Why I won't use 'migrant' except in inverted commas...

Historically immigration laws has been separated by which type of immigrant you were;-  if you were making a free choice to emigrate due to your work or personal life then you classed as an immigrant, with no extra factors to consider. If you were a refugee then you were fleeing war, famine other natural disaster or dictatorship in your home land, the Jewish immigrants during and after World War 2 are an example of refugees, as are the Croatian refugees from the 1990's, Rwandan refugees from the same decade and Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, Palestinian and many others from today. Then there are asylum seekers, these are people whose personal lives i.e. someone lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans-gender or queer living in Uganda, Kenya, Russia etc or political views i.e. someone who stands up against the current regime and is in danger or their family is in danger for this i.e. Turkey, Israel, Palestine (danger from Israel), Uganda, Zimbabwe, Russia, China, North Korea, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and many, many others.

To pull all of that complexity into 'migrants' is frankly deceitful, it places everyone under the category of 'choice', when the reality is far, far more complex and human.

Which brings me to the other reason I refuse to use 'migrant' outside of inverted commas. It is dehumanising, it takes all the varied, personal, complex often devastating reasons this person has had to make this journey and makes it a carbon copy identity, with a carbon copy solution, and carbon copy rhetoric, hyperbole and out right lies.


Many years ago I was on a rail replacement bus service from Crewe to Liverpool, at Runcorn a lovely Serbian refugee sat next to me. He told me some of his story, he was a chef, a 5 star chef back in Serbia, he had stood up again the ethnic cleansing the Serbian gov and military were enacting at the time, he and his family had to flee Serbia in fear of their lives, they came to the UK because we had a reputation of accepting diverse political ideas and of not killing activists. (Not sure why we got that reputation but that's a different topic). The war at that time had been over a while, but he was still under threat as a defector and traitor, he desperately wanted to go back home, though he loved Liverpool where he'd been made welcome for the most part, his job was as an oddjob man at a restaurant, 5 star chef in Serbia, oddjob man in the UK; of course he wanted to go home but not until it was safe for his family.

Another person I met was from Turkey, he had been a journalist and pamphleteer against the corrupt regime (the regime given legitimacy by the EU and UN btw) who again perpetuated genocide against the Armenian's in the mountain regions (still not something Turkey admits to). The Turkish police kidnapped and gang raped his wife before beating her to near death as a message for him. The family were able to leave for the UK where they had family who run a take-away. He now works in the kitchen at a take out, get targeted for racist abuse, he was a journalist in Turkey. He misses Turkey desperately but can not return, not unless he is granted amnesty, as he and his family are still in danger. He misses the scents that only his country has, he misses not being judged as a scrounger, even though he works hard, difficult hours in a hot kitchen irrespective of the weather, he misses Turkish coffee, he misses proper baklava, the bazaars.

To use 'migrant' to talk of the 'migrant crisis' is to take the very real, very scary reasons people flee to the UK as asylum seekers or refugees and pretend those reasons are unimportant. Worse it is to pretend that the UK's past colonial history has had no role in creating these situations in the world.

Israel and Palestine, Israel is an artificially created state, sure it was created in part to give the Jewish people a home, a home the holy books of Abraham say is their's, however that land was already Palestine, it was already someone's home. Once you do that it creates tensions, to then allow Israel to keep taking land through the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and now, as the UN et al have done. To permit Israel to do so whilst committing the most accept mass genocide the world has seen, it's surpassed the nazi holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, all with applause or excuses from the UK and US and UN.

India and Pakistan, literally when India won independence Lord Balfour's private secretary drew a line on a map and created a border. One hardly has to be an expert in international relations or global sociology to know that's a bad idea.

Zimbabwe, swapped the dictatorship of the whites for the revolutionary leader Robert Mugabe, the night freedom from the white oppressors was won, was a glorious night... sadly Mugabe loved power too much and kept it. He was able to keep it because no rational system of governance was in place, because the white (UK and Boer descendants) kept it so. Kenya, again the issues there go right back to colonialism... the list goes on.

Iraq is the mess it is because of how the 'invasion' occurred, because it wasn't about freeing a country from a dictator it was about selling off the resources and riches to rich US/Europe based businesses, all owned by white multi-billionaires, funny that.

We can't create these problems by our actions, current and historical and blame the persecuted for their persecution and refuse them succour, we have a moral, a human, and a perpetrators responsibility to treat these asylum seekers, refugees as people, as victims of circumstances they have no control over. We shouldn't be labelling them 'migrants' and ignoring their individual narratives nor our part as a nation, currently and historically, in their desperation.


Please at least think twice before using 'migrant' - language is powerful, how we choose to use it is as powerful.


Please read this article tackling myths about the refugees and asylum seekers in Calais

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/31/calais-migrants-crisis-myths-facts_n_7910350.html


And this is a great piece about colonial privilege

http://www.uhurusolidarity.org/2014/02/10/the-material-basis-of-white-privilege-is-colonial-domination-of-african-people/