The Irony Of ‘Remigration’: When Words Are Immigrants Too

A Linguistic And Political Critique Of Exclusionary Rhetoric - And What Britain Would Lose If It Erased Its Layered History.

‘Remigration’ - from the Latin word remigrāre, meaning ‘to return home’ - is now a rallying cry for those who forget that even words are immigrants.

And the noise around validating remigration as a course of action for anyone who doesn’t have a thousand-year history in the UK seems to be gaining some traction.

It is an uncomfortable conversation to observe on social media.

I tend to not go and scream ‘racism’ at the first opportunity because I would rather focus on people’s characters, and try to understand their frustrations about anyone who has a more recent immigration story.

But let’s be clear: the subtext of ‘remigration’ is that some belong more than others - as if history hasn’t spent centuries proving otherwise.

The argument in the ethno-nationalist sphere is that because their ancestors built this country and have settled here for a much longer time, they are more valid than someone like me.

Despite probably having done nothing for the country themselves.

And that we, the non-white immigrants and non-white children of immigrants, should ‘go back home’.

I’ve written about belonging before, concluding that self-validation about where we should be is much more powerful than seeking it from others.

Seeking validation from those who deny your belonging is a losing game.

It erases your own history and, worse, your dignity.

I exist because of two immigrant stories - and neither parent assumed that they’d ever land in Britain to live the rest of their lives.

But they did.

So Britain has inevitably become a huge part of my own story.

However this conversation about remigration has opened up another question - do those who are adamant to ‘send us back home’ want to send back other things that came here too?

Or is it just people?

Britain is a tapestry of differences still weaving its collective identity - one where rigid categories increasingly fail to capture reality.

I’d argue that in today’s Britain, everyone is, in some way, a minority.

Even within society’s prescribed groups, individual experiences fracture into countless variations.

What unites us isn’t uniformity, but shared participation in a society that’s always been rewritten by newcomers.

When we sit down and figure out what ‘British values’ are, we tend to think of intangible elements like equality under the law, mutual respect, and individual liberty.

When we dig deeper into what it means to be ‘English’ we set off a huge debate around whether this means by birth, ethnicity or just self-ID.

The Triggernometry debate over former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Englishness revealed an uncomfortable tension: while journalist and book editor Fraser Nelson argued birthplace defines identity, co-host of the podcast Konstantin Kisin questioned whether ethnicity and religion could override it.

The debate exposed a pattern: we apply self-identification flexibly.

When it’s gender, activists insist identity is self-defined; when it’s nationality, some demand ancestral purity.

This selective rigidity says less about logic than about who we subconsciously exclude.

The debate then lingers on social media long after the recording so everyone can have an opinion, and we’re in no way closer to a consensus.

I’m sure it’s not the last time this matter will be debated either.

It’ll come round again soon enough like the one about whether Churchill was a racist.

But the question around asking for remigration beyond people needs to be considered.

In around 2022, I started exploring etymology on the back of the debate around the word ‘woman’.

Social media was ablaze with arguments for what the consequences of the word ‘woman’ should mean for society.

Boundaries were being debated and safe spaces suddenly didn’t seem safe from this discussion either.

In my initial naivety, I didn’t realize how intense this discussion was; but it did make me question where the word ‘woman’ actually came from.

Once I traced its origin, curiosity flung the door wide open.

I set up a space called Words in Progress to explore everyday words and their movements over time beyond borders, conflicts, and empires.

I came to the conclusion (which I stand by with each word I explore) that all words that have ended up in the English language are also immigrants.

Even the word ‘remigration’ has come from beyond the sovereign border of Britain.

There is some irony when those who argue that any one of us with immigration stories that aren’t a thousand years old should leave, when the word they use to label this aim is from the Classical Latin word ‘remigrāre’ meaning ‘to return home’ and was first used in English in around 1608 in the writings of Andrew Willets, a Church of England clergyman, originally to mean simply ‘returning’.

Over time, the meaning of the word has been stretched by a far-right narrative to push non-white immigrants in returning to wherever their racial ancestry is.

But what if other things were sent back too?

Would potatoes be sent back to Peru with Paddington Bear?

If the ‘remigration’ advocates had their way, English would sound very different.

‘Bungalow’ would be sent back to the Hindi word ‘Bangla’; ‘jungle’ wouldn’t exist because it came from the Sanskrit ‘jangala’, and even the affectionate term for this great country, ‘Blighty’, would return to the Indian subcontinent as it was from the Urdu ‘vilāyatī’.

Yet these words have settled, amended themselves and assimilated well, and are as British as tea.

Which is ironically an immigrant beverage too.

So if ‘remigration’ ever escapes the realm of rhetoric and becomes policy, will its advocates notice the silence left behind?

Not just of people, but of words - of ‘bungalows’ and ‘jungles,’ of ‘tea’ and ‘Blighty.’

Perhaps then they’d see: a nation stripped of its immigrants, both human and linguistic, would no longer recognize its own voice.

I understand the frustration - when systems feel strained, it’s easy to blame the newcomers.

But ‘remigration’ isn’t the answer.

The real question isn’t who belongs, but how we rebuild a shared sense of belonging - one that honors both Britain’s roots and its evolution.

The choice isn’t between change and tradition but between a living culture and a museum exhibit.

Puja Teli is a UK-based writer, author, and artist who founded Words in Progress - a space to explore words and their origins, journeying beyond borders, conflicts, and empires.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.