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Mind your language

Think ‘migrant’ is an insult? ‘Refugee’ can be too

Al-Jazeera wants to banish stigma by banning the word. It will struggle

5 September 2015

9:00 AM

5 September 2015

9:00 AM

Al Jazeera, the Qatari broadcaster, is going to use refugee instead of migrant in its English output. ‘The umbrella term migrant is no longer fit for purpose when it comes to describing the horror unfolding in the Mediterranean,’ one of its editors explained. ‘It has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative.

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