Immigrant, Refugee or a Foreigner? Catch the right terms!

When talking about migrants, minorities and other vulnerable groups, the use of right terminology is very important. But people who are not so familiar with these terms get easily confused between migrant and immigrant, refugee and asylum-seeker, national and foreigner... To help you out with this struggle, let me explain you some of the most important terms:

  

Migrant / Immigrant / Emigrant

Migrant is a person who was born in a foreign country, as a foreigner (regarding the current host-country) and who has crossed a border to live in another country. Often used term immigrant emphasizes the host-country's point of view, where as emigrant can be used by the country of origin. To take the whole process of emigration and immigration into consideration, and not to forget that migration has consequences for both countries (plus for the transit countries!), it is preferably use the globalizing term migrant.

For example, if Abdou migrates from Senegal to France, he is an emigrant in Senegal and an immigrant in France, but globally we can call him a migrant.

Refugee / Asylum-seeker

Often people get confused with terms migrant and refugee and seem to think that being a refugee is somehow better than being a migrant. In fact, everyone who moves from a country to another is a migrant, where as those who try to seek asylum are also asylum-seekers and only those who get granted asylum (according to UN's Convention Relating to Refugee Status) are refugees. However, all of them are migrants and not being able to obtain the refugee-status does not mean that those migrants would not have serious reasons having left their countries. Currently many NGO's have chosen to use the term refugee when actually talking about migrants/asylum-seekers because of the term migrant's pejorative echo in many people's minds.

For example, if Mehmet moves from Afghanistan to Sweden he is a migrant. If he seeks an asylum in Sweden, he becomes an asylum seeker. If the asylum grant gets approved he becomes a refugee. However, he remains still a migrant as well.

National / Foreigner

The pair of words that also creates confusion is national and foreigner and they can be mixed up with the term immigrant too. National is someone having the nationality/citizenship (passport, right to vote etc.) of a country. Foreigner is someone not having these rights, even if he lives in the country. As opposed to immigrant, this is a status that might change; when a person immigrates to a country, he usually is a foreigner in that country, but in some years he might become a national. However, he remains always an immigrant – that status does not depend on nationality.

For example, if Alexander from Macedonia moves to Italy, he is an immigrant in Italy and most likely a foreigner. If after five years of living in Italy he manages to acquire Italian nationality, he becomes a national. However, he is still an immigrant.

Also, a good thing to note is that nationality legally speaking does not have anything to do with one's ethnic origin.

For example, most Albanians in Macedonia are Macedonians by nationality and Albanians only by their ethnic origin.   

Jannika