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    #51
    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
    I'm never entirely sure what to self define as. When I too lived in the UAE in the late 80s I suspect I will have used the term expat. Since then I've been immigrant, migrant, and most often foreigner, and now I have started using May's "Citizen of nowhere" (but that only really works if people get the reference)
    With my tongue firmly entrenched in my cheek, I refer to myself as a "Norddeutscher mit Migrationshintergrund". I'm not, officially, as I don't have German citizenship, and "Migrationshintergrund" is a synonym for "foreigners, or people with foreign parents, with dark hair".

    I'm not an "Ausländer" - or the more subtle "Mitbürger" -, I know that. If I were, I wouldn't have so many people telling me what they dislike (and, indeed, like) about Ausländer and Mitbürger.

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      #52
      Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
      I work on the assumption that anyone who refers to themselves as an "expat" rather than an immigrant is basically a wanker and best avoided. It's certainly true of French people in the UK in my experience.
      This. Although I really thought only the English were arrogant enough to use the term ex-pat.

      I'm just a migrant. Shortly to become an immigrant, no doubt.

      In France I felt French. Years of study about everything French. No Internet and a total immersion in the French media and an absolute disgust at 15 years of Tory governments.

      When I moved to the non
      Amsterdam Netherlands in the mid 90s, and was still regularly frequenting bars, nearly every English person I met, or was repeatedly introduced to was that sort of wiry, hairy wanker who came over to Holland, worked 3 months to get into the dole system and was happily, permanently stoned. And fuck were they boring. And untrustworthy. And usually leaving some nice Dutch girl, and inevitably children in the shit at a later date.

      Luckily this sort of dickhead seems to be extinct these days. I refuse to speak English at work. Understand everything about where I live, but still feel strangely detached. No doubt due to my absurdly anti social job and my divorce. But I'm never proud to pronounce that I'm English.

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        #53
        My feeling - perhaps unfairly - is that an immigrant is someone who has moved permanently, who has no intention of leaving, so therefore has to engage (at least to some extent) with their new native country. An ex-pat is someone who's abroad for a bit as a job but will go home, so connections to the local community will only be temporary, and making an effort might seem pointless. Particularly if you have a clubby group of your countrymen creating an ersatz-country for you to live in. And that's why immigrants are generally less obnoxious than ex-pats.

        I've always just thought that ex-pat was just code for an English Economic migrant with limited self-awareness.

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          #54
          I think this is because of my American-centric POV, but the word ex-pat makes me think of someone who has renounced their citizenship and has no intention of returning to their home country--which is the exact opposite of SB's definition. Interesting.

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            #55
            I get introduced to blokes with mohicans and Discharge t-shirts, because, you know, we’re both punks.

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              #56
              I hate myself for saying this, but I am really good at accents, so when 'cornered' by an unsuspecting Brit, I speak another language, and then fuck off sharpish.

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                #57
                You'll have to reach me how to do that Gero.

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