Who is a real refugee?

The refugee crisis in Europe has caught a lot of global media attention. Countries at the entry points and their official actions, as well civil organizations, get a lot of attention in online media; furthermore, social media comments quite often focus on the refugees’ origins, intentions, religion, and behaviour. For instance, in the coverage of how a parish near the Hungarian border helps refugees, one interviewee voices her misgivings:

They spend a lot of money for coming, but if they are real refugees, they can come on order, on normal way. Not this other ways how they are trying.

While not uncommon, comments such as this one miss a key aspect of the refugee experience. Having taught refugees in Australia, I am aware that people intending to leave their countries may sell all their possessions to be able to afford a journey to a safer place. When it isn’t possible for whole families to move together, they may raise money to enable a select member who may try to help others once they have reached safety.

So what are some of the possible origins of this ‘not a real refugee’ discourse?

It is quite often attributed to politicians. Earlier this year, in June, the Deputy of the ruling party in Hungary commented on national radio that people entering Hungary are not ‘real refugees’ as they have the funds to buy even first class plane tickets to Europe, but somehow they prefer to pay thousands of Euros to people smugglers and walk all the way. This comment, of course, blatantly ignores the fact that one needs both a passport and a valid visa to board a plane. While it is virtually impossible to trace the origins of such ideas, the above opinion seems to be a popular one globally present in reader comments on social media as well.

Undoubtedly, Hungary is just one of many countries using the ‘not a real refugee’ discourse, and possible reasons, like having enough money to buy plane tickets, and the issue of these people having smart phones, have been discussed in the media in other countries, too. Consequently, ideas and concepts linked to the construction of ‘non-real refugees’ are not localized to Hungarian politicians and media only. However, it is obvious that the position and role of the country in tackling the refugee crisis gives Hungary a central place in the discussions, so I will focus on the Hungarian context.

Confusion regarding terminology can be a possible reason why refugees are not seen as ‘real’. When analyzing discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press 1996-2006, Baker et al. (2008) mention a fundamental disagreement in defining refugees and asylum seekers in official bodies and sources, such as the Refugee Council or various dictionary definitions. By commonly applying the term ‘migrants’ to all people on the move, refugees and their rights for asylum can become invisible or even associated with those of ‘economic migrants’. In an attempt to clarify the issue, the UNHCR has published a statement saying:

Conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before.

Since early September, when Hungary sealed its border with Serbia and made border-crossing punishable with up to three years imprisonment, the terminology used in the media has been shifting to ‘unauthorized or irregular arrivals’.

Could it be that, apart from politicians fanning the flames, Hungarians simply have a different picture of ‘refugees’ in their minds? To answer this, I have examined how two historical events are linked to the construction of ‘real refugees.’

Based on Ruth Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical approach in her work exploring anti-Semitic and populist discourse in Austria, I firstly focus on the historical dimension of the discourse, then briefly look at argumentation strategies, also called topoi, to examine claims about refugees, and finally focus on metaphors.

Linking refugees to history

In media and social media comments world-wide, Hungary’s response to the refugee crisis is most commonly linked to two events in the country’s history: the Holocaust, and the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, both of which produced huge waves of Hungarian refugees needing to be resettled in various parts of the world. In a reaction to these parallels, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance even released a statement in September, stating that:

The circumstances surrounding the current refugee situation are notably different from the persecution of Jews and other victims before, during and after the Holocaust; nonetheless, there are parallels between the treatment of refugees then and now – particularly regarding the shameful closing of borders, the rise of xenophobia, and the use of dehumanising language.

In referring to these two historical points, contemporary events become understood against these foils invoking above all shame. Reader comments on social media, however, oftentimes reject any kind of connection to the actions producing the present refugee situation, sometimes even clearly stating ‘we are not responsible for what happened to them’. Responsibility then, is an important element in constructing the meaning of ‘real refugees’.

The other element is resilience, at least the attribution of it to a certain group, which manifests in two ways: firstly, Hungarian refugees of the 1956 Uprising are said to have experienced the same treatment in refugee camps before they were admitted in other countries. This can be seen from the following excerpt from a reader comment detailing what those refugees had to endure:

How do you think the 1956 dissidents were treated? They slept in wooden barracks for at least 20-27 months. […] it was very cold. In summer it was scorching hot. In the meantime they worked in labour camps. There was no talking back or demanding things, blackmail or other things. If they were late, they risked being returned… [my translation]

It is clear that strength and endurance are values attached to the 1956 refugees, and this seems to be contrasted with contemporary refugees who are constructed as lacking these characteristics.

The second way attributed resilience gets expressed is by linking it to moral worth and referring to Hungarians who stayed behind during the events in 1956 as patriots. For example, a Hungarian conservative paper suggested that it as a moral obligation towards the country to stay rather than to flee, i.e. those who fled are ‘exiles with bleak souls’ while those who stayed have ‘the homeland in their hearts’. What this romantic presentation of the past does is that it positions people staying behind as superior to people fleeing war, and consequently, it questions the moral worth of all refugees.

Argumentation

Getting back to my first example from Al Jazeera, it is clear that commenters have clear arguments to support their views on refugees. The noun for ‘refugee’ in Hungarian (‘menekült’) derives from the verb ‘to flee’ (‘menekülni’), which suggests leaving everything behind and run. Having no possessions then is an important feature of a refugee. Linking these to topoi, we can apply the topos of definition to this case, which says “if an action, a thing, or person (group of persons) is named/designated as X, the action, thing or person (group of persons) carries or should carry the qualities/traits/attributes contained in the (literal) meaning of X” (Wodak 2001, p. 75). And being able to organize an escape and pay people smugglers clearly contradicts the above picture of a ‘menekült’.

Another reason brought up in the argument that contemporary entrants to Europe are not real refugees is their behaviour: they are violent, they refuse help; consequently, they are not ‘real refugees’. An example of this can be seen in a Tweet of two pictures presented side by side: on the left, people apparently protesting against Hungary’s closed borders, and on the right, a woman and children lying on bundles of clothes. A commenter mentions that the ‘real refugees’ are in the right hand side picture. Although this particular tweet emanates from the UK, it is a good example for what can be found in local comments in Hungary too. The reasoning behind this distinction between ‘real’ vs. ‘ not real refugees’ is based on their behaviour – filtered through media coverage, of course – and suggests that ‘real refugees’ should be humble and behave so that they could ‘earn’ their admission into Europe, quite like the 1956 Hungarian refugees supposedly did 60 years ago.

Language use

Metaphors are important linguistic devices used to create these ideas, and, ultimately, the picture of ‘real/non-real refugees’ in people’s heads. On Language on the Move, we have discussed the effects of metaphors here and here. In her recent article in the Austrian newspaper Kurier, Ruth Wodak explains that certain word choices in the discussion of the refugee crisis in Europe can gear people towards thinking about refugees as armed and violent. The use of metaphors of natural disaster (‘waves’ and ‘floods’ of refugees) creates a menacing picture. Wodak argues that these metaphors create the misconception that the reasons for the refugee movements are not human-made, which ties in well with the idea of ‘responsibility’ discussed above.

However, there are more direct references to danger, too. Wodak mentions the construction of Europe as a ‘fortress’, which needs to be ‘protected’ from refugees by Hungary’s ‘border guards’ who ‘hunt’ refugees. It is not difficult to see how these metaphors of war can relate to the reasoning regarding ‘behaviour’ discussed above, and thus further strengthen the idea that these refugees are not ‘real refugees’.

In sum, historical experience, argumentation and metaphors have contributed to creating a powerful anti-migration discourse in Hungary and Europe as a whole. This may feed the interests of certain political elites and parties but it cuts short any attempt at having an objective and effective discussion on the issue.

References

Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., KhosraviNik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press Discourse & Society, 19 (3), 273-306 DOI: 10.1177/0957926508088962

Wodak, R. (2001). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (Vol. 63-94). London: Sage.

‘Soaking up English like a sponge:’ The researcher’s young son engrossed in a Thesaurus

If someone cannot now learn their native language, adding a couple of foerign (sic) dead languages is not going to help them. And there is no possible economic return such as is available from Asian languages or living European languages – either of which will improve syntactic awareness as much as or better than Latin and Greek. All in all, deluded and wasteful. (Reader comment, 23 June 2014, The Guardian)

with Indigenous Australian languages, the buck stops here – if they are not supported in Australia there’s definitely nowhere else to go to later on…the dreadful finality of that should not escape us (Reader comment, Aug 2014 The Conversation)

Our opinions on language education are influenced by our firsthand experiences about languages: our memories of language learning, having friends, family from other countries, or traveling. Our experience is also affected by language policies which reflect the dominant social forces of the era, e.g. assimilation of migrants was the predominant force shaping language policy until the 1970s. Last but not least, the way information about languages and language education is transmitted to us conveys messages.

One very important source of information and thus conveyor of opinions is online news media. Catalano and Moeller’s (Catalano & Moeller, 2013) article about media discourse on language education in the US focuses on how media discourse may affect people’s opinion on dual language programs. The authors analysed 29 online media articles on dual language education (DLE) to explore what linguistic features they use to affect public opinion.

One such feature was the use of metaphors. These are figures of speech that contain an implied comparison, for example ‘the wheels of justice’, ‘a broken heart’, or having a ‘bubbly personality’. As Santa Ana (2002) argues in his work on metaphors of Latinos in US public discourse, the casual use of metaphors in everyday discussions and texts is a way to reproduce social inequality as they gear us towards a certain view of the world.

Catalano and Moeller (2013) found two prevailing metaphors in their texts. The first one was language as water; for instance, being ‘fluent’ in languages, a school that ‘immerses’ students in a language, or ‘mainstream’ education. These are words and phrases that are so attached to the vocabulary of language education that we use them without thinking about the additional meanings they may convey. The interesting feature the two authors found about the use of this metaphor is that both those opinions that showed DLE in a positive light (as part of multilingual discourses) used these metaphors and also those that discuss problems with past models (monolingual discourses). This use of the same type of metaphor to express both positive and negative views on two different types of DLE, according to the authors, creates confusion in readers, which in turn does not foster an effective discussion of the topic. The second most common form of metaphor was dual language education as business/factory. Examples for these metaphors include ‘developing strategies’ to overcome ‘challenges’ in language education, students needing language ‘skills’ to ‘compete’, to mention a few.

Investigating the language market in Australia

How do metaphors of language and language education work in the Australian online media? As part of my research, I analyse publicly accessible online media articles about language education in Australia. The focus of the online articles I analyse are the following: English language learning for migrants; introducing classical languages in schools; our duty to enable migrant children to keep their first languages; the push to get more migrant children speak their native language; pre-schools trialing language lessons; and finally, language education being compulsory in Australian schools.

The dominant metaphor is language education as business, which appears in all six media articles I analysed, with 18 instances of use. To give a few examples,

• We waste a precious economic resource […] essentially a free natural resource
• The more cost effective option is to maintain what you already have – to maintain the mother tongues of our bilingual children.
• when there are many languages in the classroom, as there are in most Australian classrooms, bilingual programmes become logistically difficult
• What languages should we invest in?
• learning another language helps boost children’s literacy skills and comprehension of English.

What I find interesting is, similarly to Catalano and Moeller’s (2013) findings, these metaphors do not only appear in discourses in support of multilingualism, but also in those prioritizing the role of English in Australia. As an example, the excerpt below comes from an article reporting on Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells addressing migrants on Australia Day 2014.

A lack of English has a personal cost, especially in an ageing population with health issues, or for parents that cannot understand their child’s teacher (Hall, 2014, 26 January).

Here, lack of the dominant language is presented as an economic burden for the individual and indirectly for the whole society as well. The reliance on this kind of metaphor in discourses for and against multilingualism, just like the dual function of the language as water in Catalano and Moeller’s findings, may not foster a fruitful discussion on the role of language education in Australia. The other reason why Catalano and Moeller warn against the overuse of the business metaphor in discussions on language education is that this focus narrows down the numerous benefits of bilingualism to an economic one.

To show how prevalent the business metaphor is: the second most common metaphor in my analysis was language as living organism with nine instances, half as many as language education as business. Here are some examples:

• the best way to support their English language learning is to nurture their mother tongues
• we “kill” the languages children bring with them into Kindergarten
• It gradually withers and disappears
• We participate in the destruction of their mother tongue, because without the opportunities to develop the language it becomes stunted.

These examples are similar to Catalano and Moeller’s education as cultivation metaphors; however, their findings include ‘blossom’, ‘flourish’, and ‘shine’, which are rhetorically more powerful than the negative equivalents I have found (‘withers’, stunted’). According to Santa Ana (2002) these kind of metaphors are an alternative to the language education as business ones because they emphasize personal development and maturation – or in our case, a lack of these.

Other common metaphors were, in this order, language as object (e.g. ‘lack of English’, to retain a language’), classical language as royalty (e.g. languages as ‘rightful inheritors’, ‘the linguistic regalia of privilege’), and language as duty (e.g. it is our ‘personal responsibility’, languages ‘policed entry into medicine and law degrees’). Interestingly, water metaphors occurred only in two articles and with the words ‘mainstream’ and ‘fluent’ each mentioned twice. However, the metaphor of language as water with the misleading connotation that language learning is natural and happens without any effort is quite common in reader comments to these articles e.g. children ‘absorb English like a sponge’, which I explore in detail in my PhD research.

Improving communication on language education

Returning back to the reader comments I cited at the beginning of the post, it is clear that these metaphors find their way into our everyday talk. The two quotes employ metaphors of business (‘economic return’), gambling (‘the buck stops here’) and language as a living organism (‘dead’, ‘dreadful finality’). Current economic forces affecting people’s life priorities can explain the marketization of the way language education is discussed. However, slipping into this habit of constructing learning and learners solely as participants of the market economy diminishes the whole experience of language learning and excludes other benefits one can gain from the process. As an example, see proverbs around the world related to the connection between wisdom and languages. It is thus important to recognize the power of the ways in which we speak about language learning and the consequences these may have on indigenous and migrant languages and communities in Australia.

Catalano, T., & Moeller, A. (2013). Media discourse and dual language programs: A critical linguistic analysis Discourse, Context & Media, 2 (4), 165-174 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2013.09.001

Santa Ana, O. (2002). Brown tide rising. Austin, US: University of Texas Press.