On passing through a french city on a summer holiday many years ago, my family and I drove past a park filled to bursting point with makeshift dwellings. Tents, tarpaulins and bags were filling the space to the point where the owners of the items had barely enough space to move around themselves. It only took me asking my mum what was going on for me to understand that these people were fleeing their homes. The event was undoubtedly a crucial moment in my development as a young girl, abruptly bursting the bubble of cosy privilege and security that surrounded me, as well as being a formative moment on my journey to becoming politically engaged. What I should point out however, is that it was not just the exposure to the reality of the fact that not everyone feels safe enough in their own homes to stay in them that lead me to feel this way about this topic, but the way in which I began to notice other people’s descriptions of immigrants and refugees in the months and years after.
You’ll have to forgive me if this sounds painfully privileged - to be writing about this rather than experiencing it is most certainly that. But I want to iron out a couple of wrinkles that I’ve noticed we are becoming increasingly accepting of. It is far too easy these days for us to get wrapped up in the accepted views of the political climate we live in, rather than flipping things round and hearing the distant call of those that we are told are ‘different’. So I hope that by reading this, you might learn something you did not know or had not considered before.
First of all, let’s set the record straight. In my experience, the meaning of these two words is often confused (or even purposefully misused as a means of divisiveness).
refugee
/rɛfjʊˈdʒiː/
noun
1. a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
Immigrant
\ ˈi-mə-grənt \
noun
1. a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.
An immigrant is what you would likely be described as if you had decided to move to America, for example. Given that I was born in London and only moved to Jersey in the early years of my life, even I could feasibly be called an immigrant. But the image that is invariably displayed across some news outlets is not one that accurately represents the true meaning of the word. It is instead one that centres around the idea of immigrants being some kind of inferior beings; deviant, criminally-oriented and ‘here to take our jobs’. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of that narrative. I’m tired of the way some people completely refuse to accept that the main reason we so often fall back on vilifying immigrants, is because of the deep-rooted and intrinsic racism that exists in our culture.
How has it become such a dirty word? Whilst anti-immigrant feeling can certainly be attributed to xenophobia and racism in some ways, it is also often linked to the historical significance of economically turbulent times, such as the Great Depression in 1929 and post-war Britain, and the effect of mass migration in these periods.
But no matter their origins, these views are not hard to find in today’s tabloids. Amongst some of the Daily Mail’s past headlines on migrants and refugees; ‘Britain’s 40% surge in Ethnic numbers’, ‘Migrants rob young Britons of jobs’, ‘Asylum seekers ferried around in stretch limo’, ‘Immigrants bring more crime’. From reading these headlines, you might be forgiven for believing that the immigrant population in the UK is ‘out of control’ and that crime rates soar when migrants are allowed to cross the border. In reality, asylum seekers and stateless people represent around a quarter of a percent of the UK’s total population (0.26%) and people born outside of the UK (who might be considered immigrants) make up around 14% of the population. Moreover, multiple studies conducted across the world have discovered that in most cases, there is either no correlation or a negative correlation between increased numbers or immigrants and a subsequent increase in crime rate.
The fact of the matter is that the right to seek asylum or to move to another country are both Human rights (see article 13 and 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, linked below). In the grand scheme of things, the UK takes only a measly portion of the asylum seekers when compared to European counterparts like Turkey and Germany.
So what can we learn from all of this? My first recommendation would be to not rely on news outlets when it comes to educating yourself about migration and refugees. They can, as demonstrated, have a distorted view of the matter, and often have political motives behind their portrayals. I would recommend instead using charity or NGO websites such as https://choose.love or https://www.unhcr.org which usually have clear infographics and useful information, as well as meaningful ways to help – an altogether more productive experience. Secondly, I would recommend challenging statements that seem unfair or wrong. This obviously is part of a much wider point, but it rings true in every sense – we cannot possibly hope to improve things if we so easily let injustice and discrimination go.
Linked here is a Poem written by Warsan Shire, Young Poet Laureate 2014. She was born in Kenya and moved to the UK aged 1. Her work is inspired by her own struggles as a young black girl, as well as by the stories of her parents, family and refugees she has spent time with as part of her work. The poem is beautifully written, and displays the ugly truth about having to leave your country only to arrive in one that does not accept you.
(Please note that the poem contains some strong language and potentially triggering descriptions)
Tamsin Hollyman, Year 12
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