Contemplating "expat"

I have spent a lot of the last few weeks helping to define words used most commonly in nonprofit and international development--- what exactly is "grant reporting", "civil society building", "expat"? And it's that last one that I was reading about this morning.

An article in the Guardian highlighted the fact that a white Westerner living and working abroad is often referred to as an expatriate-- expat for short-- while most people living and working in a country other than their home one is simply referred to as an "immigrant". There are a few nuances to this-- questions on race, skill level, and work status are all wrapped up in who gets labeled as an expat.

Undoubtedly, race factors in-- no matter how well educated, a person coming from a poorer, non-Western country is far more likely to be labelled an immigrant than an expat. And even in the United States, only 5% of black college students participate in study abroad programs that set you up for success in an expat position. After all, it's hard to get a job overseas with no overseas experience. And while this may be slowly beginning to shift, it still seems that overwhelmingly, international experience is still associated largely with privilege, and people of color are often hesitant to study abroad with no frame of reference for what this experience might look like for them.

In some definitions, an expat is someone working in another country providing skilled labor. This is how the term is used where I work-- we have expats, or international staff, from the US, UK, Nigeria, Pakistan, and elsewhere, The term isn't exclusively used for white people or Westerners, though the NGO field is predominantly led by Westerners, something that is slowly (and finally) changing. There is finally a sense among NGOs that local talent is often better than bringing in expats, who are expensive, unfamiliar with the language and cultural nuances, and unable to stay as long. However, because skilled labor is often synonymous with higher education and fluency in English, national staff often hold Program Manager type roles, and rarely make it to the level of Program Director or Country Director. I do believe that this will change, as those Program Managers are trained up, and are able to train up people behind them, but as long as INGOs are based in the West, it is likely that so too will their highest level staff.

I wish I had some insight to offer on this-- I use the term expat, despite understanding the racial complications that the word faces. Maybe I should drop it from my vocabulary, and just call myself an immigrant in Iraq-- but as someone here for 7 months, that doesn't feel quite right. In my mind, an immigrant is someone more deeply connected to the community in which they work and live, in it for the long haul. I'm lending a skill and a few months. These hardly feel comparable, and so I don't feel like the two really should be used interchangeably.

There is also, in some ways, a degree to which I associate the word to frivolity (of the 1920's, perhaps, where expatriates flooded Europe to drink, party, and write or paint). There is a degree of separation that I see expats as having that I don't think immigrants have-- they typically live together, separate from the people whose home the country is, unlike immigrants. Expats have a reputation, I think, for parties and the sort of lack of responsibility and monotony that comes with having your family and children nearby.

While the term undoubtedly has challenging, racist roots intended to differentiate or create a special status for white Westerners abroad as opposed to other groups, I also don't think of it as being a particularly flattering image.