> It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics
These people typically call themselves "expatriates"
These people typically call themselves "expatriates"
I consider myself an expat in New Zealand, because I'm on a ~2 year visa that cannot be extended, and I have no particular intent to try to transfer to a different visa.
If I'd been here the same amount of time, in the same job, but on a straight to residency visa I intended to convert to PR/Citizenship, I would be an immigrant.
Lots of people live somewhere for decades and still call themselves, and are called, expats.
I guess colloquially it probably implies moving somewhere as an adult, but the word itself doesn't carry that meaning (it's literally ex=outside + patris=homeland). But for instance, my sister has lived permanently in New Zealand for 25 years now (and a few years prior to her permanent move) and has no intention to ever leave, but would still be considered an expat. Her children were born in the UK, but they were 4 and 2 when they moved there, and I don't think they'd ever have considered themselves expats as they've never known anywhere but NZ. In fact the oldest is visiting the UK for a week this year, it'll be the second time he's been in the UK since moving to NZ aged 4.
So, British expats in Spain and Chinese expats in Spain are likely to socialise in their specific group, but rarely if ever intersect. They are all immigrants in the target country (and especially when considered as a whole as everyone from "outside"), and they are all expats (but probably in defined cliques).
I'd say these clusters of people are living the "expat life", but equally there are many immigrants who don't particularly want to hang out with other expats, because they're not trying to recreate where they left in a new place, but are trying to assimilate to the new place. They themselves are still expats even if they don't socialise much with other expats, but wouldn't be living the expat life.
But I think this is might be cultural about the host country. Cambodia is blatantly racist, "Cambodia is for the Khmer people" is a thing there. Any non-Khmer immigrant will never be considered Cambodian, always a "barang"(foreigner) no matter how long they live there. This isn't true of NZ, who would happily consider you a Kiwi if you got the citizenship and lived there for a while, no matter your race or origin country.
[1] Non-immigrant is the administrative word used by the United States to designate people that are supposed to leave the country rather than settle in the US, usually on training/work/investor visas.
> Cambodia is blatantly racist
I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.
> If Cambodia had a GDP per capita similar to Japan/Korea/Taiwan, they would "suddenly" become less racist
Japan is also, famously, extremely racist. Probably to the same extent that Cambodia is, but I haven't been there so I can't compare.
Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.
And culturally, there are a lot of differences between SE Asia mentality and Anglosphere/Western mentality. I suspect part of it is this, too.
> Japan is also, famously, extremely racist.
> I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.
Why do almost all countries that get rich also get more democratic and more liberal on social issues? I don't know, but I see it nearly universally in many different countries.
> Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.
Agree.
Like I said, I've never been to Japan, can't comment on it, I'm only repeating what I've heard. I'm glad that's changing.
Thailand is a little different, yes. I wasn't there for as long, and was mainly only a tourist there, so no expert. But I never heard "Thailand is for the Thai people" while I was there. The cultural racism is similar, but they haven't had Cambodia's historical suffering as a background.
seems to contradict
> I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.
Racism can also take different forms. India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.
> India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.
Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are effectively ethnostates and they've not had the cultural enrichment yet that America or Europe has faced. Notably, there is rising anti-migrant extremism in the West, because the Great Replacement Theory is becoming increasingly obviously not just a theory.
Similar how? Why skin colour rather than say eye colour? Why not similar language, culture, religion, politics...?
People of course prefer others that share their language, culture, religion and politics. Race is often highly correlated to those.
To ignore the dimension of genetics is to willfully blind yourself to reality.
In the days of racial science (so up to the 1950s or so) some east Africans and South Asians were classified as "caucasian". Textbooks and encyclopedias from the time say so.
Race is not highly correlated to religion. Christianity is followed by numbers of Europeans, South Americans, Africans, and Asians. Islam by semitic, African, South Asian, South East Asian people. Buddhists are most commonly, South Asian, SE Asian or East Asian - still multiple different "races". The same with cultures. I do not see how race correlates to politics at all. There are weak correlations with culture and language, very weak within countries.
A white USA citizen will have more in common culturally, religiously and politically with a black USA citizen than any white European, Australian or New Zealander.
This is blatantly and obviously not true. Especially when discussing ex-pats, as you'd realise if you gave it 5 seconds' thought.
Ask anyone who has spent time in Japan, there has been a dramatic fall in blatant racism in the last 10-20 years. Yes, there are still rare instances, but the bad old days (before 2000) are gone. There is now a consistent, tiny, visible minority of non-East Asians that live and work in all major Japanese cities. And their children go to local schools. They are mostly working in low skill jobs like restaurants, construction, retail shops, farms, or factories. To be clear, many of those businesses require highly skilled people to run them, but the immigrant labour is doing low skill jobs. Also, there is a tiny fraction of those immigrant workers whom have trained very hard and are no longer low skill, like a bus driver or elderly care nurse.
Korea and Taiwan also have large numbers of immigrants doing low skill work.
My guess is that probably Taiwan is the most exposed to non-East Asian immigrants because they have a large population of foreign domestic helpers (clean/cook/child+elder care), so that is someone foreign in and around your house all day. I don't think Japan nor Korea has that system.