I’m here with dozens of other folks from Silicon Valley who moved due to our towns and cities being effectively shutdown due to COVID as well as the significantly reduced likelihood of contracting the virus here (for a multitude of reasons, the infection rates here have always been lower than the mainland).
In a few circumstances recently, people I know have referred to Hawaii as a refugee camp for tech industry workers. This feels like hyperbole to me but also a relatively harmless analogy that does have some truth to it too. We have left our homes largely against our will because the quality of life and/or risk to our health was so great that we felt the need to move. That said, there is a massive difference between Google and Facebook employees moving to Hawaii and persons in the third-world fleeing war or genocide.
All that being said, I don’t think it’s necessary or productive to police speech in this circumstance and I don’t think the term refugee is problematic here because it’s not hurting or marginalizing any particular group of people and just because we’re privileged it does not mean our lives can’t be uprooted and impacted too, even if it’s in a very different way.
Do you think we should stop using the term refugee in this circumstance?
Yes. In casual conversation among your own social group you can say whatever you like, of course.
But if you’re wondering about the broader optics of highly affluent tech workers calling themselves “refugees” because they’ve voluntarily moved from one very comfortable and safe life (and even with the pandemic, your lives were still doubtless much more comfortable and safe than those of most working-class people around you) to an even more comfortable and safe one in a tropical island (though I’m not trying to gloss over the genuine impact of uprooting your families, distance, homesickness, etc.)…
… yeah, those optics aren’t good. Keep the term “refugee” for a little in-joke among your own crowd if you want, but call yourself “temporarily relocated” or something like that in general conversation. I’ve also heard “COVID dodgers” if you want something a little more self-deprecating.
Are you kidding me? You left “against your will”? Really? Who forced you out? Was King Charles II a “refugee” when he left London during the plague outbreak of 1665? https://www.history.com/news/plague-pandemic-great-fire
What you did was not a new thing. Those who can afford it have often fled from disease.
It seems using the term “refugee” is just a way to assuage the guilt of fleeing to a long term vacation when others can’t. You have money and privilege. Having money and privilege doesn’t make someone a bad person, but pretending to be persecuted or wretched to avoid feeling guilty about having money and privilege is not something a good person does.
In a lighthearted, joking way, I don’t see much of a problem. But acting like it’s some horrible imposition, or using that term in any context where refugee has its normal legitimate meaning would come off as a bit crass, at minimum.
Also, I was under the impression that Hawaii was closed for that sort of thing.
And you [the OP] weren’t forced against your will, you had the privilege and economic power to chose to relocate. Choice in itself is enormous privilege, use it wisely, including in how you present your choices.
Huh, I don’t think I assign as much moral weight to the word “refugee” as some of you. When a chat site i used to enjoy died, i created a discord server that i named the “dead chat site refugee camp” and invited as many users as i could to it before the dying site completely went away. I never meant to imply we were some persecuted group, or wretched, just that we were forced out of our chat site.
I suppose tech workers in Hawaii weren’t actually forced to leave the Bay area or anything. They just chose to decamp for a nicer place. But i doubt they call themselves “refugees” to avoid feeling guilty.
I don’t think it’s morally wrong to have the wealth to relocate, either. I think people who do should feel grateful for their privilege, not guilty about it.
Anyway, based on the responses here, I’d say you shouldn’t use the word “refugee” in any context where anyone might possibly think you meant it seriously.
I mean, he almost certainly would have died if he hadn’t left by the end of the decade, but unlike other German Jews, he had a good, high-paying job waiting for him in the States. Plus, he left before things got really bad. Is a refugee with foresight, running away from what might happen, still a refugee?
Einstein was a refugee, albeit one in much better circumstances than most. If he had stayed where he was, he would have been severely persecuted for his tribal membership.
You are not. In addition to the factors others have mentioned, you haven’t even left the country you’re “fleeing” from.
I would say yes. Einstein saw what was happening and left. The fact that he had an a amazing skill set so he didn’t face the typical hardscrabble life of refugees in a new country makes him an outlier, but I would say he was a refugee.
The individuals mentioned by the OP haven’t lost their jobs, aren’t facing any sort of persecution, and haven’t even left their own country.
They’ve just decided that it’s nicer to hang out in a more isolated, tropical part of their own country to avoid a health crisis, and have the money to do so and work remotely.
They’re not refugees and it’s wrong for them to consider themselves in the same category as people who have fled government persecution because of their race or religion or sex, at the risk of being killed.
If they try to claim the mantle of refugees, they’re just entitled jerks.
Maybe the OP and friends can call themselves “refugers”. That is, one who refuges. Its acknowledging half the idea behind “refugee”: seeking a refuge, without importing the whole political weight the OP accurately describes.
Q: What are you doing in Hawaii?
A: I’m refuging. I’m a refuger. So’s my roommate.
Further alternatives might be “COVID camper” or “COVID coward” or “COVID avoider” or “COVID quarantiner”. Each with a different mix of self-deprecation and humor.
Some sillicn vallies peoples have few life skills and subsist mainly on bitcoin valuation news and anti-homelessness device innovations. With dwindling TED talk volumes they are lost and alone. Consider sheltering them in your home if you are able.
They may seem skittish and prone to anti-vaccination but if you move slowly and carefully they can be spoken to as humans.
By definition they are not only because the status of refugee requires leaving the country and are there with official or unofficial refugee status, usually with no other right for being in the other country. It implies you are in another country do to such a situation. It does not mean poor, but usually involved the poor as the rich can get out easy and buy favors and citizenship and can do it ‘blended in’ to the general population of well to do.
As far as people vaca in a pandemic area which is part of their own nation, fr causal conversation using the comparison is easily understood.