Apologies, bit of politics. But I’ve seen a lot recently on Twatter about Brexit regrets (good). But one of the things I most hate about the current British exceptionalism/Brexit malarkey is how Brits abroad are endlessly described as expats while other foreigners are immigrants (these days generally illegal in the UK).
I’ve lived in Spain 20 years and am very definitely an immigrant, not an expat. I know there are people from all parts here so how do others feel?
FWIW Spain have treated me very fairly (as a white and middle class bloke lets be frank) both pre and post Brexit, though it hurts being a common or garden resident these days rather than a European.
Isn’t it just that the tem ‘expat’ has a distinctly one-sided meaning – it’s only apt from the point of view of someone in the country the person has left. That same person, wherever they go outside of their home country is an immigrant to any person native to where they have rocked up.
I bet most of the white foreigners now living longterm/permanently in Spain don’t call themselves (or each other) immigrants. But I bet they don’t call Arab or African people who’ve moved there expats.
Those Arab or African folk who are still in an Arabic/African countries can legitimately refer to their emigrated friends as ‘expats’ – that’s my point. The majority of orange oldies in Spain, particularly the Brit ones suffering from tedious British exceptionalism, call themselves ‘expats’ because they can’t bear to describe themselves as what they actually are.
My brother-in-law and his partner – Brits living in spain – are, like @Guiri, pretty horrified by many of their Brit near-neighbours, who behave exactly as descibed in the OP.
Have spent 32 of the last 36 years living in a country other than the UK. Think I was mistreated because of that maybe once or twice in that whole time. Apart from obligatory right wing morons Canada seems to be especially welcome to immigrants when I compare with the UK.
Of course Canada has some serious mistreatment of the original occupants of this land in it’s dodgy past to take into account
Ironic isn’t it, when in the British isles 4,000 years ago, as the ice retreated, every other hominid group in Western Europe was queueing up to emigrate here once the polar bears and sabre-tooths and mammoths were largely out of the way. You’d have hoped we’d have learned it’s the natural order of things to mix and match by now, hybrid vigour and all that.
In early 2016, I heard some Tory nutjob use the phrase “keep Britain for the native Anglo-Saxons”. I swore at the radio, Mrs F turned it off.
I hqve found that in much of the UK people are perfectly welcoming to people from elsewhere in the world. The irony is that many of the people I encounter who disagree with my observation have themselves chosen to follow the Billy Bragg route and live in places that are overwhelmingly White British.
Meanwhile, my dozen of so closest neighbours are Indian, Dutch, Polish, West African, Black British, Cantonese and white English, all of whom get along fine.
PS In fairness, my experience was more mixed when we lived in Luton. There a minority White British population and sizeable black British was living alongside very large, culturally very different, Bengali, Kashmiri and Pakistani and, to a lesser extent, African communities. I wonder quite how welcoming some of the Canadian, Spanish or rural French communities mentioned in other posts would respond faced with that scenario.
I believe Toronto is considered the most diverse city in the world. Majority of people who live there were born outside Canada and they come from hundreds of different countries. Ottawa where I live is also very diverse. Perhaps easier to be a white middle class immigrant, but I would say it is, in general, pretty welcoming to all. Racism does exist, but I sense it to be more tolerant than the UK, this is just a personal observation, and may not be a universal truth.
What is also sadly clear is the influence of the extreme right of the US is also making inroads north of the border. Things are changing
But remember…Billy don’t want to change the world, he’s just looking for a new England.
One where he can be half English?
Been in France for twenty years. Our village has around 250 houses, some grand, some medieval hovels. Around 50 houses are owned by immigrants, 50/50 part to full-time residents. Brits, Germans, Swedes, Canadians, Polish, a veritable melting pot.
Not once have we encountered anything from the locals but friendliness apart from a continuing bewilderment re “Why would anyone want to buy that ancient, freezing in the winter, sauna hot in the summer falling-down house when for half the price you could buy a brand new villa on the edge of the village with Aircon and a pool? Are you all crazy? Oh, all right then – have you tried this cheeky little rosé?”
Pre Brexit, no need for visas or any such nonsense. After Brexit, “You might have to leave? Here, have a ten year residency card. Sign here, then we’ll have a glass of wine.”
I simply cannot imagine this happening in the UK.
To me, “Ex-pat” sounds dead posh and rather snooty. The sort of people who sit around in exclusive clubs drinking G & Ts and making rather disdainful comments about the locals and their peculiar habits and customs.
They often turn up in the songs of Noel Cowerd and the novels of Henry James and John Le Carré.
This article looks at these words in very great detail from a rather US perspective.
https://www.eddandcynthia.com/what-is-an-expat
I think of ex-pats on the costas in Spain for example as distinctly not posh. Then there’s the costa del crime. That’s what comes to mind.
There were a number of expats in Spain who voted FOR Brexit
(go figure …)
But why are they expats not immigrants? Perhaps because they have no intention of learning the language or integrating. English exceptionalism again. Idiots (and much stronger) the lot of them.
I think that’s it. Immigrants will go overseas to work, or maybe retire but get involved with local life. My idea of expats is people who stick to British-centred communities and go for the weather and gold, basically remaining as British as possible in a more hospitable climate.
Have always tried to avoid that scene. Of course have had British friends, but that’s more through work contacts rather than seeking out “Ex-Pats”
#golf not gold
This is interesting news to me. When the Brexit referendum happened, I didn’t know that Brits resident outside the country had a vote.
https://www.indy100.com/news/brexit-expat-spain-eu-uk-b1785980
(That could perhaps be because I have not registered with the embassy to vote in general elections. To be honest, I’ve lived here in Sweden, I doubt that I still have the right.)
There are thousands of Brits living in the EU. And I’m sure the majority were anti- Brexit. So, who actually had the right to vote in the referendum?
Anyone know?
I think if you had lived in the UK at most 15 years before (and were a British citizen) you had a vote, I just missed that cut off.
Yup. It’s 15 years. The referendum was the last time I had a UK vote.
Thanks Dai and Guiri. Now I know!
I am now neither an immigrant nor an ex-pat. I have become a New Swede, something which I am very happy about.
But it really was the only practical solution once Brexit happened. It was very unlikely that I’d get kicked out of the country after 20 plus years but I didn’t want to take any chances.
In order to vote in the referendum I would have needed to visit the embassy in the capital. The expat community, would overwhelmingly have voted Remain IMO, but how many would take a day out to vote.
“There were a number of expats in Spain who voted FOR Brexit
(go figure …)”
A lot of them read the British tabloids.
…and had an eye on extradition laws and how they might be affected?
I’ve lived abroad on a couple of occasions. Never referred to myself as an expat or an immigrant, possibly because I always knew it was finite? I spent several years in each country, but I never expected to spend the rest of my life there. I wouldn’t have minded in either case, but there was the knowledge of eg aging parents back home that kept me tied to this island.
I always considered Ex-pat as a temporary residency – working in Moscow in the 90’s we were part of the ‘Ex-pat community’ along with most other contract staff and embassy diplomatic staff. We could extend or renew contracts but we were always going home some day, like KD above.
Agreed. My Dad was a diplomat. So we were expats all over the place growing up. But if you’re not on a temporary contract you’re an immigrant. And nothing wrong with that, just not an expat.
Yes me too. I was an expat twice with work so they pay the accom, expenses etc. I think the two are quite different things TBH.
I think of ex-pats as a community, sticking together with their own kind, long or short term. Post Brexit I got citizenship so now dual nationality. There was a group of Brits here that I met. I wanted to flee them to be honest. I wanted to get involved with this new land. Luckily I had good fortune on the job front where I feel at home.
I think that’s right. When I lived in France most of the Brits (usually the ones with kids) lived in one area, near the British school, where there were “traditional pubs with Watney’s Red Barrel, UK telly” etc. Ghastly. We lived round the corner from the Eiffel Tower right in Paris and had a whole load of friends of all nationalities which was helped by the fact that I joined a band of mixed nationalities and Mrs. T taught English so we met lots of non-work people (partly by design).
Back in the days when I worked in international removals for those bastard bankers and hedge fund merchants the people we moved thought of themselves as ex pats. There were huge US ex pat communities in Hampstead and Surrey based around American schools. They’d arrive in the summer make a fortune for two years for Goldman Sachs or Credit Suisse or Lehman Brothers the be off to the next city, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Geneva, New York before doing it all again. Hauling all their ill gotten gains behind them in 40ft containers and the obligatory air freight shipment for the vital stuff they couldn’t fit in their Armani suitcases. The calls from the packers when they discovered the bonus letters were as hysterical as they were eye watering. Still, paid my salary for 20 years so no complaints.
40 years in Italy and now an Italian citizen (cos of Brexit) I always refer to myself as an immigrant. I’ve had Italians arguing the usual anti-immigrant arguments to me then being stopped in their tracks by my responding “you do realise you’re talking to an immigrant?”. What can they say? “Oh, but you’re the right kind. You’re white, for one thing”? Nope. Never so blatant. They find a way to change the focus.
In my industry (oil + gas) and working for large, global companies, the term ‘expat’ refers to the terms you are on, and depends on your base country. So if I took a role in Oman for four years but was still paid my normal salary and had my normal conditions, I would be on expat terms, as my current role is in Australia. If I took ‘local’ terms, it means I have switched my pay/conditions to the new country (usually lower).
In actual usage, anybody who’s home base (i.e where you were first onboarded) differs from where they work would be called an expat. It has nothing to do with visa/immigration status. I work with permanent residents who are still on expat terms.
Like several others above, I have lived on mainland Europe for (nearly) 20 years – in Bonn, in my case. Previously, I’d lived in Switzerland and Belgium, (as well as the UK). I generally feel at ease in these countries – similar temperate climate. Until 2016 I would have said I was comfortable identifying myself as a northern European, not needing to really see the borders between countries in this part of the world.
I still do, though post-Brexit and the 2017 T. May general election (the last two I was eligible to vote in before the 15 year rule kicked in), I now consider myself neither immigrant not ex-pat, but a citizen of nowhere – without the right to vote in any election at all.
I could apply for German citizenship, but frank(furt)ly why should I? I carry my UK Brexit passport like a badge of shame, thanks to the current shocking set of incompetent self-serving arseholes fucking up the country for shits and giggles. I hope the next election, which I sadly can’t participate in, sees them one and all, kicked out of office, and maybe prosecuted for lies and corruption.
One good thing about taking Swedish citizenship, was that I re-enfranchised myself after many years of not voting in a general election. It didn’t feel right to vote in UK elections when I no longer live there.
The vile, (extreme-right), Sweden Democrats are on the rise here. I am glad to be able to vote for another alternative.
I think as and if there is a re-evaluation of what national identity means – i.e. similar to the change that must have happened to county/regional identity in the UK for example, then it won’t matter so much to me. I liked being able to dissolve my Englishness in a broader European identity, but it is/was still there. I am doing my bit for loosening those ties by having multinational children, but I am still tethered emotionally somewhat to those cloudy wet lands off the mainland.
I’d love to take Spanish citizenship. But at the moment it would mean giving up my British one. And despite it all that would be hard to do. Here’s hoping for an agreement between UK and Spain (plenty of other countries offer the option of dual nationality) but I’m not holding my breath.
Sweden does allow dual nationality which made my choice easier.
But if I was forced to choose which to keep, it would be a sad but pretty obvious choice.
I also have dual citizenship. Previously had permanent residency in Canada, only difference is I can indeed now vote (which is good), and can also do jury service (less good), otherwise identical rights Main reason I got it was so I didn’t have to keep renewing the permanent residency every 5 years, it is also a lot easier to cross the border to US and I can also spend 6 months of the year there should I choose to do so.
Sadly I doubt that will happen any time soon. My Spanish-born MIL could not be a dual national, and that was long before Brexit.
As far as I know, the UK allows dual nationality in general – it seems to be the other country which might insist on single nationality. It isn’t anything to do with Brexit. My wife was born in India, and has lived here since she was about 8, and so has UK nationality, but India won’t allow dual nationality. They have fudged it slightly with a card called Person of Indian Origin, which allows some of the rights of having Indian nationality as well, as they have realised they are cutting off a lot of people they might like to have working in the country.
I work with someone who is Dutch, and they don’t allow dual nationality either, with the result that some of his children have Dutch Nationality and some British.
Yes, the UK does allow dual nationality and it’s the other countries that are restricting.
It’s the same for here in Singapore – they do not allow dual nationality. My wife is Singaporean and both my sons were born here so they have Singapore passports. They do automatically quality for British Citizenship through me but getting a UK passport may cause issues with Singapore. What the UK do though is a think called “Right Of Abode” which is essentially a British passport stamped as a visa in the other nations passport. This gives all the rights of British Citizenship without having to give up the other nationality.
My MIL died before Brexit, so it definitely wasn’t that.
The Spanish govt have an issue with the Brits, something called Gibraltar. Whatever that is…
When we moved to Oz in 2014, I gave no thought to the matter once I’d got my permanent residency. I was simply going to flit backwards and forwards, living a life of perpetual summer, neither expat nor immigrant. Now, nearly 10 years later, I’ve finally admitted to myself that I actually live in Australia – my trips to Blighty are getting shorter (harder and more expensive too). I’ve never been in Australia for long enough at a time to meet the citizenship requirements, and like Sal I no longer see any point in pursuing it. But once my 15 years are up I’ll be disenfranchised.
As for definitions, although I dislike the connotations of the word, I guess I’m an expat, because I never thought of myself as moving permanently from one country to another. To the authorities over here, and I assume to Aussies who care one way or another, I’m an immigrant. Actually I’m just a bloke who lives mostly in Australia…
An immigrant to somewhere started as an ex-pat from somewhere. Surely. Perspective of whether to or from. Different words, different meanings.
No, that’s just immigrant / emigrant. Ex-pat by common understanding here, including mine, means someone, typically British, who relocates to another country but doesn’t see that as affecting their Britishness (or other original nationality).
A comment by Amitav Ghosh which I liked in his magnificent dismantling of colonial/imperial mythologizing ‘The Curse of the Nutmeg’ suggested that there is a long tradition of mobility of peoples, with no necessary complete cut off for those travelling in identity and connection between where they came from and where they go to – more a maintained cross border sense nurtured by remittances and wider family in both locations.
That tension between nomadism and settled status has always been there since farming/herding first developed. I suspect that ‘ex-pat’ is a label in the heart of every first generation person in a new country.
Thanks for the tip for that Ghosh book, Sal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutmeg%27s_Curse
Common understanding doesn’t necessarily equate to the correct meaning. Unless, of course, you refer to the colloquialism “ex-patriate”, which may have deserted the ex patria gerund.
You should play Wordiply. You’d be dead good at it.
What’s that? Watneys Red Barrel? In which case, I believe it is compulsory to post this YT clip
What a silly bunt …
I only knew it from the record release (Monty Python’s Previous Record). Watching it now, I am impressed how Idle manages to continue his monologue in the background, even as the scene moves on beyond Palin’s increasingly desperate response.
I’ve lived in Singapore for 30 years and am very much an immigrant, not an expat. I see the term expat to mean the community that come for a couple of years posting and stick completely within their group. When I first came here, I purposely didn’t join any of the “British Club” etc etc as I wanted to experience the country as it was, not as an enclave of Britishness abroad. It probably helped though that after a few years working here for a UK company, I left and found employment on pure local terms.
I have always felt welcome as an immigrant here – mind you this is a country that was built on immigration and is very much focused on multiculturalism. It’s not perfect but certainly one of the better places I’ve been in the world. I do occasionally like to wind up friends by telling them that I am ‘foreign talent’ brought in to enhance the overall capability of the country……..
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170119-who-should-be-called-an-expat
I worked in Miami for a couple of years in the 80’s.
They had an expat club in Coconut Grove – I think it was called the Anglo-American Society or something ridiculous like that. Ridiculous because there were hardly any Americans in it.
I went once and vowed never again. Middle aged arseholes (I was young at that time) taking the piss out the people and the country that was hosting them.
The Expatriate club in Bulawayo, which meant , colloquially, the lingering ex-colonial ruling class, was, memorably, in the 1990s, run by a Pole, a recent incomer who had seized the opportunities available to a dwindling pool of whites.
@retropath2
AKA “Whenwes” as in “when we used to run everything…”
The best, if unofficial, ex-pat club in Coconut Grove is of course The Taurus!
Re the denigration of expats who live somewhere nice but generally stick to their own countrymen who also happen to live there. That’s us, that is.
We have excellent relations with all our French neighbours, chat for hours about Macron and the awful croissants our new baker serves up, my wife is godmother to the mayor’s daughter’s son and we cannot walk through the village without greeting at least half a dozen French chums.
But our closest and best friends are “foreigners” whether from the UK, Canada, Holland, Scandinavia. What binds us together (apart from language cos everybody speaks English of course) is our middle-class, university -educated, wishy-washy liberalism. We write together, paint together and get drunk together. Whenever twenty or thirty “foreigners” get together with twenty or thirty locals the first hour is conducted entirely in French. Three hours later the French are huddled together over there discussing the riots in Marseilles and us lot are over here discussing Donald Trump and where we are going to watch England v Spain on Sunday. C’est la vie
As the child of Irish immigrants and having spent all bar two and a bit years of my career working in places outside the UK, I am probably one of the few people here who has experience of both categories.
Ultimately, there are good expats and bad expats.
The good ones are those who choose to get involved in the country they have been fortunate enough to be given the chance to experience on a full time basis. Having always loved being exposed to different cultures and meeting people, I did my best to try and fall into this category.
The bad ones are those who just go overseas for the money and couldn’t give a stuff where they earn it or who pays them.
Most of my early career was spent in the Middle East in the early to mid-80s where the locals very much viewed foreign workers – be they American, European, Asian or African – as the hired help. Any fraternization with such infidels was considered if not haram, then very inadvisable.
While I and the guys I worked with were paid tax-free salaries and a flight home each year, we got no other expat lifestyle benefits. Our free housig was a jerry built block of flats opposite a mosque and I later learned just a stone’s throw from where the bin Laden family lived.
There was a saying in Jeddah that you did one year for need and one year for greed, and got out.
The worst kind of expats ignored this very sage advice. Most of these people were second-rate construction guys who lived in luxurious compounds with swimming pools to laze by and Asian maids to do the fetching and carrying for them as Pakistani guards watched over them.
Some of these old school expats I met were truly loathsome individuals who loved going into Jeddah to see the Friday morning lashings, stonings and executions. Most of them were just saddoes who’d become so institutionalized by living in compounds they would never ever be able to adjust to life back home.
Aside from three lengthy stints in Hong Kong where I became a permanent resident before 1997, most of my other overseas jobs – all for different companies – were in places like Kenya and Vietnam. As my work in such places involved training local youngsters to do my job, it was wonderful to be able to get to know the local people who would hopefully one day be running the countries in question.
Before I left Kenya in 2000, I refused an offer to stay on and work on the upcoming election campaign for Presidential Daniel Arap Moi – a sort of East African Donald Trump. Didn’t really make much difference as he was so venal his getting back in was never in doubt
I lived in Hong Kong pre-handover before moving to Australia. There was a definite floating ‘expat’ community there and not just Brits. Typically people in engineering or finance who would shift between stints in Asian cities, the Gulf and bits of Africa. They all seemed to gravitate to the same expat bars, cricket and rugby clubs. There was also a smaller group of longer-term residents, but I doubt even those would describe themselves as ‘immigrants’. Here in Sydney for more than two decades I don’t think I have met any poms who would describe themselves as a UK expat.
I think Expats don’t pay UK tax whilst Immigrants do pay UK tax. I may have oversimplified it.
Depends on where you are from.
US expats used to (and probably still do) pay tax on their overseas earnings.
UK expats do not.
Shitholes like Saudi Arabia and Dubai don’t charge tax because the foreigners
they need to keep their countries running would never go and work there if they
did.
Yup, the US routinely expected /expects 10% of earnings from any passport holder, irrespective of residence and were earnt. To maintain any US citizenship. I know of several who have this renounced that right.
You can be a UK resident but pay no tax if you can come up with an overseas address where you claim to live, and you pay £30k to the gov’t to establish your non domiciled status. This exempts you from all tax on non UK earnings. You’d still be liable to tax on UK income, but set up a service company overseas, wash any UK work through this offshore company and hey presto, no UK tax. 68,000 people in UK have non-dom status.
I was an immigrant, now I’m an expat.
I moved to the States, with no intention of returning to Blighty – Immigrant.
We’ve been posted to Australia, with an expected return date to the US – Expat.
But do you “identify” with/as a yank or a pom?