Terms for People Who’ve Moved to another Country

Image credit: Ryutaro Tsukata

Though you’ve heard the terms, you may not have considered them unless you’ve needed to define yourself (or had someone define you) by one or several: expat, foreigner, immigrant, migrant, refugee, world citizen, nomad, even alien (the latter often preceded by “illegal” in the United States).

Though I’ve composed the list using English-language variants, people who live in countries that mainly speak another language than English (including me) can affirm that these terms have their corollaries or equivalents in every language.

Getting called one of these terms is… illuminating. Sometimes surprising, if not offensive. Getting asked to self-define using one of these terms has complexity as well.

How do I self-define?

Am I an “Expat?”

I’ve avoided self-defining as an “expat,” a shortened term for the longer “expatriate.” The term “expat” has complicated and undesirable—for me—associations. I don’t identify with these associations.

In its typical use, “expat” refers to someone sent somewhere for a set period (three or five years, say) by a government, company, or organization (including religious institutions). I’ve written a full article on the decline of the traditional expat, if this category of classification interests you.

This person does not intend to stay long-term or to apply for citizenship. “Expats” come for a few years, often have many of their expenses covered by their organization (at least initially), tend to spend their time with other people in the same situation—in place for set durations and for specific professional and organizational purposes—and do not tend to integrate or try to integrate with the local community or to learn the local language beyond the basics.

In interviews for my ongoing Stakes project, I ask each person how he or she self-defines in terms of living status. Repeatedly, especially by nonwhite interviewees, I hear that the term “expat” only applies to white people and that it has traces of colonialism. For many people, expats come from wealthy origins or backgrounds and go to what they consider “lesser” places to impart what they see to be their “superior” thinking or knowledge to the locals.

Am I an “Immigrant?”

The term “immigrant” has a negative and dirty connotation, especially recently.

Like “expat,” “immigrant” has racial undertones—through from the opposite direction. Typically, when you hear someone or a group of people called “immigrant” or “immigrants,” the person using the term means nonwhite people and people who do not have roots in the region’s predominant religion. In the United States, people use the term “immigrant” to imply “undesirable” and the term often blankets all nonwhite people and all non-Christian people.

In general, “immigrant,” regardless of its technical definition, gets used to push people away. Immigrants are not “of us.”

Interestingly, I’ve in recent years heard people use the term “immigrant” regardless of a person’s place of origin or birth. For example, though the term technically refers to people born in one country who have moved permanently or for the long term to another country (especially if they plan to apply for citizenship or have applied for citizenship), I’ve discovered that people now use the term “immigrant” to refer in general to people not “of them” even if the person was born and has lived all his or her life in the same country.

True in the United States when people refer to nonwhite people and people of other religious ties than the predominant protestant Christian background (e.g., Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus). True also in other countries: In France, during a conversation ahead of the country’s last presidential election, I thought I’d hit a language barrier and didn’t understand the meaning of certain arguments because the term “immigrant” seemed confused to me. But no, I’d understood: More than one person in the dialogue clarified that they didn’t mean “immigrant” as “people who came from another country,” but as “the children of people who’d moved to the country.” In other words, citizens—but not “of us.”

I’ve even pushed back against people in the United States and in Europe who’ve said something about “immigrants” by saying that I’m an immigrant—and had people tell me they didn’t mean me. Because I’m white? Indeed. At least partly, if not predominantly.

Am I a “Refugee?”

After a U.S. election over which I didn’t particularly rejoice, someone mentioned me moving abroad to join the “political refugees.”

Though put ironically, it demonstrates the breadth of applications of the term “refugee,” which I believe really should only get used in its true sense, out of recognition of the gravity of the refugee situation.

A refugee—which I am not—is someone who must flee to another country to escape violence. In other words, if this person stayed where they had lived before moving, they would have faced certain or near-certain death, torture, or imprisonment.

Refugees deserve our compassion. They rarely receive it.

The term “refugee” rarely gets used in propaganda in the same way as the term “immigrant,” though you will hear it used with negative connotations regularly enough.

Am I a “World Citizen” or a “Nomad?”

Egad.

Without official, government-issued citizenship, you can only legally enter a country with permission and under set rules. True even for people just visiting on vacation.

Not just everyone gets to just wander around wherever they want, however they want, working however and wherever they want. In fact, few people can and do. Even actual nomads—people who move seasonally for hunting and gathering and grazing livestock—tend to stay in the same overall region or country.

And let’s be honest: “World citizen” is just silly. There is no such thing and likely will never be such a thing as a “world citizen” in any legal sense. A country has granted you citizenship or it has not—and whether it does or does not depends largely on its parameters and, in many cases, whims. You don’t get to decide on your citizenship. Even if you received citizenship via birth somewhere or via the citizenship of your parents in a certain country, you can’t exactly say you chose it. (Further, in some countries, including the one where I live as of this writing—Switzerland—birth in the country doesn’t de facto qualify you for citizenship.)

I have never personally defined myself as either a nomad or a world citizen, though I get the idea behind both terms.

However, from my perspective, these terms feel idealistic, privileged, and clueless—if not exclusionary. Self-defining as a “world citizen” or a “nomad” seems as though this person can’t possibly see themselves in the lights cast by the official terms for people who’ve moved from their countries of origin to another country, such as “immigrant” or “migrant.”

After all, the more official terms have a negative cast, don’t they? Better to be something else.

Am I a “Migrant?”

I’ve tended to call myself a “foreigner” or an “immigrant” when asked, as these terms have felt more honest than the other options.

However, a recent letter from an official Swiss organization referring to me as a “migrant” made me realize that the term “migrant” is more genuine than “immigrant.”

I have migrated from one country to another. I may not stay permanently. Though I haven’t considered whether to apply for Swiss citizenship at this point, I mainly haven’t considered it because I don’t have the option. (I’m not yet eligible to apply.)

Therefore, as the term “immigrant” tends to refer to people who intend to stay and who have applied for or who plan to apply for citizenship, I don’t know that I quite qualify for the term.

So What am I?

The term “foreigner,” for me, will always apply unless I’m in the United States. No question. I am somewhere and I came from somewhere else.

Outside the United States, whether for living or traveling, I am a foreigner.

Migrant, meaning someone who has come to a country from another country, but who may not have decided to stay permanently, fits best as of this moment. It doesn’t imply separation from the local community or society, either. Since arrival, I’ve worked to learn the language, join local groups and associations with local people, and have even started to volunteer locally in local organizations. I plan to integrate and immerse as best I can.

Does “migrant” tend to have a more negative cast than some of the other terms, especially the manufactured ones like “expat” and “nomad?” Sure. But I think people who might not typically get referred to by the negative terms owning those terms helps bleed them of their vigor.

Language—and Naming—Matters

As mentioned, I ask the self-definition question each time I conduct an interview for my Stakes project. People almost always struggle with their responses to it.

Though I’ve met people who fit the normal-use term of “expat”—people who tell me they’ve moved for three years on a fixed term for a specific work project, for example—I’ve also had Stakes interviews with people who’ve gained citizenship in different countries than the countries of their births who’ve used the term.

To each person, his or her own response.

For me, all this brings me back time and again to how much language matters.

How we define ourselves often ties to how we hear the terms in use. People who don’t see themselves in the term “immigrant,” as it is used popularly, shy away from employing the term to self-define. They use creative phrasings or terms implying “I’m different or special or somehow better” than the term “migrant,” even if the technical definition of migrant best fits them.

How we use these terms to define others, also, reflects how we see these people. The words’ use often does not correspond with their dictionary definitions. We use these terms to separate people we see as worthwhile from other people who’ve come from elsewhere—by using the term “expat” or “world citizen,” for two examples—or we use terms like “immigrant” and “migrant” to “other” others, to cast pejorative aspersions, criticize, and belittle.

As a foreigner, consider how you self-define and why you use one term or another. As someone born and living in your country of origin, think about how you’ve referred to people who’ve come from another country to live where you live—and consider why you’ve used these terms.

You’ll find surprising what you discover.