As an ethnic Pole who's lived in London since 2013, I've been trying to find a suitable label to describe my living situation – in relation to the country of birth vs. the country that I currently live in.
Turns out it's a confusing clusterfudge of a minefield to navigate.
In Polish, we have two complimentary terms: "imigrant" and "emigrant" (the first vowel in each one is pronounced differently, so there's never any ambiguity in spoken Polish, in case you're wondering). They mean exactly the same thing, but from the opposite perspectives: you're an "imigrant" if you moved in, you're an "emigrant" if you moved out; if you're in, say, Warsaw, and your mate who was born there now lives abroad, they're an "e-". If a foreigner moves in to Warsaw, they're an "i-". It doesn't matter which country you're from, or which country you move to.
So naturally, I have assumed that the term "expat" is just an equivalent of the term "emigrant" in Polish (and many other languages with this particular pair of complimentary cognates, like French).
Oh how wrong I was. Whenever I'd mention I was an "expat", I'd get confused looks, followed by even more confused questions, like "But how can that be possible, you don't currently live outside of the UK" or "You're Polish, you can't be an expat, you're an immigrant".
Apparently if you move from a "poorer" country to a "richer" country, you're automatically an "immigrant". If you move from a "richer" country to the "poorer" country, you're an "expat". Yet somehow it only applies to SOME nations? Or at least this is how I understand (or completely misunderstand!) it? In that case, why aren't the British who live in the US considered "immigrants", seeing as technically our economy is yet to catch up to the cousins from the other side of the pond?
Just to be clear, my decision to move to London was not an economical one, but rather an ideological one (just google "Law and Justice Poland")- but somehow that seems to be making zero difference?