Recently i have been wondering why people consider me as an expatriate rather than an immigrant and looking for some tips about it i found out that the web community and social network have been talking over about this matter. But despite a lot of arguments i haven't found a satisfying answer yet.
Unfortunately in this case the latin roots doesn't help, indeed etymologically speaking there's not much difference between expatriate and immigrant.
According to wikipedia (“an expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing"), you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expatriate, regardless of his skin colour or country. On the other hand the majority contend the idea that it's not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad. One of the most provocative assumption read so far says that in the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word “expat”.
I think there's the precise intention to amplify a misleading racial discrimination issue with these discussions; the matter in this case is much more simple.
My country of origin has provided so many immigrants around the world and still now most of them proudly consider themselves italian immigrants. Argentina, Australia, Usa, Brazil, Germany are plenty of italian immigrants and, if not mistaken, we are white. So the word "immigrants" doesn't sound discriminating to me.
In my point of view it's not about the social class, country of origin or race. Basically the trick is in the common bad meaning attributed to the term "immigrant". Actually the purpose of the two different groups set the red line between immigrants and expats.
The purpose of an immigrant is to live permanently in a foreign land, leaving the native country because of economic, religion or conflict reasons. And this is exactly what is happening with afrikaans, south americans and middle east people. And the same happened during 50s and 60s for italians. Both in the past and nowadays they strive and struggle to escape from the native land due to the mentioned reasons, with the precise intention to acquire the new citizenship (in some case they also lose the origin country's one).
It's quite easy to understand then, regardless races, that British, Americans, Germans or Scandinavian have not these priorities at all thanks to the wealth conditions typical of such countries and the only reasons that bring them around the world are related to temporary business opportunities. They might set up later in the foreign country but we cannot consider them as immigrants because they still feel belonging to their origin countries and as i notice they live like they were still at home without any cultural integration.
Put in another way, immigrants may have a larger emotional commitment to their new place of residence.
In conclusion i could say that being an expatriate is a choice, but when you're forced to move then you become an immigrant.
Unfortunately in this case the latin roots doesn't help, indeed etymologically speaking there's not much difference between expatriate and immigrant.
According to wikipedia (“an expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing"), you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expatriate, regardless of his skin colour or country. On the other hand the majority contend the idea that it's not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad. One of the most provocative assumption read so far says that in the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word “expat”.
I think there's the precise intention to amplify a misleading racial discrimination issue with these discussions; the matter in this case is much more simple.
My country of origin has provided so many immigrants around the world and still now most of them proudly consider themselves italian immigrants. Argentina, Australia, Usa, Brazil, Germany are plenty of italian immigrants and, if not mistaken, we are white. So the word "immigrants" doesn't sound discriminating to me.
In my point of view it's not about the social class, country of origin or race. Basically the trick is in the common bad meaning attributed to the term "immigrant". Actually the purpose of the two different groups set the red line between immigrants and expats.
The purpose of an immigrant is to live permanently in a foreign land, leaving the native country because of economic, religion or conflict reasons. And this is exactly what is happening with afrikaans, south americans and middle east people. And the same happened during 50s and 60s for italians. Both in the past and nowadays they strive and struggle to escape from the native land due to the mentioned reasons, with the precise intention to acquire the new citizenship (in some case they also lose the origin country's one).
It's quite easy to understand then, regardless races, that British, Americans, Germans or Scandinavian have not these priorities at all thanks to the wealth conditions typical of such countries and the only reasons that bring them around the world are related to temporary business opportunities. They might set up later in the foreign country but we cannot consider them as immigrants because they still feel belonging to their origin countries and as i notice they live like they were still at home without any cultural integration.
Put in another way, immigrants may have a larger emotional commitment to their new place of residence.
In conclusion i could say that being an expatriate is a choice, but when you're forced to move then you become an immigrant.
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