Part 3: Barriers for Belonging - Logical Errors as Barriers for Migrants & Youth
In Part I of this series, I explored how we often speak about climate with logical errors that make problems harder to understand — framing consequences as causes, mistaking symptoms for disease, and shifting responsibility onto individuals.
🔗 Talking About Climate Without Logical Errors
In Part II, I asked what it would mean to tell the climate story in ways that actually include people. Instead of abstract nouns, we need language rooted in families, rivers, food, and futures — things people can see themselves in.
🔗 The Climate Story That Actually Includes You
Now, in Part III, I turn to a group that feels these communication errors most sharply: migrants — and how the abstraction of language creates barriers to belonging, disempowerment, and silence across generations.
When I first arrived in Australia, I thought the challenge would be the distance — from home, from family, from the soil where my ancestors rest. What I did not expect was the distance inside language itself.
The words here are heavy with abstraction. The news tells me that climate change caused the flood, that inflation caused the crisis, that my footprint is the real danger. At first, I believed these words. How could I not? I was new, eager to understand, to belong.
But soon, I discovered these words are like shadows — they name the consequence and hide the cause. If climate change caused the flood, what could my family do? If inflation is the villain, how do we fight it? If my footprint is the problem, then perhaps the only option is to shrink my life until I disappear.
Back home, the language of crisis is different. When the river floods, we say the dam has cracked, or the forest has been cut, or the monsoon has changed. We speak of causes with faces and names — choices made by people, not ghosts. Here, the ghosts of “climate” and “inflation” float above us, untouchable. And so, migrants like me are left powerless.
This is not simply misunderstanding. It is a form of exile. We are displaced not only from land, but from meaning itself.
The Hidden Cost of Abstraction
For more than two years, I struggled to decode this language. I realised the issue is not ignorance, but distortion. The communication systems of the West — media, education, politics — often carry logical errors that obscure reality:
Consequences are framed as causes.
Symptoms are mistaken for disease.
Responsibility is shifted onto individuals.
These errors are not harmless. They disempower. They make people feel that nothing can be done.
Migrants, who often come from cultures rich in solidarity and collective care, find themselves lost in this new environment. The mismatch breeds confusion (“why does nothing make sense here?”), guilt (“maybe we are to blame”), and eventually withdrawal (“this system is not ours to influence”).
The tragedy is that many migrants arrive with traditions of community resilience that could strengthen Australian society. But the very way problems are communicated prevents them from seeing where they might act.
What This Does to the Young
The youth inherit the same broken maps. In schools, they hear that climate change is the cause of disasters, that inflation explains the cost of living, that their carbon footprint is the weight dragging the Earth down.
These messages produce three poisons:
Confusion — the problems feel distant and unsolvable.
Guilt — they internalise blame, believing their choices are killing the planet.
Loss of imagination — they cannot see systems as changeable, only as fate.
And because they cannot explain these issues in plain language to their parents or grandparents, silence grows in families. The warmth of intergenerational conversation fades, replaced by abstract jargon that belongs to no one’s heart.
Communication as Relationship
This is why I say: communication is sacred. It is not just words, it is relationship. And relationship is the soil where care and futures grow.
When we reduce crises to abstract slogans — “climate action now,” “net zero by 2050,” “resilient communities” — we may sound urgent, but we erase the doorway for ordinary people. Migrants, young people, even neighbours who have never joined a protest, hear only a wall of language. There is no place to enter, no place to belong.
The irony is that the very people who might be most capable of imagining new systems — migrants with traditions of solidarity, youth with unspent energy — are trained instead to think inside broken logic. They inherit not only the crises, but the wrong maps to navigate them.
Toward a Language of Belonging
If we want wider participation in climate and justice movements, we must restore specificity and relationship to our words. Instead of “tackling climate change,” we can say “ending coal and gas approvals.” Instead of “net zero by 2050,” we can say “protect forests and water now.” Instead of “your footprint,” we can name corporate profiteering and political choices.
This shift is not cosmetic. It is the difference between exile and belonging. Between silence and conversation. Between despair and imagination.
Migrants deserve more than shadows. Youth deserve more than guilt. Families deserve language that makes sense at the dinner table as much as in parliament.
Because in the end, communication is not a meeting. It is not a press release.
It is not that the migrant fails to understand; it is that the system of messages is organized in such a way that understanding cannot easily occur. The loop between media, policy, and public discourse reinforces confusion and disempowerment.
Language that abstracts away cause produces loops where the system reproduces misunderstanding, which in turn reinforces the sense of exile and powerlessness.
Closing Note
Belonging is not only about being physically present in a place — it is about being able to make sense of it, to share language with neighbours, to imagine futures together. When migrants and young people inherit only abstracted, broken maps of causes and responsibilities, they are cut off from both clarity and community. To restore belonging, we need more than translation; we need communication that reveals roots, not just symptoms. Because when the soil of understanding is restored, people can stand together again — not as outsiders or spectators, but as co-creators of the systems that shape their lives.
This is part 3 of a series of posts on the topic. I’ll release a new post every Friday.
With gratitude and hope,
Ramandeep Sibia
