Lingo for leavers

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A week or so ago, Vera mentioned the curious difference in usage between expat and immigrant which I thought was very interesting since it's one of those things you don't really notice happening until you do and then you can't really explain why. So, I turned to the OED and a few other dictionaries of authority, none of which proved to be very helpful on determining the current connotation or usage. I asked a few of my linguist friends who also thought it was interesting but couldn't really offer an answer. So, I turned to the perl using editor of the American OED for help while hoping I wasn't asking a really tired question. Writing email to linguists, especially dictionary folks, tends to be fairly stressful since I obsessively check my spelling and punctuation lest my message be dismissed on technicalities. Fortunately, he thought it was an interesting question as well.

It's an interesting question. My first reaction, and that of several people I asked, was that an expat is someone who might be living somewhere else, but is "aligned" with his or her native country--an American in Paris who is American and considers himself so, regardless of whether he plans to return. The intentionality was also prominent in my mind: an expatriate leaves because she wants to, an immigrant because he is forced to.

Historically, this is not that case: expatriates are people who have formally renounced citizenship in their native country.

There's also the point-of-reference distinction: writing in English, most accounts of American or British transplants will be from an American or British perspective, where "immigrant" wouldn't really work (i.e. the scene would have to be so strongly framed in the other country that "immigrant" wouldn't seem jarring).

In the end, I think the First vs. Third World distinction might just be the simplest.

Language is important as it says as much about who we are as a culture and individuals as nearly everything else combined. It is our identity. Why do I refer to myself as an expat instead of emigré or immigrant? Emigré has a taint of the political about it so it falls somewhere between expat and immigrant. It seems strange, even to me, that a country that was created by and populated by immigrants from all over the world would have such disdain for the word immigrant in less than 100 years. Nancy Mitford would be proud to see that U and non-U language lives still.

• emigré
  Orig., a French emigrant, esp. one from the Revolution of 1789-99. Now, any emigrant, esp. a political exile.
• expat(riate)
  Orig., an exile. Now, a person who lives from choice in a foreign country.
• immigrant
  A person who settles as a permanent resident in a different country. Also (esp. in Britain), a descendant of such a person.
  An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. [Ambrose Bierce]

So, according to the OED, they are all very close in meaning yet the usage distinguishes them. I rarely, if ever, hear or read emigré anymore, probably because few Americans would know the word and, well, you know how popular anything French is nowadays. Anyone leaving the US due to the current political situation could technically refer to themselves as an emigré. I like it as it has a lot more cachet and style than expat. American Emigré of Mystery. Yeah baby! Yeah! I need a tux and a shaguar, too. But I digress.

Expat, our tried and trusty label for those of us who got the hell out of the US and are the envy of all we know back home who are unable to escape. It conjures pictures of embassy row cocktail parties and the international jet set which, I can assure you, is not at all what 99.9% of expats might experience. I'm not even sure if I have a dress and a pair of pumps for cocktails at Fortress America in Kaivopuisto [US Embassy] if they had parties. Even the British Embassy has ceased all social functions here in Finland so the quaint idea of expatriate life being a high society affair has been replaced with armed guards, barbed wire and a grimace. Expat is also an odd sounding word and usually involves a lot of spit since the ex brings up the juice and the p pushes it outward. It's definitely non-U to use words that involve spraying instead of saying. It could even be a slang word for expectorate. I'll guess that expat, given the grim reality vs. the lofty image, will gradually change towards a less romantic notion when used to describe someone who relocates to another country. Besides, I even checked with the U lexicon and there are no words to describe Brits who moved to one of the colonies since people of that class were always British even though noone bothered telling them that no country would have wanted them anyway, even the colonies. [In 1955 Nancy Mitford wrote a famous scathing essay on how the upper classes "are neither cleaner, richer, nor better educated than anybody else," who only distinguish themselves through language and usage. Ironically, U and non-U was first discussed in a paper by Professor Alan Ross in a Finnish philological journal in 1954 which reportedly was received with a big *yawn*. :)]

So then there's immigrant. It evokes the image of the Titanic with Irish peasants jumping around in the hold or a group of Mexicans sneaking across the border into a country where they can get paid $1 an hour so people can buy cheap produce. The romantic age of immigrants in America, or anywhere for that matter, has long since past. When Americans speak of their ancestors, they don't say that Grandpa from Austria was an expat, they say Grandpa was an immigrant. I don't think that people are forced to be immigrants as that would make them refugees. It may just come down to the 1st vs. 3rd world distinction which, ultimately, means having money/means vs. not having money and this is where the real dividing line in the usage lies I suspect which, by American standards, is U vs. non-U.

I don't know that any of them really suit me and my current condition so I may give myself a new label that may catch on by November in the US when the tide of people leaving the US may swell; I am an American escapee. :)