immigrant, foreigner, expat, repat

The title sounds a little the nursery chant, "butcher, baker, candlestick maker" but a Facebook posting on the difference between immigrant and expat started me thinking about the terms immigrant, foreigner, expat, repat.

A few years back at a conference of credit union executives the topic of serving illegal immigrants came up. There was some real negativity towards these foreigners who had encroached national borders. I stood up and announced that I sympathized and that once I had been an illegal immigrant.

There were gasps.

As a white, well-educated, professional woman I did not fit the image of an illegal immigrant. Yet I had lived in France as one while trying to find work long after I legally had a right to be there.

I later found work in Switzerland and 15 years later became a Swiss national.

Geneva is 47% foreigner. The Swiss may consider these people foreigners, as they are, but they often refer themselves as expats, people living outside their native country. Based on the title of my blog, I thought of myself that way.

But I was also an immigrant and a foreigner. Even after taking the oath of Swiss citizenship I still had immigrated and had foreign origins. (Taking Swiss nationality did nothing to improve my French accent, identifying me as a foreigner as soon as I said anything). I still was an expat from the US but I am now also a repat, having become a foreign national, according to the country of my birth because I expatriated from the US.

What nation do I feel I truly belong to?

None.

America feels like a "foreign" country to me, but having spent only 24.5 years in Switzerland, I don't feel totally Swiss despite being totally comfortable living in the land of the red flag with the white cross. I've spent a long time in France as well as Germany. I am comfortable in France, less so in Germany, because it has been decades since I lived there but I could easily live in Germany again.

In France, Germany, Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Canada or any other country where I might live, I would be an immigrant and a foreigner. I would be an expat from Switzerland, but I feel also like an expat (legally as well as mentally) from the US.

Many of us who have moved countries have said they consider themselves "internationals" taking a bit from each of the cultures they've lived in without being 100% of any of them. My Third Culture Kid mystery series features a heroine who has done just that and searches sometimes (when she isn't finding killers) for her national identity, something I'm not doing.

Being a hodge podge, a melange, a hybrid, a mixture of experiences, languages and cultures has enriched me as a human, so I don't care what I'm named. I can toast looking into each persons eyes or not. I can leave my left hand on the table or not. I can do, two, three, four or no cheek kisses.

I can curse the bureaucracy in ALL the countries where I've lived, appreciate the quirks be it the noise-adverse Swiss or the shouting French. 

So maybe the term "international" fits best. It doesn't really matter. My life doesn't need a term.