What’s The Difference Between ‘Migrants’ And ‘Refugees’?

Our resident wordsmith explores the latest linguistic trends.

The lifeless body of a tiny child lying face down in the surf. A woman sprawled across train tracks, clutching her baby as riot police tug at her leg. A crowd in Budapest pushing desperately to board the last train to Germany.

Images like these have saturated media coverage of what is sometimes called the refugee crisis — or, more often, the migrant crisis. The terms are often used as though they’re interchangeable, but they carry different assumptions. And as the EU and the rest of the world debate how to respond, those meanings matter.

Refugee is a word that elicits sympathy. The images it conjures — in the mind or on Google — are of roads filled with people on foot, carrying only a few possessions on their backs as they flee a war zone, images of children peeping through barbed wire.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines refugee as “one who flees, esp. to another country, seeking refuge, as from war.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to the late 1600s, when it was used to describe those fleeing from religious persecution. Later, its meaning came to include fugitives from justice as well as people fleeing war.