An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin ex (out of) and patria (country, fatherland).

Background

The term is often used in the context of Westerners living in non-Western countries, although it is also used to describe Westerners living in other Western countries, such as Americans living in the United Kingdom, or Britons living in Spain. It may also reasonably refer to Japanese living, for example, in New York City, New York. The key determinant would seem to be cultural/socioeconomic and causation.

In the 19th century, Americans, numbering perhaps in the thousands, were drawn to Europe—especially to Munich and Paris—to study the art of painting. Henry James was a famous expatriate American writer from the 1870s, who adopted England as his home.

Famous American expatriates

American literary notables who lived in Paris from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. African-American expatriation to Paris also boomed after World War I, beginning with black American veterans who preferred the subtler racism of Paris to the oppressive racism and segregation in parts of the United States.

In the 1920s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as "the Harlem of Paris." Some notable African-American expatriates from the 1920s onward included Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and, after World War II, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. 1 2 3

Another famous group of expatriates was the so-called Beat Generation of American artists living in other countries during the 1950s and 1960s. This group included Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Harold Norse, Gregory Corso and Gary Snyder. Later generation expatriates included 1950s jazz musicians such as Steve Lacy, 1960s rock musician Jim Morrison, and 1970s singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy. Preceding the Beats by several years, and serving to some extent as a point of pilgrimage for many of them was the American expatriate composer and writer Paul Bowles, who spent time in Europe in the 30s before relocating to Tangier, Morocco in 1947, where he lived until his death in 1999.

Many American fashion designers have notably become expatriates in France and Italy to design for existing European design houses or to enhance their own collections. These fashion designers include Marisol Deluna, Tom Ford, Patrick Kelly, and Marc Jacobs.