Last Friday, The Guardian carried a short piece about the language of migration. The drift was that African, Arab, and Indian people who live outside their countries of origin are called ‘migrants’, while Europeans who do the same are called ‘expats’. The writer, himself an African, clearly found the lexical sleight upsetting enough to summon his readers to action: “If you see those ‘expats’ in Africa, call them immigrants like everyone else. If that hurts their white superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there.”

The idea is that there are very many different types of migrants and migrations, and that each type carries with it a baggage. That baggage often includes some notion of prestige and desirability, or their opposites. Thus the language.

It is not true that the differences in the kind of language we use to describe migrants can be boiled down to skin colour. It is true that there are specific circumstances in which skin colour matters above all else.

Take Malta. For the past 15 years or so, sub-Saharan African migrants have made up by far the biggest chunk of boat people. They are the type associated with destitution, detention centres and such. We would never call them ‘expats’. On a really good day we might honour them with ‘immigranti’ (immigrants). Most of the time they have to make do with ‘klandestini’ (illegals). They also happen to be black.

A friend of mine once told me that she was seeing a black African man. She quickly added that she hadn’t “picked him up off the street” (“ma sibtux barra, ta”). What she meant was that he wasn’t a boat person; rather, they had met at a medical conference at which he was a delegate from an east African country. The reason she felt the need to specify was that, in Malta today, black skin colour does indeed stand for a type of migrant which she wasn’t happy to be associated with.

The rest are another matter altogether. ‘Expats’ is largely reserved for British people who retire in Malta and spend their time soaking up the sun or putting balls in holes at the Marsa. People from European countries who live and work here are rarely called immigranti. Most of the time they are simply referred to by their country of origin (‘Russa’, not ‘immigranta Russa’).

Language often pigeonholes different types of migrants

Indeed ‘migration’ and its derivatives tend to be limited to formal settings – a report by an NGO, for example, or an academic conference or a newspaper article. Funnily enough, the exceptions to the rule are the Maltese people who moved to Australia and elsewhere in the 20th century. They are commonly referred to as ‘emigranti’ and they are hardly thought to be black.

They also provide us with a couple of clues. The first has to do with skin colour. It is not as if people come in either black or white. There are very many different blacks, browns, whites and so on. Besides, not a single one of them is a fixed category. Maltese migrants to Australia may appear white to us but swarthy Mediterranean types (sometimes known as ‘dagos’) to others. Clearly, then, black-white differences alone can hardly be very reliable markers of migrant types.

Second, the language used to describe specific migrant groups can and often does change. ‘Emigranti Maltin’ is itself on the way out, and in the process of being replaced with things like ‘Maltin tal-Awstralja’ or ‘Maltese diaspora’. Only the people involved are as white, black, swarthy or whatever, as they always were. Once again, skin colour turns out to be not all that telling.

Take India. The word ‘diaspora’ has been in use for decades now to describe Indians who live outside of India. Within this diaspora, different groups are called different things. The wealthier types are often called ‘NRIs’ (Non-Resident Indians). They are admired as a success story and one which holds much investment promise back in India. Indians who live in the Gulf States and who hold low-paid jobs, on the other hand, are simply known as ‘Gulf workers’. Both NRIs and Gulf workers are Indian. And, if we must, both are non-white.

We can conclude two things. First, that it is true that language often pigeonholes different types of migrants (‘expats’, ‘migrants’ in The Guardian piece). Only that’s as things should be, simply because there are, in fact, different types of migrants. To call the people living in the detention centres ‘expats’ would be silly. It would also banalise the very real and hard-hitting inequalities that exist between these two groups.

Second, skin colour (‘race’, according to some renditions) is just one of the many things that can matter. It often does, but that’s not the point. Rather, the language of migration tells us that things like the circumstances of mobility, the economic conditions that migrants live in, class and so on, are equally important.

The old story about the Indian maharajah who went to London and had his shoes shined by an Englishman comes to mind.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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