I've always assumed it depends on what your context is. If your perspective is the country that the immigrant is from, then they would be an expat. If you are in context of the other country they are an immigrant.

"My friend is an expat who went off to The Netherlands." "My friend is an immigrant that came here from The USA."

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Emigrant. That's the kind of migrant who leaves a country. They'd be an immigrant in their new country.

But, IMO there's a difference with an expat. An expat is often someone who isn't moving permanently, and as a result is often not trying to integrate into their new country.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago

From my observation when living in The Netherlands as an immigrant (from Portugal) sometimes working in companies with lots of foreigners, most of us said of ourselves as being "immigrants", except Americans and Brits who often said they were "expats".

Curiously, generally the other people from different nations, including the Dutch, would use immigrant rather than expat when refering to the status of the self-proclaimed "expats" in that country - "expat" was very much their label for themselves.

The Americans and Brits were there in average for just a long as the rest.

I don't think it's really length of stay, at least not directly, I think it's about the immigrant believing or not that their country of origin is a "greater country" than the country they're living in. You can see this for example in places like Spain where British retirees have retired to and live the rest of their lives in their own Little Britain communities calling themselves "expats".

This also matched to how some of the British immigrants most pissed of about their homeland (for example, a gay guy who had to move to The Netherlands to marry his partner, as back then that was not allowed in Britain) made a point of using "immigrant" for themselves instead of "expat".

It's about national delusions of grandeur, IMHO.

[–] Soulg@ani.social 9 points 1 day ago

That's what I've always assumed too, but I only ever hear it in reference to other Americans, so I could absolutely believe that it's just some weird shit they use to separate themselves from immigrants.

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 1 points 23 hours ago

I always assumed that 'expatriate' meant that you gave up citizenship in the old country to get citizenship in the new country. Like it's a type of immigration that a lot of people like to pretend they've done because it's pretty hardcore.