Gadling

Great post, Aaron. I had never really thought of the implications of the term "migrant worker" - or whether anything they do differs fundamentally from the "expat" existence.

On the flip side, I have noticed some travel enthusiasts have kind of a reverse judgment of the "expat" set as well. No one questions a "migrant worker" or an immigrant from a developing country if they choose to spend much of their time with other people from home, eating food from home, and so on (hence the existence of Chinatowns around the world), but we "authentic" backpacking traveler types are quick to criticize expats for not doing enough to truly experience their new country, for living a superficial existence, etc, etc.

Just as "migrant workers" may sometimes be curious about seeing the world, "expats" may also just be following their paycheque, and may miss home, family, friends, language, customs...

Anyway. Thanks for pointing out this double standard - it's always interesting to catch ourselves in a significant, but unnoticed, use of language.

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UN.GIFT (United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking ) website www.ungift.org aims to be an extension of UN GIFT activities worldwide. We would like it to evolve into a vibrant online community where people exchange views, showcase their work, talk about their experiences to strengthen the fight against human trafficking. With your help we can make it a valuable resource to take this fight forward. Organized crime of human trafficking needs a fitting organized response.


• It is time to join forces to prevent human trafficking.
• Give this global problem a global solution.
• Rally under the banner of the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking.
• Get involved!
• Together we can save people and put traffickers behind bars.


UN.GIFT was formally launched in London on 26 March 2007. It is designed to have a long-term impact to create a turning point in the worldwide fight against human trafficking. 27million people are trafficked each year. UN.GIFT intends to take action against human trafficking in all its manifestations – commercial sexual exploitation, bonded labour, organ trade, camel jockeying, forced marriages, domestic labour, illegal adoption, and other exploitative work – through creating partnerships at a global level with all sectors of society.

The ultimate goal of the Global Initiative is to contribute to ending human trafficking– estimated to have a total market value of about $32 billion worldwide. UNODC has a two-pronged strategy for achieving this goal – increasing public awareness of the problem and coordinating existing but disparate efforts by international and national groups, governments and non-governmental organizations and by concerned individuals to end the practice.

Numerous regional GIFT events will culminate in Vienna with a Global Forum against Human Trafficking from 13th to 15th Feb 2008.

The objective of The Vienna Forum is to raise awareness, facilitate cooperation and partnerships among the various stakeholders. It will bring together representatives from Member States, UN system organizations, other regional and international organizations, the business community, academia, non-governmental organizations and other elements of civil society. The Forum will allow for an open environment to enable all parties involved to take concrete steps to fight human trafficking, within their spheres of action.

The Forum will be a catalyst for solution-seeking ideas and address three overriding themes on human trafficking:
1.Vulnerability: why does human trafficking happen;
2. Impact: human and social consequences of human trafficking;
3. Action: innovative approaches to solving complex problems.

The Vienna Forum will also consist of plenary sessions and a variety of panel discussions and workshops especially designed to address the multi-faceted dimensions of human trafficking.



Tushar

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"Immigrant" and "migrant worker" are not the only terms people use to subconsciously distance themselves from those who have moved to work in their country. The most loaded term, which I somehow forgot to mention, is "alien," or the even more remote "permanent resident alien."

Those terms make those working abroad seem literally as if they're from a different planet.

I can tell you, I've even been an "illegal alien" before-- living and working on an expired visa-- and I never once thought of myself in that way. Why? I don't know.

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Hello, I'm a guest and I just happened by after reading your food collumn about fish, for which I'm thankful.

I share a house with two Columbian men. They're both extremely well educated in computer sciences. Lately they were downsized out of that work in New York and now they live in Florida, and repair appliances for a living. One refers to Columbia as "my country." They both pine for friends and family "back home."

They are not "expats" seeking self actualization or more cultural experience. They're here because they want peace, safety, and a decent living. They're not "miserable" but I wouldn't say they're exactly "happy" either.

We are like so many immigrants who came to the US, and went to South America seeking peace and safety. Today you can meet hundreds of poor Asian women who married men 20 years their senior in large measure to come to the US for a better life. You call them expats? I call them "survivalists."

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I think this a really good point that most people, myself included, don't even realize they're contributing to. However, I do have one possible insight into the difference in the two terms/concepts. While this is more of a stereotype, and certainly doesn't apply to all (or possibly even most), I think generally "expats" are seeking an alternate, relatively temporary, experience. On the other hand, much of the "migrant worker" group might not have much intent to return to their home country and in many cases would gladly seek citizenship and permanent residence in their immigrated country. In the end, realistically, the end effects/results of the two probably aren't any different from each other, and while the economic status is very much a part of it, the vocabulary can be related to the intent of those described, and therefore how people respond to teir presence.

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While we're at it, we should also examine the custom of referring to illegal immigrants as "undocumented workers" instead of "illegal immigrants" As far as I'm concerned, its a thinly veiled attempt to soften our views regarding the impact of allowing those illegal immigrants to continue to depress wages, steal identities, and drain our social services without contributing to the tax revenue. Well, as much as I feel sorry for the poor in other countries, these immigrants are here ILLEGALLY, no matter how hard working they are. They are breaking the law, period. They are taking "cuts" in the immigration line from people who are trying to follow the rules and waiting their turn to come to the USA. I wish I could solve the poverty problems in other countries, but I can't. I can't control the cause of their problems, and I shouldn't be held responsible to accomodate the results of their inequitable policies. Our pie is only so big...lets feed it to the people who were born here first.

Btw, a migrant worker is someone who is working on a temporary basis at a temporary job. An immigrant is someone who intends to make a permanent home in the country with a permanent job. I would use the term "expat" (and I have been one) to describe myself living in another country. I would expect others to refer to me as an immigrant. There is no defense for that god-awful term "alien", though.

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Hey Dion,

I'm not American and I only hear bits and pieces of the debate over illegal/undocumented workers, so I don't want to weigh in on the actual arguments on benefits/costs of their presence or how to solve the problem.

But I think the term "undocumented worker" has arisen largely in response to the use of the term "illegal alien" - which is usually used alongside pretty inflammatory statements filled with hatred, racism and ignorance. (Thankfully, of course, this isn't the case in your comment - and of course you didn't even use "alien", but normally when I see the word "illegal" it's paired with "alien", rather than "immigrant".)

You're quite right that people use it to soften others' views - because they see those views as often being extreme and dehumanizing. (Again, not in your case.) And of course, it's also used by people who want the laws changed so that those undocumented/illegal workers will no longer be either undocumented or illegal.

I read an interesting comment on WorldHum.com recently - in response to a rant about "illegal aliens" supposedly destroying every neighbourhood they move into, stealing jobs, being dirty, etc, etc, etc, Jim (one of the editors) had this to say:

"Politics aside, I don’t believe people can be illegal. It’s a question of grammar. People, or aliens, can commit illegal acts, but they cannot be illegal. Although plenty of media still use “illegal aliens” or even “illegal immigrants,” that’s changing and will continue to change."

I thought that was a useful reminder for all of us, wherever we may stand in this debate, that labels (whether it's "illegal" or "undocumented") often obscure the fact that there are a whole lot of human beings stuck in the middle of this argument - and many of them are children who had no choice in the matter.

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It is amazing that, just today I was thinking about the first time I came across the term 'expat.' It was in reference to Fitzgerald and that group of writers who went abroad...it was a romantic term to me. And I thought what a lag in the definition of a term and the times in which it is used...in a global existance, where it does not matter where we are physically as long as we have an open line of communication to our workplace, can any of us really be expats? Why aren't we all just people living in the world, trying to get along the best way we can? How long can those old terms be relevant?

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Well hmmm...an awful lot of the expats I've known (in 25 years away from my home country) have moved abroad expecting to be more or less permanent. This has if anything increased since US companies stopped outstationing whole families for three year stints and instead sending singles who often end up seeking permanent positions or continued outstationing. And often they marry and the US is so bloody impossible to get your spouse into (often requiring separations of up to four years, during which the marriage is severely tested...and questioned for authenticity as well) that the US partner stays abroad.

Myself I have always been used to refer to anybody living abroad as an expat, regardless of origin, and my local neighbors think of me as a foreigner. Or lately, a lucky escapee from a teetering democracy! LOL

I assume that most people love their homeland, even if the system they lived under is bad. Refugee has a terrible ring of finality to it, but many immigrants and expats moved under those circumstances. Knowing that they may never be able to go back.

Lovely article and comments. I may soon be moving back to the old homeland...and due to my dual citizenship, will once again become an expat. We have changed much in a quarter century, my country and I.

Live is never dull.

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My assumptions on the matter:

- Migrant workers are low-paid agricultural laborers *who follow the work*. The "migration" isn't from a country of origin, it's from harvest to harvest. In the 1930s, plenty of "migrant workers" in the US were Caucasian US nationals.

- Ex-pats are people from your own country, whatever it is, who have either renounced citizenship or taken up permanent residence in another country, usually on another continent. This usually refers to Anglophones, but not always. (IE, you might see people refer to "The Japanese Ex-Pat Community" in a given city.)

- Immigrants are people who have come to your own country from another country.

I think immigrant vs ex-pat or emigre (ex-pat carries a sense of having "renounced" your former home) has to do with a point-of-view concept. After all, whether someone is an immigrant or an emigre (we like the French word for that! it's more common than emigrant...) depends literally on the land you're standing on.

I have no particular position on "illegal immigration" in the US or elsewhere, except that fear of it is often driven by xenophobia and/or racism, and the rhetoric put out by people with that POV is not supported by statistical data. To me, racism is a much-worse force in the world than what amounts to line-jumping.

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I'm sorry, but if you scratch the surface of most rhetoric about "illegal immigrants," the racism does enter into it -- because in the US, the problem is mostly framed with reference to Mexico, in spite of the fact that there are plenty of people here illegally from other places, and I never hear people worrying about white people sneaking in from Canada.

The anger and fear about illegal immigration in the US is attached almost entirely to people of color, even if the label itself is the same regardless of race. And that makes it such a hot political issue that I don't really want to get into it any further with anyone. (However, there was a good in-depth nonpartisan look at the topic in a recent, maybe current, issue of "Mental Floss.")

I stand by my definition of "migrant worker." I think it jibes with the current Wikipedia statement on the topic, more or less (that the seasonal component may be there as well and the worker in question may not necessarily be a foreign national). Of course, we all know how easy Wikipedia is to game, so who knows if it'll say the same thing in twelve hours? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_worker

"A migrant worker is someone who regularly works away from home, if they even have a home. Although the United Nations' {use of} this term overlaps with 'foreign worker', the use of the term within the United States is more specific. In the United States, the term is most commonly used to describe low-wage workers performing manual labor in the agriculture field. Today in Europe and the United States these are often immigrants who are not working on valid work visas. {....} The term migrant worker sometimes may be used to describe any worker who moves from one seasonal job to another. This use is generally confined to lower-wage fields, perhaps because the term has been indelibly linked with low-wage farmworkers and illegal immigrants.{....}In America's history, starting at the end of the American Civil War, hobos were the migrant workers who performed much of this agricultural work, using freight railroads as their means of transportation to new jobs. During the collapse of capitalism in the Great Depression, so-called Okies who fled the dust bowl were a significant source of temporary farm labor.{....}It is also used currently for workers from China's impoverished west who go to work in the more prosperous east."

The UN defines "migrant worker" in terms of foreign nationals, but the US has not signed on to that definition; furthermore, that definition is not historically accurate for the US, though it may have currency. *shrug*

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Tourists are aliens too, albeit legal ones.

They become "Illegal Aliens" the moment they overstay. Not their visas because visas are travel documents, but their lawfully allowed stay granted to them upon their arrival.

They also become "Illegal Aliens" if they do paid work even if their stay is still current, i.e. they have not yet overstayed.

Then they become "Undocumented Alien Workers" because obviously, they lack the basic document required for them to work: the SSN. Tourists can not be issued a Social Security Number.

"Undocumented Aliens" are those who entered "Without Inspection"; or those who entered with inspection but somehow managed to "slip past" the quarantine area (persons who are in transit); or crewmen of vessels docked temporarily in the U.S. and are left behind when their vessels sailed away and decide to stay for good.

"Migrant Workers" are those individuals whose primary purpose is to work, then return to their own countries after working temporarily or after having saved enough of the "fruits of their labor", no pun intended. I'm thinking "farm workers" here.

"Immigrants" are those who enter legally and seek to make the U.S. their home country. Obviously, you cannot be an immigrant and undocumented at the same time.

Some tourists coming from "Visa Waiver" countries overstay too. They are allowed to enter and stay for 90 days only. They cannot convert to any type of working status because there is no visa to convert.

An "Expatriate" refers to an individual who is usually self-sufficient; who comes to see initially the country, likes what he or she sees, and decides to make it their home. Of course the inevitable paper work has to be accomplished. After all, they are "Aliens" too you know.

You see, race does not enter the picture here. Depending on your particular circumstance, the label attached to you is the same no matter the color of your skin.

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