Why is an English teacher or ex English teacher considered low in expat community?

I wonder why is that? Especially English teachers?

English teacher is not even concidered an expat. Expat is someone who is doing skilled job abroad. What kind of skill is knowing one language and teaching it someone who wasn't lucky enough to be born in English speaking country?

Then why all native speakers call themselves expats?

Because they want to feel superior to others.

Superior! Lol can't teach in a university so they superior?

What? Looks like you got me wrong. They want to be an expat to be superior to immigrant.

Quite a lot of skill for those of us with masters' degrees in it.


They don't, Deepak, however they are generally higher in the food chain than the people who try to come here from your neck of the woods.

Do you mean, "I wonder why that is?"
Perhaps the unskilled backpackers you've met are considered of lower caste in the so-called expat community. Some are highly educated and highly skilled, but you would probably not have met them. By the way. Having failed in India and then Poland, how are people such as yourself viewed in the expat community in the USA?


Do you mean, "So why do all native speakers call themselves ex-pats?"
They don't.


So, you think being born in an English-speaking country is a mark of great luck. That explains a lot about your insecurity. By the way, what skilled job do you do in the UK? How are you viewed in the Polish expat community?

It's a good luck if you want to speak good English without any effort, that's what I said.


Therefore not applicable I assume.


I'm an Engineer.


Sometimes it used to be a bit of jealousy but lately I don't have too much contact with the Polish community.

Then I'm surprised that you could say something as ridiculous as


Teaching a foreign language properly and successfully demands not only skill, but knowledge. I was going to explain more, but it's clear that I'd be wasting my time.

A great deal of both to do it properly.

Because they know the language of English, perhaps?

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expatriate
ldoceonline.com/dictionary/expatriate
chambers.co.uk/search.php?query=expatriate&title=21st
ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=expatriate

As for why they are considered "low" within the expat community.... I think you may be confusing skilled teachers with non-skilled simple labour. I think this low social label/distinction applies even to an expatriate in their homeland as well (where they would not be an expat). And if such a person were incompetent with their own language, they would be socially low wherever they go.

There's a lot of discussion here sometimes about terminology, Shadow. Those definitions are right, but usually when people in real life talk about expats, they mean someone hired on an expat package for a fixed time. The rule isn't hard and fast though. People also talk about expats in Spain, more often immigrants really, but people who've gone there with money in their pockets.

I guess definition comes with the agenda someone wants to push or the limitation of personal experience. I know a wide range of expats, in Poland as well as in other countries. They are all expats. Accepting a widely shared lexicon will standardize a language so its meaning is not lost between its speakers.

I could not play a role-playing game, for example, if players could not agree on the meaning of the language. In fact, it would devalue language itself were a widely accepted lexicon not respected. We'd be all back to the time of grunting.

The question is: what's an expat and what's an immigrant? There's surely a difference. Perhaps it's ones degree of assimilation or future plans.


One of the joys of English is the shifting and flexible meanings of its lexis.

Seeing as we're having so many of them, perhaps we can have a special forum for threads which are started purely for trolling?

I have noticed the same thing in topics started by the anonymous. I gather active membership here must be down.


An immigrant is someone who officially adopts another country as home. This means an intention expressed in paperwork. This may or may not involve renouncing citizenship to another country. Immigrants are eligible to the same services as native citizens. An immigrant is certainly not an illegal alien, which is a foreign resident without status. An expat retains their citizenship to the country outside their current host. In the case of dual citizenship, someone can feel like an expat due to cultural socialization while not being an expat.


Fixed.

Do not change quotes. I don't want to see you doing this and if it happens again, you might not get a warning.

Shadow, expats too if they're from the EU have exactly the same paperwork and 'official' stuff as a migrant. And nobody, whether immigrant or expat has to renounce their citizenship to live in Poland. Citizens of EU countries have no reason to take on a new one either. Very hard to know what point you're trying to make in that post.

And I'd prefer you not to change quotes, especially in such an irrelevant way. Usually grounds for being banned from here.

There is no difference between an expat and an immigrant except in the mind of those who are insistent that they are somehow better than other humans.

That's an interesting claim to make about the United Nations experts:

un.org/esa/population/migration/turin/Symposium_Turin_files/P09_Dumont&Lemaitre.pdf

Naw man, I hate the expat label.

I'm an immigrant Ithat left Ireland and moved to Poland. An expat is sent abroad by a company from their homeland.

Gawd I do hate that term expat, it's like they're too good for their new country. People don't know the proper definitions. The vast majority of foreigners are mostly likely immigrants.

Especially TEFL teachers.

Makes me think of retired brigadiers necking G'n'Ts on the verandah and barking at the servants in broken English.


I don't have a problem with that.

I agree I was always an immigrant


Exactly, people thinking they are better than other humans.

English teachers or not, if you can earn a crust fair play to you

No, it's that they are there to do a job which they have been sent there to do and once that job is finished they are off. An immigrant moves to a country to settle there, an expat is sent to a job.


The proper definition has a habit of changing depending on one's viewpoint.

You really impressed me right now.

The difference between an English teacher and a more "traditional" expat i.e. someone doing a highly skilled/specialized work abroad, is that the traditional expat probably earns about three times (or more) as much money and therefore doesn't wander around in a state of permanent scruffiness :)

All you say is correct and since this forum is full of English teachers you can understand why there is so much fuss about it.

Mind you, how would you classify someone sent by their employer, the UK government, do do something connected to ELT for a year or so at a western salary and with expenses, flights, furniture allowance etc?

Well, if sent by an employer then they are an ex-pat.

The problem with the term and what I meant by people thinking they are better when they use it is that they use it incorrectly and deem the term 'immigrant' as demeaning.

Y'know I don't get why someone would think that calling themselves an ex-pat when in reality they're actually an immigrant would make any bit of difference? It's an ego thing for the people who use it incorrectly. I've no problem with a person using it at all whatsoever if they are actually sent here by a foreign company to take up a post.


Yea, I'd have to agree with ya Roger.

People must have awful self-esteem issues when they think that a wrongly used label will give them a better social standing. Like 'Oh you're an ex-pat, you didn't willingly come to Poland, you were sent here.' Do people really think that that's a good image to portray? Oh we peasants are so lucky to share the same soil as one so gifted as you who were sent here to show us the way.

Boll!x.

It's all nonsense, we're all mostly in the same boat here and can't see why most of us can't all get along. Putting a label on yourself will only create a distance between fellow foreigners.

That's truth