Interview with Sandra Leblé: Expat or Migrant?

Sandra Leblé, can you tell us a few words about yourself and your geographic background?
I am French and Comorian, I grew up in Chad, Madagascar and Cameroon, with many trips to the
Comoros, before “returning” to France at the age of 15 where I continued my high school in
Seine-Saint-Denis, completed my preparatory class in the 16th district of Paris, then my Business
School in Evry!

I did my international internship in Mauritius to rediscover a taste of the Indian Ocean that I was
missing.
It was here that I met the man who is now my husband, and who comes from Reunion Island.
We then spent 10 years in Toulouse (“the Pink City”), where I had the pleasure and the privilege of
working at Airbus on large business transformation projects.
And we finally came back to Mauritius in 2021, but now to live here, with our two kids.

What is your Job in Mauritius?
I am a Career Coach and Team Coach. I help companies to boost their performance thanks to a more
fluid communication, and by rebalancing some axes in their way of collaborating.

I also accompany women in Life Coaching, in order to help them get back to the center of their
priorities and create for them the life and career that suits them.

I work in Mauritius, but also with Metropolitan France, Reunion Island and the Comoros Islands.

How do you answer when people ask you where you come from?
I ask them to clarify the question!
Because this question can have a very varied meaning in the mind of the person who asks it.
Depending on their answer I say that I am Franco-Comorian, that I grew up in Africa or that just before
arriving here, I was from Toulouse.

When you say you grew up in Africa, how did you consider yourself during that time?
The 11-year-old girl who was told she was moving to Cameroon after 8 years in Madagascar felt torn
from her home, because arriving at the age of 4, I felt like a Malagasy , although I didn’t really speak
the local language.

This move, which was the first of which I was really conscious of, really constituted an important stage
in my personal construction.

Arriving in Cameroon shook me.
I could not understand the accent of my school mates, they were speaking too fast for me, and above
all I arrived with a disproportionate ego from the height of my 12 years, and I had to inject a large
dose of humility into it to successfully integrate.
I finally have very good memories of those 3 years there and very good friends as well.

So objectively but a bit reductively, I could say I was an expat’s daughter.

In my feelings, more complex things were played out.

I went from “quasi-local” but belonging to a social stratum that I knew to be rather privileged … to that
of a foreigner for whom it requires effort and work on oneself to be accepted.

What do you think of the use of the terms expatriate and migrant?
In the dictionary, the definition of these words is not so different!

In the “Robert” dictionnary, an Expat is someone who left his homeland voluntarily or who was
expelled from it. This word also designates a person who works abroad on behalf of a company in his
country of origin.

According to Le Robert, a migrant, this time, is a “person who emigrates for economic reasons”.
Finally, according to the United Nations, the word “Migrant” designates any person who has lived in a
foreign country for more than one year, whatever the causes, voluntary or involuntary, of the
movement, and whatever the means, regular or irregular, used to migrate.

It makes you wonder if there is a real semantic difference between these two words.

If we could position these words on a social scale in the common mind, “migrant” would be well below
“expatriate”.
One can also integrate, if one wishes, in the parameters of differentiation, a parameter of economic or
social value that one brings to the country where one comes to live.
Finally, we can try to tell ourselves that an expat is freer to move than a migrant.

However, if I ask you to imagine a medical specialist expatriate in France… and I tell you now that he
comes from an African country… there is a good chance that you have just done a little gymnastics in
your mind to change the skin color of the expat in your visualization.

This therefore sends us back to our cognitive biases, to the political and economic history of “rich
countries” and “poor countries”.

As a mixed person who has traveled quite a bit, I would tell you that it is above all a question of
perspective, feelings, posture.

When I’m in the Comoros, I’m not considered superior because I’m half French. On the contrary, with
each new person I meet, I have to prove that I am indeed Comorian, in order to be accepted, because
as I have light skin and don’t live there, I am first of all a foreigner.

When you arrive in a new group, a new city, a new school or a new company, the same thing
happens.
If the group is proud of what it is, and you are in the minority, it is up to you to adapt to the culture of
the group, to show humility and abnegation, whatever the value that you think you came to bring in
this group.

And today, in Mauritius, do you think you are an expat or a migrant?
When we settled in the city of Tamarin, which is very popular with foreigners because it has a French
School and is close to an International School, I knew that we were going to enter this box of “expats”.

But we don’t feel like we’re giving Mauritius a gift by living here.

We consider ourselves rather lucky, and that the country is giving us a gift by putting in place
favorable conditions at various levels, which allow us to live happily and in a stable way here while
being close to the islands of our parents, in a dream environment.

The Mauritians also facilitate the integration of the migrants we are, by being so warm and welcoming.
Because we are social beings, and if we feel rejected by the host group, integration cannot take place.

So Expat or Migrant, what would you say to conclude?
That it’s good, when you define yourself as an expat, to keep within yourself the humility and gratitude
of a migrant, because you are an immigrant for the country where you are going.

That it’s good, when one defines oneself as a migrant, to realize what one brings to the country one is
going to, and to be proud of the path traveled, of this transition that one has dared to do.

Finally, it’s good, when defining someone as a migrant, to ask oneself what is the basis for defining
him in this way.
Do we know his diploma, his job, his story?
Haven’t we ourselves experienced a period of similar risk-taking, of separation from our roots to settle
more serenely elsewhere?

Let’s try to find our common points, beyond the obvious differences, and strive to respect everyone in
the path he draws for his good and that of his family.
.