There is a difference between immigration and expatriatism. I think. It's semantics, of course, but from what I have observed, whatever difference is imagined is based on class, race, and nationality.
The term 'expat' seems only to refer to the affluent, particularly (though not always) those with Caucasian ancestry. The expat has no obligation to learn the language and customs of the place they live; the language of 'assimilation' does not follow them around their daily lives. And expats always have a home they can return to where they can enjoy safety, security, and economic opportunity. If they can handle the tax regimes.
'Immigrant' on the other hand is understood to mean a person who is motivated by a lack of opportunity in their homeland, or an ousting due to war or famine or corruption. The mythology around the immigrant is that they start from scratch with about five dollars in their pocket, and make what they can of their adopted home. Some 'succeed' by adequately assimilating and doing well in the private property department; others 'fail' to adapt and live out their lives in some sad littoral space.
The terminology is accorded based on colonialist ideas about which kinds of people mean what.
I've recently accepted that in my taking a job in publishing in South East Asia, and moving into a house with other English-speaking fugitives, that I am an Australian expatriate. I'm not ashamed — not really. It's just a fact of my life. I don't know how long I intend to stay, and I have opportunities back home that I can return to if things don't work out here. I am the kind of person who gets to be thought of as an expat. That feels weird.
Not because there is anything inherently wrong with being an expat, but because my morality is so sanctimonious, so staunch, that it is always in conflict with the reality of my decision. Many people are comfortable in the expatriate lifestyle; they make the most of their host city, and they cover their footsteps when they leave. Others are basically evil incarnate: people whose private staff in their way-too-big houses force me to wonder how they made it to adulthood without the basic skills of self-sufficiency.
Being a newly minted expat in Vietnam is rife with moral dilemmas: to what extent do I accept other people's choices to employ full-time domestic labourers? And without local knowledge, how ethical is it for me to pay for help, in any incarnation? My gut says that it is not acceptable, that I am solely responsible for my own upkeep in every situation. But without a Vietnamese parent, someone who can tell me what the word for Drain-o is and where to find it, I am left with these decisions that make me feel at once useless, judgemental, and indulgent.
There is a quote by Flannery O'Connor I relate to strongly: 'If it's a symbol, to hell with it.' She is talking about the Eucharist, which for me as a lapsed Catholic is neither here nor there. It relates more to the sense that the symbolic is staunchly grounded in the real; the difference between language and action, abstract and manifest, may as well be nil. That moral decisions that are grounded in the symbolic always have real expressions.
Participating in a labour exchange that I don't think is fair on the labourer reiterates a historical pattern of racial and class violence. But sometimes, I do it.
Coming from a country whose government is currently depriving other humans the right to security, movement, and basic human dignity, it feels a little bit wrong to enjoy my own freedom to move with such ease. In some abject way, the cost of my relative affluence, and the cultural affluence of all Australians, is the deprivation of someone else's dignity.
This is not about white guilt; is it about the struggle to find a way to live without hurting other people because of arbitrarily assigned freedoms. It's difficult to feel thankful for freedom when it is guaranteed on the basis of someone else's servitude.
I can't imagine what it might be like to not possess the ease of movement and guarantee of personal security that my passports give me. Because I experience it, I feel that this relative ease is a right. Indeed freedom of movement and freedom of security are enshrined human rights in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The older I get, though, the more I realise how 'alienable' those rights are, and how it is post-colonial privileges that prescribe who has the right to rights.
Ellena Savage is an Australian journalist and editor who edits an entertainment and pop culture magazine in Ho Chi Minh City. She tweets as @RarrSavage
Pictured: Ellena on the beach at Mui Né