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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To keep shouting, they are refugees! !!

290 replies

ginmakesitallok · 02/09/2015 21:35

And not migrants!!!!

The people who are dying on Europe's shores are not migrants! They are not coming to Europe for jobs, for benefits, because they think it will be an easy life. They are escaping war, ISIS, starvation, rape, death. They just want to live and give their children an opportunity to live.

Stop calling them migrants, as if they just fancy living somewhere else. Brits rearing abroad are migrants. Other eu residents coming here are migrants. The dead baby on a beach in Greece was a refugee.

OP posts:
Palomb · 02/09/2015 21:37

I hear you Gin

ghostyslovesheep · 02/09/2015 21:37

I get irate at them being called anything BUT human beings

Original poster
ginmakesitallok · 02/09/2015 21:38

True ghosty.

OP posts:
PacificDogwood · 02/09/2015 21:39

YAsoNBU.

They are victims of geopolitics.
I was a migrant once, NOT a refugee.
Language is so revealing, isn't it? AngrySad

eddiemairswife · 02/09/2015 21:40

For the first time ever I'm ashamed of my country.

IHeartKingThistle · 02/09/2015 21:43

I'm reading vitriol on Facebook and feeling sick. It's like people think we did something good to get born here instead of being just bloody lucky.

SmashleyHop · 02/09/2015 21:43

YANBU- I am a migrant. I came here because my husband is British and he wanted to raise his family here.

Those poor poor people are not migrants by any stretch of the imagination and those calling them illegal immigrants need to be smacked. In the face. with a chair.

Witchety · 02/09/2015 21:43

Economic migrants are different

By Greece? What's happened?

PacificDogwood · 02/09/2015 21:44

I cannot stomach to think too much about what must have gone on in that lorry found by the road side in Hungary recently before everybody died.

We should all consider more what all these people are running away from, and not get too caught up in where they are running to. Babies, young children, old people… it does not bear thinking.

BrandNewAndImproved · 02/09/2015 21:47

Agreed

itsraininginbaltimore · 02/09/2015 21:51

But some of them ARE just migrants and are not refugees. They are from lots of different countries, not just Syria - some of those migrants are fleeing for their lives and will claim asylum and be granted it, some of them are not and are just looking for a better life. They would be unlikely to be granted asylum if they told the truth about where they were from and why they were leaving. No-one could fail to have a bit of sympathy for them, or deny that they have grounds to want to leave, but they don't have grounds to call themselves refugees.

The term 'migrant' is all encompassing and applies to ALL of them regardless of their individual circumstances. Some migrants are refugees, some aren't so it would be inaccurate to call them all refugees, but it is perfectly accurate to call them all migrants. I also think perhaps once they have chosen to move on from their first 'safe haven' point of arrival they technically cease to become refugees.

I have lost count of the number of times this has been pointed out on various threads over the last few weeks. I don't know whether people are incapable of processing this information, or just wilfully refuse to. Confused

Smellyoulateralligator · 02/09/2015 21:51

Yanbu - I also agree with you. It's just horrific.

Original poster
ginmakesitallok · 02/09/2015 21:54

I understand the legal technicalities thank you it'sraining. But calling people drowning in desperation to get to Europe "migrants" and putting them in the same category as economic migrants is disingenuous.

OP posts:
Witchety · 02/09/2015 21:55

Economic migrants.... That's where people are confusing the 2

Witchety · 02/09/2015 21:57

How do you differentiate between the 2 when nobody has paperwork

That was on the news earlier, it's a big problem

ElkeDagMeisje · 02/09/2015 21:58

Lazy stereotyping - this seems to be doing the rounds today and to be the latest trendy left wing bandwagon to jump on. I fail to see how labelling all people from one part of the world leaving it as "refugees" is possibly less offensive than calling them "migrants".

I think I'd be pretty annoyed if I was a migrant, hoping to move permanently for a better life, if I was labelled a refugee by a do-gooder left winger in the UK. I'd probably find that very derogatory and stereo-typing, whereas the word "migrant" I think is more aspirational and doesn't classify between differing classes of migrant based on their desperation to move. Its quite a non-judgemental word actually, in a way that "refugee" isn't.

Equally you can call them people, but then you have to tie yourself in knots to differentiate between them and other people who are not trying to enter the UK as part of a migratory process.

As if no other people than refugees ever moved from the Middle East to the UK. My doctor is Syrian, and has been here for several years. I was friends at university with two people from Syria. None of them were bloody refugees, but they did have to undergo a migratory official process, in terms of applying for a right of residency and eventually citizenship to stay in the UK.

plinkyplonks · 02/09/2015 21:59

Please, please, please sign the petition and share on social media!

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105991

OneFlewOverTheDodosNest · 02/09/2015 22:18

When people on the news specifically talk about Syrian migrants it's wrong - people fleeing Syria are most demonstrably refugees. Most Syrian refugees also have paperwork which prove that they are Syrian, it's just taking time to process them because of the sheer numbers of people.

Economic migrants are a different kettle of fish and most have purposefully destroyed their paperwork in order to attempt to claim asylum. Most economic migrants are young men of employable age, most Syrian refugees are in families with young children, elderly parents and pregnant women as well as young (and not so young) men and women of employable age.

I feel as though there has been an intentional conflation of the two terms in order to excuse us from taking responsibility for a humanitarian crisis and that makes me feel quite ill.

Original poster
ginmakesitallok · 02/09/2015 22:22

A lion and a tabby are both technically cats, but they are very different when they are in your back garden.

OP posts:
TheFairyCaravan · 02/09/2015 22:27

I hear you too.

If I read "close our borders we're full" or "they're coming here to steal our benefits and get our social housing" one more time I am going to scream. The complete lack of compassion for these poor, desperate people is mind boggling to me.

My 18yo DS2 and I sat and cried this afternoon at the pictures of that poor little boy on the beach in Bodrum. I honestly can't believe what is happening yet politicians are being weak and squabbling amongst themselves. I am ashamed of the world we live in.

TravellingToad · 02/09/2015 22:27

I agree with baltimore and I think if they're genuine asylum seekers they're meant to stop in the first safe country they get to, not keep going in search of somewhere with better benefits...then they're migrants.

MaidOfStars · 02/09/2015 22:29

I feel as though there has been an intentional conflation of the two terms in order to excuse us from taking responsibility for a humanitarian crisis and that makes me feel quite ill

I couldn't agree more.

As for that shit upthread - 'migrant' is preferable because it's 'aspirational' - honestly? You don't think the word 'refugee', someone seeking refuge from harm, is adequate? The word 'refugee' describes something the word 'migrant' can never. It describes a life perhaps indescribable and almost certainly unthinakble, it describes a child who screams every time the classroom door slams, it describes fear and pain and loss. Refugees are not simply 'migrants'.

Lictionary · 02/09/2015 22:30

My husband just made a comment about the immigrants stranded at the docks.

I have torn shreds off him and he is now sulking.

MaidOfStars · 02/09/2015 22:34

I agree with baltimore and I think if they're genuine asylum seekers they're meant to stop in the first safe country they get to, not keep going in search of somewhere with better benefits...then they're migrants

Better benefits? In what sense? Money?

If all the Syrian refugees stopped in the first country they arrived into, Greece and Italy would be overrun.

Oh, wait.

We are part of the EU. We benefit financially from that more than we realise. It's about fucking time we started sharing some social responsibility. It is not fair to leave countries like Greece, already on their arses, to pick up the load. We need a coordinated effort to disperse refugees across the EU. Every country needs to work together for this.

We simply cannot shrug it off as 'someone else's issue, they didn't come here first'. That's appalling. We have a moral imperative to the people fleeing horror, and a comunity imperative to our fellow EU countries at the front line.

hattyhatter · 02/09/2015 22:35

But calling people drowning in desperation to get to Europe "migrants" and putting them in the same category as economic migrants is disingenuous.

But it's not Confused

Migration is the umbrella term. Refugee, economic migrant, expat etc are subgroups. 'Migrant' is quite a neutral umbrella term.

If the refugees were being referred to as tourists or expats, I'd understand the issue.