Why "Expat" is a Dirty Word (And Why I Use It Anyway)

In my work as a therapist for English-speakers in Paris, I often use the word "expat." We talk about the expat experience, expat mental health, and the unique challenges that come with that label.

I know that for many, "expat" is a complicated, uncomfortable, and sometimes deeply offensive word. It can feel loaded with a history of colonialism, with privilege, and with a willful separation from a local culture. Those criticisms are often valid.

I want to dedicate this post to exploring that complexity: why the word is so loaded, my own personal history with it, and why, despite its historical weight, I continue to use it.

A Word Shaped by History: My Time in Singapore

Language is fluid; words change meaning depending on their context. To explain my relationship with this word, I have to start in Singapore, where I lived from 2008 to 2021.

When I arrived, "expat" had a specific, unwritten definition composed of three parts:

1. Nationality: Someone from a predominantly Caucasian, Western country.

2. Finance: Someone on a "golden era" expat contract, with a high salary, housing allowances, and other benefits that placed them in a different economic reality from local Singaporeans.

3. Lifestyle: Someone who lived an insular life of social privilege, with overtones of the old colonial system — the "colonial masters of yesteryear."

This manifested in a noticeable segregation of daily life. Expats and locals congregated in different neighborhoods, sent their children to different schools, and rarely integrated in a meaningful way. This separation has deep, painful historical roots. The colonial project was founded on a fundamental disrespect for humanity, creating a system of racial hierarchy. While the empire is gone, the memory of that behavior is not. So, when a modern class of wealthy foreigners behaves in ways that echo that past, a word gets attached. In Singapore, that word was "expat."

By this definition, I was not one of them. I never made "expat money." My world was that of a "foreigner" — my friends were other foreigners from around the region and, of course, local Singaporeans. I lived a deeply integrated life, and it was the great pleasure of my time there.

Deconstructing the Bubble: Beyond the Easy Judgment

My work as a teacher did bring me into contact with that expat bubble. So, where does it come from? Does it originate with open racism? Sometimes, yes. I heard shocking, casual racism more times than I can count. But those people were a small, though loud, minority.

Most expats I met were adventurous, curious people. Their lack of integration stemmed from more complex, systemic forces: demanding jobs that left no energy for the hard work of integration, and a profound wealth divide that made genuine connection across class lines incredibly difficult. It's easy to judge someone for staying in their "comfort zone," but we shouldn't discount the profound human need for comfort when navigating a disorienting life abroad. The bubble is often a symptom of a system, not just an individual moral failure.

The Paris Context: A Different Cage, A Different Key

And this brings me to Paris, where the word "expat" has a completely different history. It is not primarily associated with colonial power. The historical image here is not a colonial master, but an artist: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein. People who came to create. So the word here is not loaded in the same painful way.

This allows us to see a different phenomenon. More often than the wealth-based bubble, I see a different kind of "gilded cage." One built not from extravagant wealth, but from cultural exhaustion.

These are people navigating one of the world's most expensive cities on modest salaries, feeling their resources are stretched thin. Their privilege isn't financial luxury, but the ability to retreat into a comfortable English-speaking social world when the daily effort of life in French becomes too much. The cage is gilded with the romantic idea of being an "expat in Paris," but the reality inside can be a lonely struggle — not belonging to the wealthy elite, but not yet belonging to the local culture either.

Why I Still Use the Word

This is precisely why I use the word "expat." Because that label, with all its nuance and imperfection, is what people in this very specific situation often choose for themselves.

They are the ones searching online for an "expat therapist in Paris" because they need someone who understands the specific, unspoken forms of gilded isolation that come with this life.

My goal is not to endorse the word's complicated history. It is a therapeutic act. I use the language people are using to describe their own lives so that I can reach into that cage with understanding and begin a deeper conversation — one about how we can live abroad with more awareness, connection, and respect for both ourselves and the cultures we call home. Because recognizing the cage is the first step to finding the door.