The Terminological Division between 'expatriates' and 'migrants': Sorting Migrants By Skill and Form of Employment or By Race and Nationality?

Even though the term 'expatriate' or 'expat' enjoys frequent popular usage, there is a lack of sociological research on the groups identified by it, and an ever greater scarcity of attempts to critically investigate and deconstruct what this term is signifying. This study uses in-depth interviews and fieldwork to analyze how the terms 'expat' or 'expatriate' are adopted, assigned and negotiated in Hong Kong by receiving society members as well as highly educated migrants of various ethnicity from Western and South Asians countries. It is found that interviewees profess to use the term in color-blind, meritocratic ways to signify attributes such as white-color or professional employment, high amounts of education and expertise, temporary mobility, positive, enriching impacts to receiving societies and an absence of associated social problems. However, in reality, race and nationality, along with class, tend to strongly pattern categorizations, individuals associated with the Global South being frequently categorized as 'ethnic minorities' or 'immigrants,' while those linked to the Global North are being viewed as 'expats'. White migrants, even those who are low-skilled, unemployed or come from a society with a lower level of development than Hong Kong, report being automatically categorized as 'expats.' Highly skilled, professionally employed migrants of color hailing from Western and non-Western societies tell of shifting, situational categorizations that depend on factors such as their perceived social class or enactment of Western cultural capital, the individuals they are accompanied by, and the venue or even city quarter they happen to be in. I argue that a conceptual division between and separate study of 'immigrants' and 'expatriates,' or 'migration' and 'mobility,' may obscure and reify deep inequalities based on racialization and nationality, and that there is much to gain from a systematic comparison of the migration experiences of those labeled 'expatriates' with those labeled '(im)migrants.'