Expat or Immigrant: Living Abroad Beyond Labels
- Paul Allen
- Apr 17
- 5 min read
Beyond the First Step
When you leave your home behind to live abroad, nobody really prepares you for how the world will try to define you. Expat. Immigrant. Foreigner. Wanderer. Boxes and labels scattered like luggage across the road you travel. After years of drifting, working, stumbling, and growing across continents, I’ve heard them all. But rarely did any of them feel like they truly belonged to me.
Table of Contents
A Life Built from Stubbornness and Hope
I’ve stood on street corners where no one spoke my language, feeling more immigrant than anything else — invisible, uncertain, carrying nothing but a stubborn heart and a half-broken backpack. I’ve waited hours outside crowded offices, clutching wrinkled paperwork that could decide my future. I’ve smiled awkwardly in grocery stores, nodding at words I barely understood, trying to piece together a new life one broken conversation at a time. In those moments, the word "immigrant" wasn't just a label
Other times, depending on how I looked, how I sounded, or the colour of the passport hidden deep in my pocket, people assumed I was something else entirely — an expat, just another foreigner passing through, privilege stitched invisibly into my seams like a currency I hadn’t earned. They didn't see the nights I spent alone wrestling with doubt, or the days I walked miles I put into my work that paid enough to survive. They didn't see the sacrifices stacked behind the smile that I share freely.
The truth, like most truths, was both simpler and far more complicated. I wasn’t chasing luxury or running from my past. I wasn’t looking for postcard sunsets or five-star breakfasts. I was or have been chasing something harder to define — something raw, something essential. I was chasing opportunity. I was chasing growth. I was chasing a life bigger than the one carved out for me by chance or circumstance. I believed, with every fibre of my being, that travel was never about escape. It was never about taking the easy road. It was about confronting the unknown, standing knee-deep in discomfort, and learning — not just about new places, but about myself. Travel, at its core, was the purest, most brutal, most beautiful form of education we could ever imagine.
Digging Beneath the Surface
To understand the weight of these labels, you have to live it. Not just in Instagram posts or polite café conversations — but in the fumbling, raw, unfiltered moments: renting a room from someone who barely trusts you, fumbling through a job interview with broken grammar and sweaty palms, sitting alone at dinner hearing a language you can't yet understand, realising you are a guest in a life that wasn’t built for you.
You start to see how perception shapes everything. "Expat" often conjures an image of floating above — a remote worker sipping cappuccinos under European skies, or a retiree basking under tropical sun. "Immigrant" conjures struggle — grinding, surviving, pushing uphill with everything stacked against you. One word whispers freedom. The other echoes hardship. But life abroad — real life — isn't so neatly divided.
Visas aren’t handed out based on hard work. Opportunities don't bow to good intentions. Doors open or stay closed based on invisible markers — birthplace, skin colour, assumptions tied to the passport you carry. Even as I worked — harder than I ever had at home — the labels clung. Privilege, they said. It didn’t matter that every new place meant starting from zero. It didn’t matter that I came to contribute, not to take. The labels lived on the surface. But the truth? The truth lived much deeper.
Finding Home Beyond Definitions
When you live abroad long enough — not as a tourist, but as a human being trying to survive, belong, and build a life — you start to see the invisible walls that rise between people. You notice the "expats" who often live in comfortable bubbles, speaking their own language, eating familiar foods, and brushing lightly against the local culture without fully diving in. But you also meet expats who break free from the comfort zone — who learn the language, build deep friendships, and weave themselves into the community with humility and care.
The same goes for immigrants. While many dive into their new world — celebrating unfamiliar holidays, adopting customs that once felt foreign, moulding themselves into something both old and new — others find safety in familiarity, surrounding themselves with people from their homeland, recreating a version of home in a place that still feels alien.
It’s never as simple as the labels suggest. Integration isn’t automatic. It’s a choice. A daily act of courage, humility, and resilience — no matter where you come from, no matter how you arrived.
And then there are people like me: the stubborn ones. The wanderers. The ones who refuse to fit neatly into either box. The ones who believe integration is not optional — it’s a responsibility. Living abroad means talking about life in broken Spanish, Maya or other native languages, it means learning to celebrate all the small wins: ordering food correctly, making a local friend, getting directions without using Google Translate. It means sitting with loneliness without running home. It means being humbled, over and over again — by the complexity of cultures, the kindness of strangers, the vastness of everything you still don't know.
Travel teaches you that privilege isn’t just money or a passport. Real privilege is the freedom to choose discomfort — to walk into the unknown willingly, to let struggle transform you, and to still keep your heart wide open at the end of it.
The Heartbeat of Wandering
Whenever I landed somewhere new, I didn’t come with demands. I came with questions. I didn’t expect the world to bow to me. I came ready to bow to the world. Because true travel — real, soul-deep travel — isn't about conquest. It’s about humility. It’s about walking into a new life and whispering: "Teach me. I'm ready to learn."
That’s the heartbeat of Wandering Monkey™. It’s about letting the world break you open, rebuild you, and invite you to become something stronger, softer, wiser. The older I get, the less I care what they call me. Expat. Immigrant. Foreigner. Drifter. I know who I am. I am a student of life. I am a builder. I am a dreamer who refused to stay boxed in by fear. I am someone who has eaten meals with hands, chopsticks, and forks. Who has danced to music I didn’t understand. Who has cried alone in hostel rooms, and laughed under sunlit plazas with people I might never see again.
Every border crossed stripped away something false. Every job, every broken sentence, every late-night conversation layered something truer onto my soul. No label can contain that. No title can explain it.
Keep Moving Forward
So maybe next time someone asks if I’m an expat or an immigrant, I’ll just smile. Because the truth is bigger than any box they could try to fit me in. I’m a traveler. A builder. A wanderer. A stubborn, hopeful, beautiful work in progress.
And if you ever find yourself caught between labels — if you ever feel unseen, misplaced, or misunderstood in your journey — remember this:
No Travel, No Life™
Paul
Wandering Monkey
P.S. If you enjoyed this, check out my book A Traveller’s Guide to Life — a raw and honest look at living, learning, and growing beyond borders. Available now!
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