Why I stopped calling it a 'crisis'

I used the word "crisis" to describe European migration for about four years. I used it in articles, in conversations, in my own notes to myself. Then, somewhere around 2022, I stopped — and the change was not merely stylistic.

The word "crisis" does something specific to a political situation: it implies that there is a normal state of affairs from which we have temporarily departed, and that the goal of policy is to return to that normal state. It implies urgency without requiring diagnosis. It implies that someone is at fault for the emergency — usually whoever is speaking last, or loudest.

None of these implications are helpful when thinking about migration. Migration is not an emergency from which Europe will eventually recover. It is a permanent feature of the world we live in, shaped by demographics, climate, economics and politics in ways that will not simply resolve themselves once the right minister is elected or the right regulation passed.

What I have tried to use instead — imperfectly, inconsistently — is the language of policy. Not "crisis" but "challenge." Not "flood" or "wave" but "movement" or "arrival." Not "invasion" or "replacement" (two words I never used, but which circulate freely in some of the spaces I inhabit) but simply description: this many people, from these places, for these reasons, with these consequences.

The advantage of this language is that it forces precision. The disadvantage is that it is less emotionally compelling than crisis language, and therefore less effective at mobilising attention.

I am not sure that is a disadvantage, actually. The attention that crisis language mobilises tends to be short-term, reactive and poorly directed. What we need for questions this complex is the opposite: sustained, patient, honest engagement with facts that will not resolve themselves on a news cycle.