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I mean, its not even about white people. In fact many nonwhites are immigrants themselves and just as white people arent native its kinda hyocritical either way if gour here.
I'm a Brit living in Luxembourg and am therefore an immigrant. One of the most annoying habits of Brits living in foreign countries is to describe themselves as 'expats'. Like they are a cut above the rest of us mere immigrants!
Yes, but the problem with it is that I have never once heard of the epithet 'expat' applied to anyone except a white man or woman.
Generally, the way it is used by Brits is definitely to maintain the social distinction between themselves and other foreigners of different skin colour or doing more lowly jobs; a sort of way of extending the still very prevalent class system from the UK to lands further afield
@Paulos_the_fog thats fair. I do find brits and americans can use expat rather generously in reference to themselves
To be explicit about this I do not consider myself to be any different to the 1000s of refugees who call Luxembourg their home nor indeed to the 1000s of others who, like me, for one reason or another, moved to Luxembourg to make a living.
Living in Luxembourg shines a bright spotlight on the immigrant -v- expat question as an astonishing 47%+ of the population of Luxembourg are immigrants (yes, that isn't a typo - the official government figure is more than 47% of Luxembourg residents, were born outside the country making them immigrants like me). Even more surprisingly, taking the population of the capital city alone, more than 70% of population are immigrants - yes 70%!
I never intended to remain in Luxembourg for the 20 years that I have lived here and certainly didn't anticipate retiring here although that is what has happened. At what stage did I morph from being an 'expat' into an immigrant, I wonder? (I'm a white, sedentary, office worker and therefore absolutely "entitled" to call myself an expat according to the way that I have seen it used)
@Paulos_the_fog generally expats are temporarily in another country while immigrants have made the move perminantly, by definition.