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Most passengers from last month's Libyan vessel heading towards Europe were, accordingly, of Syrian, Eritrean, and Somali origin. Although all three countries are regularly cited among the world's largest refugee-producing states, the crisis that followed the latest vessel sinking was titled by media not a "refugee crisis" but a "migrant crisis."Following the tragedy, hashtags like #migrantcrisis, #MigrantLivesMatter, and #migrantdeath widely spread on Twitter. Politicians and media reports from all political spectrums labeled the victims as "dead migrants" or "migrant victims," the boat a "migrant vessel" and the people responsible as "migrant smugglers." There is, of course, nothing factually incorrect with considering refugees migrants. Refugees, in seeking a safer and better life elsewhere, migrate from one location to another. But semantics matter. To name refugees migrants is not an arbitrary decision. It's a political one.To name refugees migrants is not an arbitrary decision. It's a political one.
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This notion contrasts with the historical figure of the refugee. For many, the refugee's experience of forced displacement is a tale from the past. In Europe, legislators set benchmarks to conceptualize the figure of the refugee and determine who can be considered a "genuine" refugee depending on political, economic, social, and cultural interests. This denial of the reality of refugee life, particularly the choiceless nature of the decision to flee one's home, has other consequences: it effectively aids the criminalization of the act of seeking asylum. The European right to seek asylum has turned into a guarantee of rejection and deportation for thousands. This severe approach is also recognizable in the EU's Mediterranean Sea politics, where officials use militaristic language when talking of immigrants in terms of 'combating' them while 'defending' borders. Demonizing "migrants" as threats to the welfare of the state is, after all, far easier than demonizing "genuine refugees," who are quickly reduced to victims.When the media labels refugees "migrants," there are subtle but powerful politics at play. The public is left to believe that crucial categorical and political distinctions are irrelevant in the face of the mass-arrivals of racialized people, who are perceived as a monolithic and one-dimensional group.But migration isn't always just migration, and semantics are rarely just semantics.Sinthujan Varatharajah is a PhD student in Political Geography at University College London, where he researches spaces of asylum and resistance. He was born in a refugee camp in Germany.Follow Sinthujan on Twitter.Demonizing "migrants" as threats and enemies to the welfare of the state is far easier than demonizing "genuine refugees," who are quickly reduced to victims.