For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

I was taught these are two words for different concepts. An immigrant expects to take permanent residence in a foreign country, an expatriate – temporarily. The former doing it nearly always out of his own volition, while the latter could very well be sent for duty, to varying degrees.

I do not have any sympathy for immigrants refusing to integrate, but I don't think that an expatriate should necessarily come to be held to the same standard.

Meanwhile, the "expat" gets a free pass for being a general douche.

These are stories we tell ourselves to persuade us we're not "like them".

Unsurprisingly, it's a term invented by the British Empire, when people with no prospects in the motherland (like George Orwell) would move to the colonies to make their fortune but wouldn't dream for a second of ever "going native". The amount of time they ended up spending there, or whether they even came back at all, was irrelevant.

So an American permanently living in the UK will be considered an expat. A polish will be called an immigrant. Despite the actual definition of the word, "immigrant" has a negative nuance artificially attached to it so people use it to this effect.

In Europe I noticed that skin color makes less of a difference than "source country". Many British people will still treat African-American individuals as expats, and an Albanian as an immigrant, once they find out where they came from.

The main difference seems to be whether they're people moving there to make a new life in a new place, and the work is secondary vs. it's the work that gets them to move (and if you move for work, it's probable that you're being paid more, so have the luxury to have the option to move somewhere else in a comparatively short time.)

what do you mean by integrate? are immigrants allowed to speak their native tongue, dress differently or act differently?

does Integration to you mean the complete erasure of their past identities? because that what the German in the pub seems to think.

Of course they do. The question is how does everyone around you see you.

It does make a bit of a difference if the job lead to switching countries (mostly "expat"), or switching country lead to getting a job (mostly "immigrant"). But this detail is buried pretty deep, people will most likely first find out where you're from (by asking, or accent, etc.) and that will determine their first and longest lasting opinion.

Black Americans in the UK are considered expats while white Bosnians are considered immigrants.

> people will most likely first find out where you're from (by asking, or accent, etc.) and that will determine their first and longest lasting opinion.

Perhaps. Where I live there are a lot of Turkish immigrants, for example (mostly they/their parents moved in the 60s/70s.) At the same time I work with people who are Turkish who moved here for work, often in the past several years. I suspect that given the situation, the latter would still be considered expats and the former immigrants.

This exemplifies my point perfectly. Even though you go on to write that some were born in the country, they are still "Turkish immigrants" not "expats" or [that country's] citizens. Some may be considered expats by you now but walking down the street I can assure you people see "immigrants".

Say "British immigrants", or "US immigrants", or "German immigrants" and see how that rolls off the tongue. Now say "Polish immigrants", or "African immigrants", or "Mexican immigrants".

English has this distinct connotation for the word "immigrant" and it's associated with individuals overwhelmingly based on their country of origin (the poorer the country, the more "immigranty" the person).

I am a white male coming from a reasonably developed and civilized second world country (literal and figurative definitions apply) to follow a high end job. Yet the second I open my mouth I am very much an "immigrant" in the eyes of most locals.

Does this distinction actually exist in how people use the words "expat" and "immigrant"? A lot of the time, immigrants will have accepted their job offers already before entering the country, and if they did not switch countries, they would have the same kind of job in their home country anyway (e.g. immigrant nurses recruited by the NHS).

The dictionary definition (OED) talks about the immigrant being a person who enters a country to live there permanently, but in reality, even those who enter with the intention of leaving after a few years are considered immigrants by everyone around them if they are from a third-world country.

I was born in Australia, my mother was born in Scotland. In my mind, that makes me a second generation immigrant. I never thought of my mother, or her parents, as "expatriates".

A lot of Australians who immigrated from the UK and Ireland identified themselves as "immigrants" not "expatriates".

Don't you have sociology classes or political education in school? I just looked up the word to make sure and it turns out its meaning is almost the same to what I remembered, and it certainly is not a complete erasure as you allude to.

Nice straw man, though. Man, must it be satisfying to topple it over!

Yes, they're definitely not expats by the definition I gave earlier - those who move for work. Considering second+ generation residents as immigrants was really a mis-edit on my part, though they are seen by "natives" here as immigrants, often.

But you're kinda focussing on a point I wasn't making - that (in my experience, where I am), it's not only white people who self-identify as expats. Russians, Bangladeshis, Kenyans, USians, etc. are all generally expats if they moved for work.

Right, but the point is people who are generally called expats get a job offer in another country, and move because of that job.

People who are generally called immigrants want to move, and so try to get a job in another country (or maybe don't, depends on the relationship between the two countries and the status of the person.)

The expat causality is (typically) "job -> move", the immigrant causality is (typically) "want to move -> job".

The actual ordering of when the move happens and when the job is got aren't that relevant.

Also notable that there are plenty of exceptions, grey areas, regional differences, etc. involved. Which is why I don't like sweeping statements like the one I was originally replying to, because they're invariably wrong in some situation.

yes, I've had an overly technical education but I fail to see how that's relevant.

> I just looked up the word to make sure

I feel like you misread my argument. "seems to think" means that I don't agree with him. Some people, including the person that this thread-tree is about (in my opinion) use integration when they mean cultural erasure. (aka assimilation)

if people speaking/dressing differently in a train implies that they are not integrated (according to him). Than integration (according to him) implies that people do not speak/dress differently which I see as cultural erasure.

And from my own experience, I've been told by a Turkish friend that he received cold stares and was yelled at for speaking Turkish with his daughter in public transportation (out of concern for her integration). Although, it's a common technique for each parent to speak a single language when you want to raise a bilingual child.

and honestly, it's not that novel of an idea:

- "In fact, integration has become a code word in some circles for intolerance and discrimination" - The Emerging Monoculture: Assimilation and the "model Minority" De William E et al

- 'the older völkish notion of German national identity lurks behind calls for acculturation as a condition for social acceptance.In contemporary Germany, "integration" is a codeword for cultural assimilation, with a strong emphasis on learning the majority language and history.' - From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic: Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification. Jeffrey J. Anderson. Eric Langenbacher.

But in rich countries that are old enough to have a population that already forgot they probably also came from elsewhere (populations have always moved around, replacing, killing, and/or mixing with the locals), recent waves of immigration are always from poor countries with a very different culture/language (so that they have trouble assimilating, getting jobs, contributing and so on... and many end up giving up and start to feel marginalized, causing some to appeal to crime) which made the word immigrant have a very negative connotation... hence the need for people from other rich countries to distinguish themselves from those poor people and call themselves something more respectable like "expats".