Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere
Populations born in the UK and France is probably a pretty good proxy for the size of "transnational professional elites" (since there's no British or French ethnic enclaves obviously).
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How rich, developed (or sharply disconnected from any previous wave of poorer migration) do countries have to be before they start sending what can be considered "transnational professional elites" as opposed to economic migrants and family reunification immigrants to the US (or other rich nations)?
For instance, in the British and French example, the assumption is that almost no one of those countries is sufficiently desperate in the home country (and leave due to lacking options) nor are they desperate to find enclaves to live together with those "of the old country" in the US (though I guess you can argue rich enclaves with international schools are just upper class versions of enclaves where people don't want their kids assimilating to the "locals").
But it's a spectrum isn't it? I mean, today, Germany, Japan, Italy are pretty well off and have already not sent desperate migrants for well over a generation or two or more so do we assume modern German, Italian and Japanese immigrants (of a certain age) are just as transnational elites as British and French? Maybe just slightly less, because there are still probably older generation migration that bridges the immediate postwar migration and still more "living ties" to previous migrants that perhaps remember immediate post-WWII poverty.
Going further along more recently rich, industrialized countries, Polish or South Korean migrants are still portrayed as closer to the "economic immigrant" side of things because there is an immediate generation of poorer migrants well within their parents' memory to the late 20th/early 21st century (even though young Poles or Koreans are not really "desperate" to emigrate any more and their 20-30 year old generation are already very educated/western in their home country, experienced recent democracy when their parents experienced dictatorships). When I meet a young millennial or even Gen Z Pole or Korean, sometimes their attitude to the US is already similar to the Brit or French expat (e.g. it's a cool country, to experience something different etc. but they no longer see their old country as place to flee in desperation). It seems countries with GDP per capita near 20 K (e.g. Hungary, Poland, Greece, Croatia, Uruguay are close to this point) and above are no longer filled with many people "desperate" to leave (in some cases, these places have shifted to actually other desperate people moving to them instead!). But on the other hand, there are countries just a bit poorer that still send migrants. Romania's GDP per capita is near 15 K and it's surrounded by rich places (the EU) yet as in the recent news, people from there have died risking their life to reach the US. Similar with Russia and China (their GDP per capita are around 15K or slightly less) and people leaving there are very much often in the "getting out for better life" camp (though political also with economic).
Today, archetypal economic migrants like Latin Americans, Chinese, Russians, Middle Easterners etc. still have their own version of transnational elites in the US or Canada (e.g. the archetypal rich kid who lives in luxury in Miami or NYC, California, Vancouver, Toronto is not desperate etc.). But I guess for these groups, the stats are swamped out by economic/working class migrants so their groups' public face is still kind of that.
I guess a kind of line can be seen where the immigrant vs. expat/transnational elite boundary is seen as where the label "immigrant" starts or "the immigrant experience" starts to no longer be the framing narrative. For example, Mexican, Chinese, South Korean, also eastern European -- still get the "my parents moved here for better life, "fish out of water", culture clash between east/west or American/non-American and immigrant experience" pop culture tropes. German, Italian, Irish, also to an extant Japanese, no longer get the recent immigrant trope (though they still might get the funny exchange student trope, or the "US society discriminated against my family back in the day", "my grandparents/parents became American but it was a rocky road to acceptance today from decades/generations past" trope). Brits or French or Canadians or Aussies arriving to the US definitely do not get the immigrant trope (except ironically to draw a contrast). For instance, a Canadian in the US might joke that "well, I'm an immigrant too" but not really internalize it on a gut level or think that anti-immigrant rhetoric is talking about them.
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