This Land Is Our Land_An Immigrant’s Manifesto by Suketu Mehta

Author:Suketu Mehta [Mehta, Suketu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History
ISBN: 9781473563490
Goodreads: 40554208
Publisher: Vintage Digital
Published: 2019-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

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What is the difference between a refugee and a migrant? It is a strategic choice of words, to be made at the border when you’re asked what you are; etymology is destiny. The “migrant” does not even enjoy the nominal rights that are the privilege of the refugee, because it is implied that his movement is voluntary. You could be sent back if you’re just an “economic” migrant, but you could also be shunned and feared if you’re identified as a political refugee. Whether you’re running from something or running toward something, you’re on the run.

In summer 2016, I drove out to the Hungarian-Serbian border with a volunteer for a church-based organization providing supplies to refugees. I had been in Hungary for a week studying its attempt to win the crown of Europe’s most hostile country for refugees. All over the country, there were blue posters bearing questions like, “Did you know? Since the beginning of the immigration crisis, more than three hundred have died in terrorist attacks in Europe,” and “Did you know? Brussels wants to settle a whole city’s worth of illegal immigrants in Hungary,” and “Did you know? Since the beginning of the immigration crisis, the harassment of women has risen sharply in Europe.” The Orbán government was urging its citizens to vote in a referendum against accepting an EU quota of refugees: 1,294 refugees in 2016, for a country with almost 10 million people.

We crossed the Serbian border at Röszke and spent four hours looking for a road to get to the cluster of tents we’d seen right by the side of the highway near the border. We drove on dirt roads in the depopulated countryside, past orchards of apple, peach, and plum trees. From the car window, I picked a purple plum off a branch. It wasn’t quite ripe yet.

A woman told us which road to take to the “Pakistani camp.” We rattled down a rutted road by the superhighway and came up to the camp. It was an instant South Asian slum, but with backpacking tents instead of plastic sheets, just like the Sziget music festival I’d just come from on the Danube in Hungary. The festival had been filled with Instagram-ready teens, who, on payment of the $363-per-person entry fee, could luxuriate in their own tent city for a week.

There were children in the refugee tents, too, but younger and brown: preteens and toddlers on the run with their families. They played cricket amid the garbage. It cost a euro to use the toilet at the border. So people from the long lines of cars waiting to cross used the bushes instead, which served as the migrants’ temporary home, where they slept and ate, waiting for the doors of Europe to open.

We opened the trunk of our car and handed out water bottles, chocolates, socks, and underwear. A group of men came over; when they identified me as Indian, they shook my hand and spoke to me in Urdu about their travels.

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