The online exhibition Expats x Migrants shows their portraits (without mentioning their name or profession), with the question who do you see: an expat or a migrant? A team of UM employees who are carrying out research on migration at five different faculties, helped Miyazaki with the implementation of the project. They were supported in their work by a grant from the UM’s Diversity and Inclusivity Office.
“With this exhibition, we want to show people that they sometimes – unconsciously – label people,” says Julia Reinold, PhD student at UNU-Merit and one of the organisers. “For example, white people are more often classed as expats. This is quickly linked with all kinds of expectations. An expat is rich, has everything under control. It is not without reason that policymakers use the word expat at times as a euphemism for migrant. But also: expats don’t want or have to integrate, but migrants do.”
It is not that we are no longer allowed to use the word expat, she says. It is mainly that we tear ourselves away from the stereotypes. An important objective of the exhibition is therefore fuelling the discussion. This was anticipated during the presentation of the project, last week during the annual conference of the interfaculty MACIMIDE (Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration and Development).
“A professor who has worked here for years is practically praised when he or she speaks a couple of words in Dutch. But the cleaner who has just arrived, is expected to ‘just’ speak our language”, could be heard. Also: “We often define people as expats purely if they only come to work here temporarily. Why do we never call seasonal workers from Eastern Europe expats?” Some of those present – many of them internationals working at the UM – speak from their own experience: “I feel like a migrant, but others often don’t see me like that. ‘Yes, but you are a ‘different’ kind of migrant’, they then say.”
The photo exhibition can be viewed online at www.expatsxmigrants.org. The organisation is still looking for locations to set up a physical exhibition.