The word arrives to us from Latin. Ex, out of. Patria, fatherland. Expatriatus: one who has left the fatherland. Note what the word does not say. It does not say where the person went, why, or for how long. It does not say whether anyone wanted them there. The Romans, characteristically, left the embarrassing parts implicit.
English took the word and gave it a job. An immigrant is someone who moves to a country. An expat is someone who moves to a country while remaining, in some essential and unexaminable way, from somewhere better. The two words describe the same act. They are not used for the same people. A Vietnamese engineer in Frankfurt is an immigrant. A German engineer in Saigon is an expat. This asymmetry is never explained because it cannot survive explanation.
Still, precision matters. “Expat” has become a catch-all for any Westerner observed in the wild east of the meridian, and this is taxonomic malpractice. The genus contains distinct species. They do not interbreed willingly. Field notes follow, compiled in Vietnam, where all specimens may be observed in a single afternoon.
Expatriatus classicus — The Expat Proper
The original. Sent, not gone — the distinction is everything. A multinational moved him here, pays him in a hard currency, covers the villa in Thao Dien and the international school. He did not choose Vietnam; Vietnam happened to him, between Jakarta and a promised posting in Singapore.
He has been here four years and can say “no coriander” in Vietnamese. He experiences the country primarily through windscreens. His social circle is a closed system of other Expats Proper, replenished by arrivals as departures thin it. He will tell you Vietnam has changed enormously, and he is right, in the sense that his compound got a second pool.
Distinguishing call: “When we were in Nairobi—”
Nomadus digitalis — The Digital Nomad
Newer. Arrived after the Wi-Fi did. He is not in Vietnam; he is based in Vietnam, a preposition that does considerable work. His employer is a laptop. His visa is a question he prefers not to be asked.
He measures the country in megabits and the price of flat whites. Da Nang, he will tell you, is basically perfect: beach, fibre optic, a ninety-minute time overlap with his clients. He has strong opinions about which coworking space has the best light and no opinions about anything decided in Hanoi. In three months he will be based in Medellín and will describe it identically.
He is the only species that self-documents. Consult his feed for confirmation.
Distinguishing call: “The cost of living here is insane.”
Magister anglicus — The English Teacher
The most numerous species, and the least discussed, chiefly by itself. He came for a year, seven years ago. The certificate took a weekend to acquire. The lifestyle took longer to escape, and then he stopped trying.
He occupies an ambiguous position in the hierarchy: paid locally, so not an Expat Proper; employed on-site, so not a Nomad; here indefinitely, so not a tourist. The other species regard him the way old money regards a lottery winner, which is unjust, since he is the only one of them who works evenings and the only one who knows what a Vietnamese teenager thinks about anything.
Distinguishing call: “It’s just temporary.”
Peregrinus sedimentarius — The Backpacker Who Never Left
A tourist who fossilised. Came for two weeks in 2019 on the banana-pancake trail, and through a process no one, least of all he, can reconstruct, is still here. He owns a Wave 110cc and one pair of shoes. He knows a guy for everything.
He speaks the best Vietnamese of any species — bar Vietnamese, market Vietnamese, argue-with-a-landlord Vietnamese — and holds the fewest documents. He is sustained by border runs, remittances from a bewildered family, and an occasional gig of unspecified nature. He is, it must be said, having a better time than everyone else in this taxonomy.
Distinguishing call: “Yeah I was gonna go home, but.”
Coniunx sequens — The Trailing Spouse
Arrived attached to an Expatriatus classicus and is now the only member of the household who has learned anything. While the primary specimen attends meetings, she has learned the language, the market ladies’ names, and the actual price of mangoes. She runs a book club, a charity, and, quietly, the family.
Taxonomists note with interest that the trailing spouse frequently outgrows the host organism.
Distinguishing call: fluent Vietnamese, delivered without comment.
Civis factus — The Naturalised Citizen
The rarest species, and technically no longer a foreigner at all, which is precisely why he must be included: he is the taxonomy’s exit. Decades in. Vietnamese spouse, Vietnamese passport, Vietnamese arguments about traffic. He renounced the old citizenship at a consulate one Tuesday and felt less than he expected.
The other species find him unsettling. He is the proof that the door they all keep propped open — the return ticket, the “eventually”, the fatherland held in reserve — can simply be closed. Ex patria, at last, in the full Latin sense.
He is not an expat. That is the point. The expat is defined not by leaving home but by keeping it: home as a backup drive, faithfully maintained, never restored from.
The naturalised citizen deleted his. The rest are just visiting, some of them for the rest of their lives.
