guardian | 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”.
What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, “an
expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or
permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s
upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (‘out of’) and patria
(‘country, fatherland’)”.
Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work
outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat,
regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in
reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people
going to work abroad.
Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants.
However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level
as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside
for ‘inferior races’.
Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they featured a story ‘Who is an expat, anyway?’.
Here are the main conclusions: “Some arrivals are described as expats;
others as immigrants; and some simply as migrants. It depends on social
class, country of origin and economic status. It’s strange to hear some
people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with
roots in a western country is considered an expat … Filipino domestic
helpers are just guests, even if they’ve been here for decades.
Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats … It’s a
double standard woven into official policy.”
