Yesterday a colleague asked me what I’m planning to write my next column about – “The migrant crisis”, I said. “Why are we calling them migrants”, he replied. “Why don’t we call them refugees?” It’s a good question and one that has been exercising many commentators. Al-Jazeera, for example, has already said that it will not use the word “migrant” since that implies a choice to move country. The correct term, they argue, is “refugee” – since most of the people on the move are in fear of their lives. David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary and now head of the International Rescue Committee, makes the same argument. He says that the word migrant “suggests these people are voluntarily fleeing, whereas in fact, if you’ve been barrel-bombed out of your home three times, life and limb demand that you flee.” The FT, however, is still running headlines about the “migrant crisis”. So are we wrong? I don’t think so.
The word “migrant” is meant to be factual, not pejorative. All the people involved in the mass movement of people across Europe are trying to migrate from one country to another. The majority probably qualify as refugees. But a substantial minority will not. For example, it is estimated that about one-third of the current arrivals in Germany are from Kosovo, Albania or Serbia – countries that Germany is seeking to classify as “safe”, meaning that their citizens could not apply for refugee or asylum status. So to classify Kosovans as “refugees” would almost certainly be incorrect. Some of the traditional and legal definitions of “refugee” are set out, in this useful piece from the BBC.
One alternative might be to routinely refer to “refugees and migrants” in describing people seeking to cross into the EU. But that could also be seen as editorialising – since it would implicitly draw a distinction between “refugees” (deserving) and “migrants” (not deserving).
In fact, that distinction is already routinely made in public discussion by putting the word “economic”, in front of migrant. As politicians and commentators struggle to rationalise the current debate, the importance of the distinction between “economic migrants” and “refugees” is increasingly being stressed. That is partly because people who want to argue for a more compassionate approach to Syrian refugees, in particular, are well aware that mass immigration is currently unpopular in countries such as Britain, the Netherlands and France.
There clearly is an important difference to be made between people who, as David Miliband puts it, have been “barrel-bombed out of their homes” and those who are seeking a better life in the EU, but are not actually in fear of their lives. But, while it would be helpful to have a completely clear-cut distinction, there are also cases that fall somewhere in the middle. Some 10,000 Nigerians have crossed the Mediterranean this year. Many of them may struggle to make the case that they have a “well-founded fear of persecution”. On the other hand anybody who is prepared to attempt such a dangerous and uncomfortable crossing, is likely to be in fairly desperate circumstances.
Given the horrors of the Syrian civil war – with around 250,000 dead and some 9m displaced – I think most people would instinctively agree that all the Syrians on the move should be classified as refugees. Yet, even here, there are some distinctions to be made. This BBC profile of a Syrian asylum-seeker in Sweden makes the point that the woman involved had been living in Istanbul for three years and had worked in a hair salon and for a television station. Her circumstances were still grim. Her father was killed in Syria and her journey to Sweden was dangerous and expensive. But when she arrived in Gothenburg, was she still a refugee or was she an economic migrant? These are the questions Europe will be wrestling with, for years to come.
