How many of us have ever thought about what it means to be an expat versus an immigrant in a given country? According to a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, it’s an important distinction.
American philosopher Justin Smith has lived as an expat in Paris for nearly two years. Even with many French scrambling to protect their culture from what many see as an unwelcome invasion of outsiders, he finds that for the most part, his Gallic counterparts have welcomed him as an equal. “They hear my American accent, but this in itself does not dissuade them.” He posits, “For I belong to a different category of foreigner. I am not read as an ‘immigrant,’ but rather as an ‘expatriate,’ here for voluntary and probably frivolous reasons, rather than out of economic necessity or fear for my own survival or freedom.”
The article is long and contains a fair share of philosophical questions about the effect of human and cultural traffic in a society, but the central theme is how immigrants -- perceived as inferior and disadvantaged -- are treated as a threat to the status quo, while expats with resources who have relocated by their own volition are welcomed as equals. However, isn’t the French national motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", or "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"? Smith comments on this, too:
“Equality is of course one of the virtues on which the French Republic was founded, yet critics of the Enlightenment philosophy behind the Revolution have long noticed a double standard: when equality is invoked, these critics note, it is understood that this is equality among equals.”
This alludes to an acceptance of inequality that perhaps only applies to native or ethnic French.
Smith recounts specific instances of anti-immigrant prejudice he’s witnessed during his time in France – a racist statement by a taxi driver, incessant stop and frisks of black youth by police and, of course, the constant handwringing by French nationals over a sudden influx of different peoples. This is no longer France, they say. France is over.
More than cultural alarmism or individual acts of meanness, from Smith’s perspective, he sees the most obvious difference in the treatment of expats versus immigrants in the procedures of French immigration offices. Americans and Swedes go to one room, and Congolese and Malians to another. While Smith describes his treatment as one of a welcome ceremony among equals, the latter “has an air of quarantine, and the attitude of the officials is something resembling that of prison guards…”
While European nativists continue to express deep concern about being “overrun” with new cultural minorities, why do those who are labeled “expats” fare better in French society? What about the comparison between US and European immigration policies? What fundamental differences have you observed around the way different cultures treat immigration and diversity in general?
