Language matters

There have been many stories recently using the term “refugee,” from the inappropriately named “migrant caravan” to the local program matching “refugees” and opportunities for farming.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that categorizing groups of people according to one particular aspect of their life experiences is dehumanizing.

I shudder when I see the word refugee because of the pronouns — effectively the “other” — that almost always precede it.

It is all too easy to dehumanize through language, too easy to not accord the dignity and value of long-lived experience before the sudden cataclysmic event that set families fleeing and erase their humanity.

In describing the tragic life events that humans encounter, it is well understood that victims of tragedy, violence, illness, etc., only ought to be defined and described by the event/s, circumstance or geography that they have been subjected to if they themselves choose to do so. In these enlightened times we would no more describe someone as a rape survivor or female genital mutilation victim without their permission than we would call a Newfoundlander a townie or bayman without their explicit permission.

Why does the media apparently think that it is acceptable to continue to call refugees by this descriptor after they have arrived to this refuge, namely Canada, and we have welcomed them and accepted them as Canadians?

To continue to call those folks who have taken the refugee route to Canada and have landed in Newfoundland and Labrador refugees, when that experience is part of a painful past and only one aspect of their complex selves, is plain wrong, demeaning and inappropriate; they are either Canadians or immigrants but no longer refugees with respect to status.

Yes, there are, in Canada, groups of people that are refugees, i.e. they are still in the process of acceptance or refusal of becoming permanent residents. To my knowledge there are no refugee claimants living in our fair province at the present time but if there are then this is the correct descriptor for what would be a very small group indeed and it is patently clear that it is not they to whom the media refers.

If there are new Canadians here who are farmers, why aren’t they referred to as such? Does it matter what route they took to immigration?

The moment these newcomers t o our province stepped off the plane in Canada, they became residents of Canada. In a few years they will become citizens of Canada — a place they likely never imagined they would call home, but in which they have found themselves and now must find a way to belong.

They may sometimes wish to describe themselves as refugees as a chapter in their life journey. That was their experience and we cannot take it away from them.

However, to use the term to describe them is incorrect and inhuman.

Let’s describe new Canadians as people and not categories, and welcome them as part of the new fabric of our collective place.

William Radford St. John’s