If you start living abroad you might be faced with these terms a lot and it might not be quite so clear that there is actually critical differences between them. While nearly all immigrants are expats, many expats are not immigrants. There is a lot of overlap, but many key points of separation. This is a nuance of the English language that takes some explaining.

I had to post this because I was explaining employment law in Nicaragua yesterday and someone was upset that I used the term expat instead of immigrant, but the law applies one way to immigrants and another way to expats here in Nicaragua and the discussion was only for expats. So I made this video to educate on the differences.

immigrant: A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another.
expat / expatriot: a person who lives outside his or her own country.

The entire modern digital nomad movement is based primarily on the expat, without immigration, experience. Digital nomadery is specifically staying nomadic and not settling into a single place. In theory this can be done within one’s country of origin or, in theory again, one could emigrate to a new country and digital nomad only within that country – but the accepted assumption of the term is that the nomadery is between countries in most cases. This means that digital nomads, at least as the term is generally used, are expats but not immigrants.

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