Expats are always white

[NormanH]

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/13/white-people-expats-immigrants-migration

Something I have been saying for ages..

[YCCMB]

Something I've also been saying for ages. So much so that a riposte I recommended to most of my students if they were called an "immigrant", was to reply that they weren't an immigrant but an expat.

Of course, I'd go a step further and suggest that it appears you have to be white British (or at least a native English speaker) to qualify for expat status, in the eyes and minds of many.

Heaven forfend that British people who have moved abroad too eke out their pensions in as country with lower cost of living be described as " economic migrants", but if it looks and sounds like a duck....

[woolybanana]

Typical piece of Guardian tosh, Norman, under thought and badly conceived.

An expat is essentially someone who goes abroad for economic reasons but who keeps substantial links with their country of origin and keeps the option of returning (which many do). In the case of older folk, it is with family and culture, often via TV.

Race has never been an issue except in the minds of the Guardian reporter looking to score points.

Most of those who came to the UK in the first post war wave were immigrants as have been the more recent arrivals. It remains to be seen whether those from such countries as Poland are expats or immigrants (I suspect the latter).

I consider myself an expat BUT, if Britain is so stupid as to leave the EU, led by a bunch of racist, gung-ho throwbacks seeking to return to the 1950s and the days when Britain ruled the waves with a leaky sieve, then I will become an immigrant. Their whole case is based on their inability to integrate all or part of the EU scheme and the snot nosed belief that "we" are better than "them", which, as we know, is absolute bacclocks and boobots.

[NormanH]

Try thinking before typing [:P]

Find me a single example of a phrase such as our plumber is a  "Polish expat" , or there are too many expat nurses working in the NHS.

I agree that it is not primarily a question of race, but an 'expat' is someone such as a diplomat of a representative of a company seconded abroad 'ex-patriated' and usually temporarily  not someone who settles there.

"Immigrant" on the other hand has had a nasty racial undertone until relatively recently when eastern Europeans had freedom of movement.

[NickP]

"Expats are always white"

No they are not, absolute load of clap trap.

[YCCMB]

Having worked, extensively, over many years, with people who have moved to the UK to live and work, from all corners of the globe, and having asked the question many times, I can vouch unreservedly for the fact that they have to a man (or woman) never heard themselves described as "expats". They can all relate to being called "immigrants", though. Usually prefaced by some form of expletive.

Now, in the case of the early wave of people who came from Poland, to take but one example, many (a great many) came to find work in the UK leaving wives, sometimes even husbands, and often children back at home. Which, if Wooly's criteria are taken as read, seems to make them the most expatty of expats, because their ties to home are clear.

Putting the boot on the other foot, it is as rare as rocking horse poo to hear a Brit living in France use a term other than "expat" to describe their status. And among those who cling most steadfastly to the term are often the people who insist that they're never going back. Or, yet more absurd, those who claim that their reason for leaving the UK was the number of immigrants.

It IS true that in a business context the use of the term expat is more correctly applied, and I've witnessed this first hand in many international companies. Outside work, however, those expats also find themselves being referred to as expletive immigrants.