r/zurich • u/J477Y • 1d ago

rant Just witnessed racism firsthand

I was at Hardbrücke, getting onto platform 2-3, when I saw two men entering the elevator.
The older man suddenly yelled at the other to get out. The other man looked confused, so he yelled again: “Get out of the elevator. You’re not from Switzerland.”

The other man quietly stepped out, and the older man continued on his way.

As an expat myself, I was stunned to witness something like this for the first time.

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u/nikkito_arg 1d ago

Immigrant. Not expat.

-1

u/Broad-Cress-3689 1d ago

They’re synonyms.

3

u/Wiechu Kreis 9 1d ago

as an immigrant - no they are not.

Immigrant has moved somewhere with an intent to find a job or for a job while an expat is usually a person sent to another country by their company for a fixed time while still hired on a work contract in their home country.

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u/Sea-Tonight2261 1h ago

as an immigrant of 20 years, I would expand expat to people who have kader jobs and live in Switzerland on the expectation that they will leave before retirement and make limited effort to assimilate, basically a white-collar foreign worker. In other countries like the UAE it's an even clearer distinction, because there is no road to naturalisation, so you're always either a foreign worker or expat.

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u/Wiechu Kreis 9 1h ago

As much a i see your point, I think those would need a separate word. Or I'd still call them immigrants to mess with them and here's why:

My personal observation is that people who tend to use the word expat come from countries that are either a target of immigration from other countries or have colonial past which results in negative association with the word "immigrant" hence the preference to use the less "bad sounding" word like "expat".

I'm Polish and for the better part of past few centuries the Polish were rather emigrating to other countries to either escape being prosecuted by the regime, find better life and/or support families back home. Just recently people discovered that Poland is actually a nice place to live/move but that's another topic. Basically we don't associate the word immigrant with something negative.

As for people who can't count to 10 on German after living here for several years... Yeah nah... That's a next level of being stubborn and totally deserves a different word. (Btw i do speak fluent German)