I spent part of last summer volunteering in a hostel for underage migrants in the south of Italy. The teenagers there were largely from West Africa, and many of them told me harrowing stories of their journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean. They were optimistic, resourceful boys and, in their situation, I hope I’d be brave enough to do what they did. But they were not, as we understand the word, refugees.

I have seen refugee columns before, and they tend to be made up disproportionately of women and children. Of the boat-people landed by the coast guard while I was in Italy, more than 80 percent were young men. Young men who, I noticed, took out smartphones when they disembarked and looked for Wi-Fi so as to tell their relatives that they had made it.