An émigré is a person who has left their own country and is living in another one, and the reason they left is political. Something happened at home — a revolution, a war, a government they could not live under — and they got out. They may hope to go back one day when things change. Many never do. Compare it with the words next to it, because that is the only way to feel the difference. An 'immigrant' is anyone who moves to a new country to live, for any reason at all: work, family, weather, study. A 'refugee' is someone forced to run, usually in danger, usually with nothing, and it is a legal word — governments decide who is a refugee. An 'exile' is someone who cannot go home, often because they were thrown out. An émigré sits near exile, but the feeling is different: an émigré usually left by their own decision, one step ahead of trouble, and often had enough money or standing to land somewhere and keep living a recognisable life. So the word carries a quiet hint of the educated and the comfortable — writers, artists, aristocrats, professors, former officials. You will read about Russian émigrés in Paris after 1917, or Cuban émigrés in Miami. You would not normally use it for a farmer who walked across a border with nothing; that person is a refugee. The word is formal and literary. It shows up in history writing, journalism, and novels far more than in speech. In Taiwan, if you are talking about your own life or your friends' lives, you will almost always want 'immigrant' instead. Note also that it usually describes people looking back at a home country — 'émigré' rather than 'immigrant' keeps your eye on where they came from, while 'immigrant' keeps your eye on where they arrived. It can also work as an adjective before a noun: an émigré community, émigré writers, the émigré press. English kept both French accents. You will sometimes see it written 'emigre' with none, and that is accepted, though the accented spelling is the standard one in careful writing. The plural is émigrés.

（因政治因素）流亡者、僑居國外的政治移民。台灣一般說「流亡人士」「政治移民」，歷史課本講「白俄流亡者」用的就是這個詞。注意別直接翻成「移民」——中文的「移民」對應的是 immigrant，範圍大得多，任何理由搬去別國都算；émigré 一定牽涉到政治，而且語感上偏向知識分子、上層階級那一類人。