Comment by jacobgkau
20 hours ago
There is an actual difference between those two words. GP said he lives in Tokyo "at the moment." Immigrants intend to settle permanently; expats move places temporarily and will eventually either move on to somewhere else or go back home.
Expats can turn into immigrants, but one who "knows deep down they don't belong" is less likely to.
That’s traditional outlook, but it doesn’t hold ground anymore. A lot of people considered immigrants are staying somewhere temporarily, for a few years. Most of all in comes down to people not wanting to label themselves as immigrants, because they have some prejudices against this terminology. Quite common it comes down to a person with European background labelling himself as an “expat” or “relocant”, and people from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East (except Israel) as “immigrants”. In the end, from point of view of host country, they are all the same immigrants that live in the country based on the same documents, e.g. resident permits, but people labelling themselves as “expats” may often support local anti-immigrant policies, not realising it will hurt them as well.