Refugees, Migrants, Foreigners, and More

From a European and particularly from a British perspective, Nicholas Gallagher’s essay on immigration in Mosaic strikes a chord. I agree with his critique of the refugee/migrant dichotomy as it has come to be applied to the present migration debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Each term has its uses, but “refugee” in particular carries so much historical baggage that it is almost bound to engender not only terminological inexactitude but political conflict.

During Europe’s migration crisis of 2015, a striking linguistic distinction soon emerged among Europeans. Advocates of an open-door policy toward the human wave then sweeping in from Syria and other parts of the Muslim world—that is to say, the liberal elites and the media—referred to them with the euphemism “refugees.” Less enthusiastic Europeans—the great majority—called them “migrants” or, less neutrally, “immigrants” or “foreigners.”

The distinction was also about optics. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, quickly realized that the masses of humanity headed for her country would have to be detained or excluded in order to deter others from joining them. She also knew that many, perhaps most, were economic migrants rather than refugees. But she could not stomach the inevitable images of destitute people being herded by armed guards into camps— images that, she feared, would instantly evoke memories of the past, memories of a time when Germany had not yet been subsumed into “Europe,” memories still vivid for all those whose families had suffered under German occupation, oppression, or genocide.