The terms “refugee”, “asylum seeker” and “migrant” are often used interchangeably. Although they all describe people on the move who have left their countries of origin, in reality, there are important distinctions and implications with each.
According to Article 1 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is defined as someone who,
“...owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”.
The Refugee Convention and the protections it promises to refugees were created specifically to protect the rights of Europeans who had been displaced by World War II. Thus, refugee status was originally only afforded to people affected by events that occurred before January 1, 1951. The convention also includes an optional geographic limitation that allowed its signatories to narrow the definition of a refugee even further by restricting it to those seeking protection as a result of "events occurring in Europe”. In 1967, the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees extended the rights and protections laid out in the Refugee Convention to all people without any geographic or temporal limitations. However, states who had previously limited the convention’s scope to Europe had the option of extending this restriction. The only country to expressly maintain the geographic limitation was Turkey, and as a result, the political status of refugees in Turkey can only be attained by Europeans. This is significant today as Turkey hosts around 4 million people who are considered refugees by the UNHCR but are not given the status, along with the rights and protections that accompany it.
It is important to emphasise that people who are legally recognised as refugees are not the only ones in need of international protection. Refugee status cannot be attained by people fleeing their country for reasons other than those included in the narrow definition laid out by the Refugee Convention or those who have been displaced due to disease or climate-related causes such as extreme droughts, rising sea levels and natural disasters. Additionally, people must cross a national border in order to seek refugee status, and thus internally displaced people are never considered refugees.
An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country to claim refugee status elsewhere but whose request for asylum has yet to be processed. According to article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. The right to seek asylum is also guaranteed under European law; article 18 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights states that “The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees”.
Although not everyone is guaranteed the right to be granted refugee status, seeking asylum is a human right and must be defended as such.
There is no universally accepted legal definition of a migrant. However, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) uses the term migrant to describe “any person who is outside a State of which they are a citizen or national, or, in the case of a stateless person, their State of birth or habitual residence”. It uses “migrants” as “a neutral term to describe a group of people who have in common a lack of citizenship attachment to their host country”. Similarly, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) describes the word migrant as “an umbrella term, [...] reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons”. Under these definitions, all people who live away from home—including international students, so-called expats, and workers (both rich and poor)—are migrants.
Some organisations, such as Amnesty International, explicitly exclude refugees and asylum seekers from their definition of a migrant, using it instead to refer to people who move “to work, study or join family” or those who “feel they must leave because of poverty, political unrest, gang violence, natural disasters or other serious circumstances that exist there.” Because the word migrant is often associated with non-forced migration, many groups avoid using it and instead choose to use terms like “people on the move”, which can serve as “an overarching category including a wider range of human mobility for whom there needs to be a basic standard of protection.”
There have also been debates in the media about which term news outlets should use to refer to people travelling irregularly to the EU with the intention of seeking asylum. In 2016, Al Jazeera, when explaining why it would no longer use the word migrant while reporting on people crossing the Mediterranean, wrote that the term had “evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative”. Others, however, have argued that refusing to use the word migrant not only “gives credence to the illiberal voices telling us that migrants are not worthy of our compassion” but also reinforces “the dichotomy of 'good refugee' and 'bad migrant.'”
Even though they are not afforded all of the rights laid out in the Refugee Convention, migrants are still protected under other international and regional human rights frameworks. Significantly, all people, regardless of their migration status, are protected by the principle of non-refoulement as was originally outlined in Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and expanded upon in Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The latter states that “No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” As a result many people, though denied the benefits that accompany being granted refugee status, are still protected from being sent back to a place where they might “face torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm”.
It is important to point out that not only is it difficult to sort people into neat categories like refugees or ‘economic migrants’, but it is also often problematic to even try. Since migration motivations usually fall on a spectrum between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary,’ the failure of an asylum seeker to meet the criteria for refugee status does not necessarily indicate the lack of need for protection. Instead, denial of refugee status might reflect an unjust or politicised asylum system or overly strict adherence by the designating authority to the very narrow definition laid out by the Refugee Convention.
Given the above mentioned legal definitions, no one term can be correctly applied when talking about people on the move in general since it is never clear whether each of them intends to apply for asylum or not and whether they would have their asylum claim subsequently recognised or not.
At Josoor, we use the terms “refugees”, “people seeking protection” or “people on the move” instead of “migrants”.
It is also important for us to point out that every human being has more than one identity and all the above-mentioned terms do not reflect their whole identity. Some of the people we support call themselves refugees, others are fed up with the term. Whenever we can, we simply call them people. There are currently 80 million refugees in the world, each of them an individual with their own story and aspirations. Whoever talks about, reports about or works with refugees should always keep this in mind.
Moving beyond refugees and migrants: reconceptualising the rights of people on the move
Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees
The principle of non-refoulement in the migration context: 5 key points
According to Article 1 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is defined as someone who,
“...owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”.
The Refugee Convention and the protections it promises to refugees were created specifically to protect the rights of Europeans who had been displaced by World War II. Thus, refugee status was originally only afforded to people affected by events that occurred before January 1, 1951. The convention also includes an optional geographic limitation that allowed its signatories to narrow the definition of a refugee even further by restricting it to those seeking protection as a result of "events occurring in Europe”. In 1967, the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees extended the rights and protections laid out in the Refugee Convention to all people without any geographic or temporal limitations. However, states who had previously limited the convention’s scope to Europe had the option of extending this restriction. The only country to expressly maintain the geographic limitation was Turkey, and as a result, the political status of refugees in Turkey can only be attained by Europeans. This is significant today as Turkey hosts around 4 million people who are considered refugees by the UNHCR but are not given the status, along with the rights and protections that accompany it.
It is important to emphasise that people who are legally recognised as refugees are not the only ones in need of international protection. Refugee status cannot be attained by people fleeing their country for reasons other than those included in the narrow definition laid out by the Refugee Convention or those who have been displaced due to disease or climate-related causes such as extreme droughts, rising sea levels and natural disasters. Additionally, people must cross a national border in order to seek refugee status, and thus internally displaced people are never considered refugees.
An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country to claim refugee status elsewhere but whose request for asylum has yet to be processed. According to article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. The right to seek asylum is also guaranteed under European law; article 18 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights states that “The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees”.
Although not everyone is guaranteed the right to be granted refugee status, seeking asylum is a human right and must be defended as such.
There is no universally accepted legal definition of a migrant. However, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) uses the term migrant to describe “any person who is outside a State of which they are a citizen or national, or, in the case of a stateless person, their State of birth or habitual residence”. It uses “migrants” as “a neutral term to describe a group of people who have in common a lack of citizenship attachment to their host country”. Similarly, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) describes the word migrant as “an umbrella term, [...] reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons”. Under these definitions, all people who live away from home—including international students, so-called expats, and workers (both rich and poor)—are migrants.
Some organisations, such as Amnesty International, explicitly exclude refugees and asylum seekers from their definition of a migrant, using it instead to refer to people who move “to work, study or join family” or those who “feel they must leave because of poverty, political unrest, gang violence, natural disasters or other serious circumstances that exist there.” Because the word migrant is often associated with non-forced migration, many groups avoid using it and instead choose to use terms like “people on the move”, which can serve as “an overarching category including a wider range of human mobility for whom there needs to be a basic standard of protection.”
There have also been debates in the media about which term news outlets should use to refer to people travelling irregularly to the EU with the intention of seeking asylum. In 2016, Al Jazeera, when explaining why it would no longer use the word migrant while reporting on people crossing the Mediterranean, wrote that the term had “evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative”. Others, however, have argued that refusing to use the word migrant not only “gives credence to the illiberal voices telling us that migrants are not worthy of our compassion” but also reinforces “the dichotomy of 'good refugee' and 'bad migrant.'”
Even though they are not afforded all of the rights laid out in the Refugee Convention, migrants are still protected under other international and regional human rights frameworks. Significantly, all people, regardless of their migration status, are protected by the principle of non-refoulement as was originally outlined in Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and expanded upon in Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The latter states that “No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” As a result many people, though denied the benefits that accompany being granted refugee status, are still protected from being sent back to a place where they might “face torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm”.
It is important to point out that not only is it difficult to sort people into neat categories like refugees or ‘economic migrants’, but it is also often problematic to even try. Since migration motivations usually fall on a spectrum between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary,’ the failure of an asylum seeker to meet the criteria for refugee status does not necessarily indicate the lack of need for protection. Instead, denial of refugee status might reflect an unjust or politicised asylum system or overly strict adherence by the designating authority to the very narrow definition laid out by the Refugee Convention.
Given the above mentioned legal definitions, no one term can be correctly applied when talking about people on the move in general since it is never clear whether each of them intends to apply for asylum or not and whether they would have their asylum claim subsequently recognised or not.
At Josoor, we use the terms “refugees”, “people seeking protection” or “people on the move” instead of “migrants”.
It is also important for us to point out that every human being has more than one identity and all the above-mentioned terms do not reflect their whole identity. Some of the people we support call themselves refugees, others are fed up with the term. Whenever we can, we simply call them people. There are currently 80 million refugees in the world, each of them an individual with their own story and aspirations. Whoever talks about, reports about or works with refugees should always keep this in mind.
Moving beyond refugees and migrants: reconceptualising the rights of people on the move
Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees
The principle of non-refoulement in the migration context: 5 key points
