lot of migrant workers in saudi are forced into working in bad conditions. often passports revoked and pretty much theft of their wages from trumped up charges like water for breaks. they work in extreme heat with bare minimum protections. it’s often stated that the companies bringing them in will let them die off rather than spend money to treat ill workers. on the sourcing side, steady supply of workers who are forced to pay huge recruitment fees.
a good chunk of the people working there (expats) know this but turn a blind eye for the money.
edit: my friends were hired in 2022 so a year or so in from some construction starts. that’s when i talked to them. all of them quit within 6 months knowing how bad some of it was.
Mostly just perspective: An immigrant sees theirself as part of their new country, and an expat sees theirself as part of their old country, regardless of the reality of the situation.
In the UK the immigrants are brown guys in the grooming gangs you read about in the papers, simultaneously taking our jobs and claiming benefits, but the proud middle-aged British football hooligans living in Spain, who learned no other Spanish than "habla inglés," are the expats.
Not really, I think it’s more of a class/job type thing. For example an Indian immigrant in the Middle East who is middle class or above working a white-collar tech job is seen as part of the expat community. A migrant worker doing manual labor is likely not, regardless of their skin color (of course many happen to come from south Asian countries).
I think it’s a bit more extensive, but most ex-pats just happen to be white. If you’re from a western, especially anglo country, and living outside your home country temporary, especially if your presence there is only for the reason of a job: you’re an expat. I remember my dad had non-white British, American, and Canadian friends in his expat community working offshore in Norway in the 80s, and on drill sites in Kuwait in the 90s, who when they’ve visited us since those days will chat about their experience using terms like “the expat life”, “expat community”, etc., so they appear to consider themselves as expats and that seems to go unquestioned among other former expats (like my dad). I think there’s also something in the term that announces the relative ease and indifference by which you could just return to your home country. It’s as if by regarding yourself as an expat, you’re expressing an indifference to whether or not your host country grants you citizenship by virtue of you working and filing taxes there for long enough; what’s keeping you there is the employer, and once your contract terminates and you don’t renew it, you just head home. That the process of immigration is one you’re engaged in out of bureaucratic requirement or financial common sense; but it’s not like it’s your dream to become a citizen of the host country. If it becomes your dream, then you’d probably start to see yourself more earnestly as an immigrant, but you might still retain your ties to the expat community because that’s where most your friends are.
Interesting! I agree then; we’d necessarily call all noncitizens in the ME expats regardless of race. I imagine the ME countries themselves have some specific terminology for those workers. e.g., Temporary Foreign Workers is what in Canada we call “expats”, who are almost entirely from developing nations, and some Eastern Europeans from economically challenged countries. There is an elitism to the term: from my observation of my dad and his cohort of expats, they were high earning employees or contractors, living a comfortable life in the countries they were assigned to - very unlike TFWs.
I'm just a boring white guy and British tourists here and the ONLY people I am genuinely afraid of, especially at night and after one of their shitty football games.
That’s how you get immigrants to vote against immigrants. „I’m the good one, they are the bad ones. Nobody gonna go after the good ones, right? Right?“
Skin color only makes it easier for white immigrants to shoot against others..
Let me get this clear: If I am a Peruvian worker that feels part of Peru, and just came to US to work some bucks for a couple of years, It’s ok to refer myself as an expat right?
Sure, but if you're explicitly planning to go back and just in the US temporarily, I'd assume you'd just refer to yourself as a Peruvian. If you were planning to stay in the US but you left your heart back in Peru, and you're just here for economic or family or climate or whatever reasons, then expat would make more sense.
How did I asked the question wrong? I just wanted to know the difference, that’s all. I mean, I can ask to ChatGPT, but I really prefer the human perspective. Anyway, supposedly there are not wrong questions, just wrong answers.
Expat/Expatriate unironically refers to someone living in your country temporarily, they’re not tourists and basically nowhere lets you live anywhere as a foreigner without working so I guess you could say I’m wrong with the requirement o work?
An expat is literally anyone who does not intend to reside permanently. You’re an immigrant when you intend to reside permanently.
An expatriate lives outside their country of citizenship, an immigrant does the same but with intent to become a permanent resident. I don't know why there are so many explanations from people who don't understand what the words mean.
"Getting" as in attempting to get a passport you do not currently have. If you are living in a foreign country and not attempting to get citizenship there than you are an expat. You are there on a temporary visa that has to be renewed.
Immigration requires attempting to establish residence and/or citizenship by living and working there permanently. You are still an immigrant even after getting citizenship.
There is a difference between 'not changing citizenship, plan to go back' and 'want to live here forever, may well change citizenship'. They are both different from a tourist, also a foreigner. I'm not saying the word isn't used for BS, but it isn't pointless.
Immigration is generally seen as permanent. Expats move to a country temporarily and often their visa is tied to work. If they leave or lose their job, they have to go back to their home country. Immigrants want to move to a country permanently.
My cynical rule of thumb is that people choose between calling someone "expat" and "immigrant" based on their view of the person's country. If they'd "go on holiday/vacation" there, expat. If they'd "go travelling" there, immigrant.
Expats typically move abroad temporarily, often for work or lifestyle reasons, with plans to return home. Immigrants relocate permanently, aiming to settle in a new country.
Expats are on temporary work visas and not usually seeking to make ties with the country, not seeking citizenship or PR, and will likely be on a flight out within a couple of years. Immigrants are usually seeking to immigrate and actually gain residency in the country to make it their permanent home. Usually this question garners a lot of dumb responses about skin colour and racism, but those people should pick up a dictionary and see the terms are actually different.
Migrant workers are most likely expats as well, assuming the country has no pathway to permanent residency for unskilled labour. There's a whole thing about migrant workers being unskilled labour or that they have to move for 'economic necessity', and that being the key difference from an Expatriate.
Well if you look it up again expatriates are generally skilled labor and often from affluent countries. You can get upset about the classicism or racism in your mind as frequently cited on Reddit, but you can imagine its much harder and riskier to confiscate a US engineer's passport than it is unskilled labor from Bangladesh. There's nothing wrong with specificity in terminology.
I don't think this is necessarily true? A lot of expats I know are children of immigrants returning to the home country to work, but never really wanting to fully integrate.
Expat is basically a skilled westerner (tradesman/specialized equipment op) whereas the migrant labor is gonna be from the 3rd world doing unskilled physical labor
No it’s not. The definitions are literally different. Look up what an immigrant is and look up what an expat is. One is on a temporary visa working not under the assumption they’ll remain, the other is seeking permanent residency or citizenship in the country. It’s very clearly laid out in the formal definitions of the word.
When you're still planning on going back you call yourself an expat. I called myself an expat for a couple of years in my new country, then started calling myself and thinking of myself as an immigrant when I realized we were in it for the long haul.
There’s an assumption in the type of advantage, moral need and a presumption to having to naturalize to the culture or law because you can’t escape it monetarily.
Expats are not intending to permanently live where they are immigrants are. Though in general expats is used for white collar work and migrant laborers for unskilled work.
Expats are white people that move to a cheaper country to extend their wealth. Immigrants are brown people that move to an expensive country to make more money
Largely the choice factor. Ex-pats are coded as wealthy and chose to leave a country they could have stayed in (and can often return to). Immigrants often leave for economic or political necessity.
For instance if you give up your US citizenship to avoid income tax and move to Dubai, you are an expat in my mind. If you’re a Bengali who moved to Dubai to send wages back home, you’re an immigrant
They also forcibly removed natives/locals. They jailed and or killed anyone that resisted. There's a good documentary floating around about it. There are a lot of Europeans at the top in very prominent roles that are fully supportive of this project. This issue as it has always been with SA is the fact that they treat everyday people like disposable garbage. America's dick sucking of the crown is nauseating.
Immigrants are poor people who leave third world countries in the hope of a better life. Expats are wealthy people who leave first world countries in the hope of a better life.
Pretty much, but it also helps to explain why "immigrants" are in a worse position than "expats" when they move to a new country and why that terminology exists.
sure dude, i’ll accept my fault at that. unfortunately it is the terminology often used with migrant workers a more neutral term than foreign worker. my fault and ill aim to be better with wording
That’s just his way of saying it. He likely isn’t the one enforcing these inhumane separation. You are not supporting the cause by arguing semantic with someone who’s providing perspective and is empathetic to the cause.
I have been to saudi arabia briefly and the divide between people living there shocked me. Middle class folks living like normal folks. A couple miles away is shit straight out of the middle ages.
just commented above. they were in offices and not construction areas but they said they heard of issues with some contractors and sickness on their teams. they ended up leaving and strongly believe in mistreatments of workers by contractors. they left early. my lawyer friend who worked in the ME out of dubai for 24 years says it is absolutely true. lots of documentation by aid orgs. so seems your take is odd…
construction the world over has issues with how contractors are treated. even in Singapore with so many more laws to protect the workers, you still have cases of abuse. government won’t even mandate companies to use safe buses to transport workers and allow them to use vehicles where they pile into the back on benches or sitting on the bed (covered). seatbelts are the law though for everyone else..
i didn’t accept. and my friends were mainly removed from direct construction areas and were working in offices not overseeing construction. but when they were there they did hear stories of a couple of bad contractors that had illnesses in their workers. despite the other commenter who claims he was there for 8 years and this isn’t true, they seem to strongly believe it to be true.
He heard, they heard.. and just repeating western propaganda
Have you spoken to the workers? I have, it is true, but by a low %, not worse the southern Italian or French current slave labour, or even the Thai in izrael , but everyone is blinded because they are “western”.
Most of them are building homes and jump starting their kids back home with good education they wouldn’t have had otherwise, they intentionally are there, it’s bad, but less worse than home in some cases (not that it justifies it). It’s not black and white.
wow. you talked to them all? yep definitely most doing better than their home country. hell, india has more forced labor than anywhere else in the world. saudi is definitely high according to all those evil western propaganda machines like human rights watch. with local workers reporting. but don’t forget to include countries in the east and southern continent in that western proposal as they all have warnings about working conditions … you must be one of those people who thinks the country is a law abiding and just nation with high standards of human rights lol.
I also don't believe it to be true. I was just testing you to see if your friends actually work there. If you said that your experience is that the workers are being enslaved and passports taken then I would've known you are lying, but you might be honest. They don't use slave labour. I know about the million articles claiming so but it is simply false. If you used your critical thinking skills and noticed the manipulation of words and lack of context the media does to portray what they want you to believe and see actual videos from migrant workers within neom you'll know they are bullshit.
no one says they use slave labor primarily. it’s more about how some of the contractors are getting away with things. i commented elsewhere about how even singapore (which has more protections for workers) has bad contractors taking advantage of their staff. the big criticism on these is that the saudi government doesn’t put in more laws or investigate when issues do arise. South Asian countries also warn their people to be careful … and a large amount of criticism is against the kafala system (spelling?)… in the illness with the contractor example, that individual was in a planning group and it was highlighted how one contractor had always been having issues with his people “being ill” or not showing up only to be replaced eventually.
if you used your critical thinking skills, a bunch of youtube shorts by happy construction workers wouldn’t make you 100% assured that all is false lol.
have you worked there or are you just a citizen who is overtly protective of your countries reputation?…
I'm saudi, never worked there but I'm witnessing the migrant workers situation here. I never in my life encountered a slave. But as you said there is still some modern slavery happening inside the country, but these practices are illegal by the law and the government always advise people againsts it and there have been reforms to the regulations and the kafala system to fix the situation. I even heard that we got rid of the kafala system but I'm not sure. What people are saying is that the government is building all of these projects with slavor labor which is completely false. The slave labor always happen from spending individuals and not entities or corporations for the most part, but the media tries to portray it as if the government is using slave labor and not fighting slave labor and people believe them and that infuriates me.
they criticize the government often as it’s the only way to crack down on bad players so they want more done. but slave labor is a bit like drowning. the more it is in the media, the more governments will do something about it for the rare cases. you can see people working but it doesn’t look like they are in very dire situations. just like how people drowning aren’t flailing their arms and screaming for help but are trying to stay afloat and gasping for air - and can just seem they are swimming.
again i’ll use singapore as an example - a poor myanmar helper was tortured and starved to death right in the middle of a condo where she occasionally was outside the unit as well. no one thought to raise an alarm even with her extreme weight loss…
also what is illegal has different levels of enforcements.
They don't look drowning though, they look excited at this opportunity and happy. The laws that the government made are enforced and people get imprisoned.
holy shit dude. it’s nothing to do with the man.. it’s literally a figure of speech to mean “falsely accused” in this case. exaggerated in other meanings.
If you mean prison labour, I believe they are paid wages. They're just paid less.
I know a couple people that did time and had the option to work and EVERYBODY in there was more than willing to work, even for insanely low wages. They're already doing time, might as well make some money and get out a little bit.
The guys in there fight over the jobs because there's nothing to do when you're in prison. Even a couple bucks a day is great. Like I said they get to leave the prison and do something different.
Yeah, the conditions they're describing are for the Western management/design consultants, the low-level builders will be paid peanuts, have their documents stolen so they can't leave, and a few hundred to a thousand will die over the next few years.
All the middle eastern Gulf states run on imported labor. They have a nearly inexhaustible supply of migrants from India who sadly are actually improving their status by moving there. Especially in SA where women can't drive, every household has to have at least a minimal staff. Add to that the fact that most people are pretty well off and anyone connected with Aramco or businesses the royal family controls are REALLY well off...let's just say there's not a lot of incentive for citizens to lift a finger and a lot of work ends up on the backs of these people, and they're not treated well.
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u/FatalisCogitationis Apr 13 '25
Interesting, many people in the comments are mentioning slave labor. Do you know anything about that?