“Remigration” is the “bad word of the year” for 2023. The word is a “right-wing fighting term” and a “euphemistic cover vocabulary,” explained linguist and jury spokeswoman Constanze Spieß on Monday in Marburg. It is used by right-wing parties and right-wing extremist groups “to call for forced expulsion and even mass deportations of people with a migration history.”
In view of the debates about the AfD’s strategies, this “non-word” choice is very topical – even if the term itself is not new, as Spieß makes clear. The jury explains that the term, which originally comes from migration and exile research and comes from the Latin word “remigrare” for “to migrate back”, is “consciously ideologically appropriated” and reinterpreted in order to disguise an inhumane deportation and deportation practice.
Tens of thousands protest against the right
The term has been making headlines nationwide since last week in connection with a meeting of radical right-wingers in Potsdam in November, which became known on Wednesday. AfD officials as well as individual members of the CDU and the ultra-conservative Values Union also took part. The former head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, confirmed that he had spoken about “remigration” there. Right-wing extremists usually mean that a large number of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress. At the weekend, tens of thousands demonstrated against the right in Berlin, Potsdam and other cities.
The jury spokeswoman had already reported in December – before the current debate – that “remigration” was among the entries for the “unword” freestyle. Since 2016, the Identitarian Movement has been grappling with the reinterpretation of the term migration, and this can also be read in its writings, says Spieß.
Supposedly harmless formulations
The strategy of using such initially less “riotous” words “in order to find a consensus in the middle of society” is not new. “The penetration and spread of the supposedly harmless and euphemistic expression into common language leads to a shift in the migration policy discourse towards a normalization of right-wing populist and right-wing extremist positions,” the jury found. Spieß expects that this will also be reflected in the election campaigns in 2024.
The jury for the independent and voluntary campaign included four linguists, a freelance journalist and, as a guest juror this year, the CDU politician Ruprecht Polenz. “The harmless term “remigration” is used by the ethnic nationalists of the AfD and the Identitarian Movement to disguise their true intentions: the deportation of all people with supposedly the wrong skin color or origin, even if they are German citizens,” commented Polenz the “non-word” decision. “After being chosen as the ‘unword of the year’, this deception with ‘remigration’ should no longer be so easy,” said the CDU politician.
“The AfD’s choice of words should wake everyone up”
The chairman of the Advisory Council for Integration and Migration (SVR), Hans Vorländer, doubts that this calculation will work. He says that naming the “bad word of the year” is a “ritual of outrage and scandal” that ultimately increases the resonance of the respective term – “you put it in the spotlight, so to speak.” That’s why he’s a little upset about this year’s decision. Jury spokeswoman Spieß said that they were aware that the term and the right-wing camp would also receive more attention as a result of the decision. As a civil society action, the aim is to “draw attention to the topic, educate people, show how the strategies work so that we can then decipher it,” said the linguist.
Vorländer believes that because actors of the so-called New Right used “remigration” as a cover term for expulsion, it lost its innocence years ago. In fact, it has hardly been used in migration research for about ten years – especially when it comes to describing the voluntary or forced departure of people from Germany.
The term “remigration” is closely linked to the racist concept of “ethnopluralism,” says Vorländer. This may also sound harmless to those who are not familiar with it, but it expresses “a separation of the different ethnic groups from each other”. In his opinion, both terms should be avoided “so that we don’t play the game of right-wing extremists.” These strive for sovereignty over the public discourse in order to “come closer to their long-term goal of a gradual change in the democratic constitutional order”.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) commented on the jury’s decision on Platform FDP domestic politician Ann-Veruschka Jurisch said: “The AfD’s choice of words should wake everyone up.” The member of the Bundestag warns that “remigration” is “a word from the poison box”. Anyone who uses it is not concerned with the constitutionally justified deportation of rejected asylum seekers. The East faction leaders of the AfD, on the other hand, stuck to the term “remigration” and the corresponding demands in a statement.
This time, the jury placed second place with the term “social climate”, which was used in the debate about basic child welfare. This choice of words denigrates and defames the group of people with low income and assets and at the same time stigmatizes the group of children who are affected by poverty or at risk of poverty. The term “Heizungs-Stasi” takes third place. The jury criticized the expression used with regard to the Building Energy Act as “populist propaganda against climate protection measures”.
The “bad word of the year” was selected according to various criteria from suggestions that citizens submitted by December 31, 2023. Terms and formulations that violate the principles of human dignity or democracy, that discriminate against social groups or that are euphemistic, obfuscating or misleading are eligible. The aim is to raise awareness of appropriate language use. This time there were a total of 2,301 entries containing 710 different terms, of which almost 110 met the jury’s criteria. For 2022, the choice fell on “climate terrorists”.
