The old saying about sticks and stones is wrong — just ask our migrant friends
People take part in a silent assembly for migrant workers and their families outside the Department of the Taoiseach in Dublin, on Wednesday following the recent attacks on members of the Indian community. Picture: Niall Carson/PA
We have long known that the old saying about sticks and stones is wrong. An updated (but far less catchy) version, might read: “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can deny my humanity.”
Words can hurt and they can lay the groundwork for the actions that follow. A six-year-old girl assaulted and told to go back to India, an eight-year-old boy called the n-word on a football pitch by another little boy, a young woman in a hijab spat at on the streets, a man attacked on his way home from work.
These are some of the stories that make up life in Ireland today for migrants and people of colour. Some of these stories have been spoken and written about in the news and have attracted condemnation and outrage; others happen quietly and without acknowledgment in our public spaces across the country. Words matter.
Incidents like these do not happen in a vacuum. They take place in a wider social climate, shaped by what we hear, read, and say about each other.
Recent events in Ireland have reminded us that the way we speak about migration matters, not just in policy debates or political speeches, but in everyday life, in how safe people feel walking down the street or our children feel playing outside their homes.
The link between public language and individual behaviour is not always clear or immediate but it is real. Attitudes are formed over time, through what is normalised in conversation, in headlines and in the stories we tell about who belongs here.
The 10-year-old calling another child the n-word has not heard it from a news report on immigration but he is still living in an environment where such views are aired.
These children are children now, but the view of ‘foreign’ or ‘other’ they are absorbing and accepting without question while they are young can takes years to undo as an adult. When ideas are repeated often enough either at home or online, they become part of our daily life, shaping how people see each other and what they believe is acceptable.
None of this is to suggest that politicians or commentators bear direct responsibility for specific acts of violence. The people who commit those acts are responsible for them. But we cannot pretend there is no connection between the tone of public debate and the actions of individuals.
It is why the language that we choose to use when talking about migration is important. It’s not about silencing criticism of migration policy, it is about recognising that words can humanise and dehumanise, they can open the door to understanding or they can slam it shut.
Ireland has long been a place where difficult conversations can happen without tipping into hostility. While we may hold different views on migration, those views must be expressed with care and with a basic respect for human dignity.
The challenge is that politics and media often pull in the opposite direction. Dramatic language gets attention, simplistic slogans are easy to understand and repeat. Anger is easier to generate than empathy or understanding.
We should be asking more of those who have the greatest influence over our public discourse. Political leaders, in particular, have both the platform and the responsibility to set the tone.
They cannot control how their words are used, but they can choose whether those words are careful or careless. They can choose whether to humanise or to inflame.
When leaders repeatedly use certain frames or labels for migrants, those words shape the tone of public discourse and influence how communities are seen.
A recent study by Runnymede Trust study in the UK, examined how migration is discussed in politics and the media. Analysing millions of words from news articles and parliamentary debates, the researchers found that “illegal” remains the number one association for “immigrants,” having risen from fourth to second most strongly associated term for “migrant” in news coverage.
The report warns that such language “frames migration as a criminal or dangerous act” and “contributes to a climate in which racism is viewed as permissible.”
In this way, migrants are cast as a threat to society rather than as workers, colleagues, students, volunteers, or family members. Over time, this framing feeds an atmosphere where discrimination feels acceptable and where acts of hostility and even violence are more easily justified.
Brexit showed us how political and media narratives about migration can shape public sentiment in powerful and sometimes damaging ways. A survey of voters on the day of the referendum showed that 33% stated their main reason for voting Leave was because it “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders”.
In addition, 81% of Leave voters regarded multiculturalism and 80% regarded immigration as “forces for ill”. However some of the strongest support for leaving the EU came from areas with the lowest level of migration.
Years of headlines of “floods” or “swarms” of migrants and political discourse casting migration as a crisis helped to create fertile ground for campaigns built on fear and resentment.
This repeated framing hardened perceptions of migration and helped normalise a climate in which hostility towards migrants felt acceptable, even in communities with little or no direct contact.
Ireland is not the UK but the lesson is still relevant. The language we use in public life matters. It matters not only for how we see one another, but for what people feel they can say and do.
If migrants are consistently framed as a problem to be solved, as an anonymous mass to be reduced or controlled, then it becomes easier for some to justify treating them as less than fully human. That is the ground in which prejudice grows.
We all have a role in this. We decide how we talk about people in our homes, our workplaces, in our local clubs, at the school gates. We decide whether we challenge casual prejudice or racism when we hear it, or whether we let it pass.
We decide whether to share that sensational but misleading story online or the subsequent less exciting fact check. We can insist that our politics and our media speak about migration in ways that recognise people as neighbours, colleagues, and fellow citizens in the making.
By choosing our words with care and holding one another to that standard, we can create a society where difference is not a threat but a shared strength.
- Fiona Hurley is CEO of Nasc Migrant and Refugee Rights Centre
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
