Never Retire: Finding Our 'Place' As Immigrants In Spain

Whenever I use the term immigrant to describe myself, it sounds strange. This just goes to show the negative connotation the word carries in much of the world.

Under headlines such as this one—

You often see this—

The word expat is loaded. It carries many connotations, preconceptions and assumptions about class, education and privilege — just as the terms foreign worker, immigrant and migrant call to mind a different set of assumptions…

“Immigrants are usually defined as people who have come to a different country in order to live there permanently, whereas expats move abroad for a limited amount of time or have not yet decided upon the length of their stay,” he says.

The first paragraph captures how we define the words immigrant and expat socially and culturally.

The second paragraph uses objective definitions, which lots of people—particularly immigrants who call themselves expats—don’t like because they don’t want to be perceived in a certain way.

It’s these so-called semantics that fascinate me. Not just in this area. But—for now—it’s the matter at hand and top of my mind.

Like many immigrants, the most important thing I feel like I have to do is establish not as much a routine—though I will do that—but rituals to settle into the city and my neighborhood. The same goes for my wife.

Today, a little on how we plan on doing this, along with a review of the last couple of days in Valencia, which was spent buying a handful of essentials. Some expenses you probably have to incur when you move abroad because buying things again is less expensive than shipping them. This includes a grocery store run, a stop at two locations of a famous Spanish department store and the potential third place(s).