too humble to have a chip on my shoulder, and you know what, the new generation of expats are exactly the same. Lunches are local (sometimes boozy), parties are inclusive, and friends over for dinner resembles a gathering of the United Nations where quite frankly expat, local or immigrant is irrelevant.
And so I would challenge Mr Koutonin to allow for the possibility (and in my experience, the reality) that his historical definition of ‘expat’ is no longer relevant, and neither are those who perpetuate it. The new generation of expats travel to learn not to isolate, we reach outward not inward, and we empathize not criticize. Are we privileged? Yes, of course. We’re privileged because we have the opportunity to embrace diversity, immerse culturally, and expand our worldview, and at the end of it all our time abroad is measured not by how effectively we maintained our ‘old’ lives, but by how deeply those lives have been altered, molded and enhanced along the way.
*Mr Koutonin has since clarified that he didn’t actually mean ‘white’ to refer to skin colour but rather to “a brand, a social status, an ideology”, but I’m not sure it really matters anyway. Us new-gen expats are pretty inclusive regardless of colour, culture or creed, and there’s nothing to be gained by perpetuating hierarchical notions that bear no relevance to our modern reality.
You’re serious?
Rarely 🙂
I empathize with your feelings: it’s so XIX century mentality the article of Mr Koutonin.
It’s not easy to integrate and classify clearly who belongs to which definition and I’ve learned something: who cares??
The less boxes we have to fit in, the more freedom we enjoy to be ourselves and let others to do the same with us.
Our kids don’t ask anymore where do you come from, their question might be: which mix are you?
Thank you for sharing your comments!
Thanks for your comment Vittoria! ‘Which mix are you’…love it! See, our kids know how it should be done 🙂
I have never confused the meaning of Expatriate with Immigrant or fused the notion of Colonialism with Integration or Subjugation. It is indeed wonderful to witness the metamorphosis of the present day youth breaking free from these archaic notions and self imposed inhibitions which have diminishing relevance in the New World! We are all economic wanderers..
Exactly! And very well said!
I saw the original article and disagreed with pretty much all of it. I much prefer your take on the distinction. For me, an expat is not only temporary, but also ‘invited’ with a job or inter company transfer generally lined up first. There’s no burden on the local economy in terms of anything provided by the state such as schooling or healthcare. The immigrant may or may not have a job lined up and is planning to stay for keeps with all that that entails. ..I’m curious, did you learn Afrikaans in the end?
Thanks for your comment! Yes I did learn Afrikaans. Married one too 🙂
Hi, I am a Chinese immigrant in the US. I came at age 4 when my parents immigrated here. We’ve never been anything other than immigrants and will never escape the description of being immigrants. Don’t pretend that I am somehow NOT an immigrant in your eyes and you see me as another “American.” The moment people hear my mother’s accent, or see the color of her skin, they relegate her to being just another “immigrant.” Not an “expat,” an immigrant.
My parents are multiple graduate and doctoral degree holding physicians (and biostatistician) who were invited to take a research position in the United States at the Virginia Commonwealth University in the Immunology and Microbiology lab of Dr. Tew to study follicular dendritic cells. Their research has contributed to breaking edge cancer treatment. My father runs a molecular genetics lab at a cancer center. My mother runs the stats and design on cancer treatment trials. they literally SAVE LIVES. (what do you do, mommy blogger?) Do they burden the local economy? I went to local schools and had healthcare. Did I “burden” the system? My parents have never not paid taxes. My parents also didn’t know if they would “stay for keeps” until after my father chose to pursue a Ph.D on top of his MD (which he was also invited to pursue). My dad considered moving back to China until my brother was in college.
Now we are all citizens and my brother was born here. But we are also immigrants. We will always be immigrants. It is a burden of an identification placed on us solely based on our ethnic, racial, and national origins. The moniker (and frankly, your exact description of such moniker) reflects the (and your) racist and white/western supremacist global system derived from centuries of colonialism and imperialism in Eastern and African nations. You automatically see immigrant as “lesser” and a “burden” while expats are what? above it all? I know no white person likes to be called racist but how hard is it to sit down, read and review how YOU benefit from a historically ingrained global culture of white privilege and oppression of color.
I understand that in today’s world, this is a complex social construct and not solely hinged on race any longer. If I moved to Scandinavia, I’d be an American expat, I would be considered such. But only so long as I fit the White Western ideal of “American,” perfect English, H&M clothing, love of Starbucks. As soon as I speak on the phone to my mother in Chinese, wear the sweater my aunt sent me, or eat tripe in my pho, I lose that privilege. I become another immigrant on a plane, immigrant who dresses “tacky, immigrant who eats weird (but “oh so diverse”) foods. Don’t believe me? Google the Youtuber speaking Arabic to his mother on a plane and what happened to him. If you are honestly an “expat” living abroad who has never examined white privilege in depth on a deeper level, you have no right to be commenting on it.
It sickens me to see white “expats” feeding their own confirmation biases on blogs like this. Instead of asking OTHER people of color who are labeled immigrants and actually suffer the burden of that label what their lived experiences are, you simply confirm your own blinded and privileged opinions to make you feel better about yourselves. You are more interested in your own “diversity” vanity than truly caring about others. Yay, you’re a world traveler with bilingual kids? So are my parents. So are their kids. You don’t see my mom blogging about her “Expat” life.
The real question is this: What about being labeled an “immigrant” do you think doesn’t apply to you? Is it your whiteness? is it your socioeconomic status? Is it your aversion to the very label “immigrant” and all the prejudiced pejorative baggage attached to it? THERE’S your answer to why expat vs immigrant is a racist issue.
Thanks for your comment Jenny, it’s good to hear arguments from the other side. I can see how being an immigrant to the US or other countries throws up the identity issues you clearly feel. You are right, you may never be seen as American in the US, but I would suggest respectfully that this perhaps has something to do with your own identity politics too? I have many friends whose parents were migrants to the US, and some who were born outside the US but grew up there as immigrants. Balancing their geographical identity with their inner cultural identity is hard for them, but they do it without the anger you seem to hold. They are Chinese and American/Vietnamese and American etc. It’s a constant balancing act for them. And for me, I was an immigrant in South Africa because my parents moved there after I was born and stayed for my entire childhood. They were immigrants, not expats. White immigrants. I’m an expat now because our jobs take us to a new country every 3 years on a temporary basis. That has nothing to do with race in my eyes. At my sons’ school there are more than eighty nationalities, black, white, Indian, Muslim, Asian and they are all expats simply due to their transient lifestyles.
I hear what you are saying though, and no I am not a non-white person so I will never know what it is like to be living with a different skin colour. But what I do know is what it feels like to be labelled as an outsider, to look and sound different, to have different traditions and customs, and to feel in my heart that I belong to a country but to also know that to others I will always be an outsider/immigrant. Your family sounds like the epitome of the American Dream, contributing to the progress of a country and excelling there, but given the current political direction of the US I can understand why you feel alienated.
Your mom should write about her experiences as an immigrant! Her life journey sounds like its been fascinating, and that kind of social history always has value, even to us expats 😉
Hi Lucille, my name is Flavia, a fellow expat, and also not a racist 🙂 Well said.
I wrote a post about that article as well. I don’t even think I read the original at first, just people talking about it, and agreeing with it, which I was shocked by. As you mentioned above, there are people from all over the world living all over the world, and they are all expats, we are all expats, trying to get on with our lives, with no labels, besides the one that we will be forever a foreigner wherever we are.
Thanks Flavia! Yes I think his definition of expat was outdated and not in touch with how many (most) expats are these days. Thanks for reading!! Xx