We use words such as “refugees”, “asylum-seekers”, or “migrants”, as if these have substantial sense beyond the instances and circumstances of speech-production. As if they are categories that are over and above the contexts that make up their properties. Differently said, they are reductive and mis-representing concepts that ultimately foster the dehumanisation of those concerned. What, if not words (and the power they have of “making worlds”), distinguish a refugee from an economic migrant, an asylum-seeker, a sans-papiers, a displaced person, a traveller, an expatriate, a tourist and even an invader?

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Ethiopia,Migration