I was speaking with an American in Bangkok recently when he began describing the thriving “expat” community there.
Americans, mostly white, who had decided to move to Thailand. Some came for retirement, others because they could work remotely. All were looking for what they felt was a better life. Away from the increasing loudness of America.
I’d heard the term “expat” countless times, but in that moment I realized I’d never once heard anyone apply it to people who moved to the United States “for a better life” from Mexico, El Salvador, Sudan, Ethiopia, or dozens of other countries.
Yet the full term, “expatriate,” literally means the same thing as immigrant: a person living outside their home nation. The dictionary definitions don’t diverge. Our usage does.
White Western professionals abroad are almost automatically labeled expats. It’s a polished term, aspirational even. I have close friends who moved to Mexico and proudly identify as expats. Others in Costa Rica eagerly claim the same label.
But people of color from the global South moving for work, safety or opportunity are nearly always labeled immigrants.
Same action. Crossing borders to build a different life. Different word. Different status.
This divide isn’t accidental.
The modern usage of “expat” comes straight from the colonial playbook. Europeans living in Africa, Asia, or the Caribbean were called expatriates, seen as “temporary elites” who often enjoyed more rights, wealth, and mobility than local populations. Their presence was framed as a professional assignment, an adventure, an enhancement to their prestig, but never as migration, even though numerous of them stayed permanently.
Over time, expat became tied to ideas of “career move,” “lifestyle choice,” and “global citizen.” Immigrant, by contrast, became tied to economic need, desperation, cultural otherness, or the idea of “taking something” from their new home. One term signals aspiration and mobility. The other, threat or burden.
The truly troubling part is that this distinction rarely reflects someone’s actual circumstances. It reflects how society interprets those circumstances through the filters of race and class.
A white American moving to Thailand is an expat.
A Thai person moving to the U.S. is an immigrant.
A white French teacher in Senegal is an expat.
A Senegalese professor in France is an immigrant.
A Nigerian banker in London is almost never described as an expat.
But a British banker in Nigeria always is.
Media language entrenches this divide, consistently calling Americans and Europeans living in Asia, Africa, or Latin America “expats,” while referring to Africans, Asians, or Latin Americans in the West as “immigrants,” regardless of their profession or education.
A doctor from Ghana in Chicago is an immigrant. A software engineer from Chicago in Germany is an expat.
These choices aren’t neutral. They signal who belongs and who doesn’t. The expat is framed as worldly, adventurous, welcome. The immigrant is framed as foreign, suspect, conditional.
How about we stop reinforcing this racialized vocabulary. Let’s use one term consistently, whichever one we choose. Or better yet, reclaim “immigrant” as the neutral, dignified, universal term it should be. It should apply as easily to a white diplomat in Bangkok as to a Filipino teacher in Chicago.
We can model this equity in our everyday conversations. By speaking up. When someone mentions a “big expat community,” try asking, “You mean the American immigrant community there?” A gentle correction that reframes status without accusation.
Our words shape our assumptions. Our assumptions shape our subconscious. And our subconscious drives the negative behaviors and ideas we often deny play out in the real world.
If we want a more honest and equitable world, fixing our language is a small but powerful place to start.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Denissa Devy On Unsplash
