Stories and Labels

This post is also available in: Spanish

The author, far right, stands beside Betty. Betty lives with Angel, on the left, who is from Barcelona. The Cat was purchased by the City of Barcelona from another Colombian who migrated to Europe years ago, Fernando Botero. The author’s son, Adrian David, happily sits on top the Cat.

Bonnie Klassen is the MCC Area Director for South America and Mexico. This post is part of our ongoing blog series on migration. 

Almost 20 years ago, I moved from my Canadian hometown to Bogotá, Colombia.  Several years later, I married a Colombian peace activist.  People often ask me if I plan to live in Colombia the rest of my life.  I shrug my shoulders.  My grandparents were refugees from the Ukraine.  My parents grew up in Canada.  My son is growing up in Colombia but who knows where he will live.

We do visit Canada on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, my husband can never go with us because the Canadian government declared him “inadmissible”, as a result of his name appearing on the United States’ no-fly list as a suspected “threat to national security”.  U.S. Embassy personnel have told us, off-the-record, that the “evidence” in his file is entirely ridiculous but apparently there is nothing they can do to change the label.

Lunch! Bonnie Klassen

We recently took a family vacation to a destination that does still accept my husband – Barcelona, Spain. We stayed with a Colombian friend, Betty. Betty first left Colombia a decade ago due to death threats and has since then gone back and forth numerous times.  Because she remains obsessively active working in favour of peace in Colombia, we have kept up the connection through the years.

We lingered for hours over Spanish-style late-afternoon lunches and it seemed like we never stopped talking about “people on the move”, like these:

• My husband’s former colleague who left Colombia after being imprisoned on false charges. Ten years later, he runs a bustling tapas bar and no longer has time to chat over coffee.
• The human rights lawyer that had come to Barcelona to “lay low” for a while in the face of threat, but couldn’t cope with being away from his country more than seven months.
• The political leader who left Colombia during the genocide of thousands of her fellow political party-members. After years in Spain cleaning houses and selling perfume, she finally returned to become a Presidential candidate.
• The numerous people who had received temporary protection from the Spanish government but then over-stayed their visa, overwhelmingly unsure about what it means to return home.
• The Colombian union-leader under threat who crossed borders only to have his persecutors follow him. Eventually Norway resettled him to a remote northern town “far from everyone”.
• My close friend who moved near Bilbao for a number of years to study and work. After returning to Colombia, she told me sharply, “Don’t tell anyone that I was working in Spain.  They’ll think I was a prostitute or something else illegal!”
• Betty’s sister, who came to Barcelona because her older sister found her a job as a medical doctor.

One afternoon, Betty and her sister interrupted each other telling stories of their childhood in a remote community in the Colombian “Llanos” – the beauty of rural community life and the horror of losing the family farm under armed pressure.  Their mother sent her four youngest children away to escape the threats in the middle of the night, sitting during the 48 hour trip on planks above hogs on their way to market.

Each of these person’s stories could be understood with one of these terms:

Migrant:  Person undergoing a semi-permanent change of residence that involves a change of social, economic and/or cultural environment.

Refugee:  Person outside his/her country of origin who cannot return to this country because of a well-founded fear of persecution, or is unable or unwilling to return there due to serious and indiscriminate threats to life, physical integrity or freedom resulting from generalized violence or events seriously disturbing public order.

Internally-Displaced Person (IDP):  Person or groups of persons who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of, or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.

Resettlement: The transfer of refugees from the country in which they have sought refuge to another state that has agreed to admit them. The refugees will usually be granted asylum or some other form of long-term resident rights.

Undocumented Migrant vs. Irregular Migration: The term undocumented/non-documented migrant is self-explanatory, but not equivalent to “migrant with irregular status”. Irregular migration covers situations where migrants overstay their visa or engage in prohibited work or travel with inappropriate or false documents.

Banner welcoming refugees in the center of Barcelona

These labels can be both helpful and harmful, depending on how they are used to hide or illuminate people’s stories.  Sometimes they are used by governments to reframe reality for political reasons.  Sometimes they are used by people to validate their own situations.  I think of another Colombian who fled to Brazil seeking asylum.  When I stayed in his apartment last year, he told me:

“As a refugee, the Brazilian government does not allow me to visit Colombia without special permission.  The government has offered me ‘migrant status’ instead, which would give me freedom to come and go as I wish.  They would rather label me as a migrant, because it is politically awkward to recognize refugees from the neighbour country.  But changing status would be like erasing my story and denying the reason I am here.  I did not choose to come and I cannot let go of this truth.  I am a refugee.”

Each story is unique and complex.  We cannot use these words sloppily or interchangeably.  Even the most adequate term will always hide nuances.  Let us think about the reason for differentiating between technical labels, and also dig deeper, to find the person behind the label.

• Why do I rarely view myself as a migrant?
• How do persons revoke the label “migrant” or “inadmissible” if the term doesn’t tell their story?
• Are there ways for people to share their stories without simply receiving a label?
• What does the use of these labels reveal about political structures?
• Is someone like Betty no longer a refugee because she has travelled back and forth multiple times? Or is someone like Betty a refugee because she still struggles with nightmares and fear?

Betty would say the following:

I am a Colombian away from home, with my heart and mind in more than one place.  I am in a better position than many of my fellow country-mates living in Europe, because I have connections, I have purpose.  But it’s painful that others look at me and assume that since I am “settled”, that means it’s easy for me to be here.  No.  I embrace life here, but it’s also always hard. My whole story matters.”