The expectation of gratitude comes up frequently in discussions of immigration. It’s so common that I devoted an entire chapter of my 2022 book — We, the Others — to the topic.

While love for, and attachment to, one’s new country is perfectly normal and desirable, the requirement made by some for newcomers to express grovelling gratitude is really a demand for deference. It’s routinely used as a way of silencing dissent and imposing conformity by reminding immigrants of what the welcoming society is “owed.”

In my chapter An Attitude of Gratitude, I point to accusations of ingratitude often thrown around “as a weapon lobbed at those who dare criticize the society in which they live.” Expectations of gratitude and accusations of ingratitude both serve the same purpose: to keep newcomers in their place, reminding them of a hierarchy that positions them as both slightly inferior to the welcoming society and forever foreign.

Novelist Dina Nayeri, who migrated to the U.S. from Iran, wrote a book on the subject. In The Ungrateful Refugee, she refers to “the expectation of gratitude” as “toxic” and writes of the “ongoing expectation that we would........

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