ABSTRACT
In the Social Sciences we regularly use ambiguous terms, without clear meaning. Perhaps it is exactly their diffuseness that makes them popular, because everyone can have their own ideas about what is meant. Like ‘Third World’, ‘Middle East’ has become such a password, which means something different according to speaker and circumstances. Middle East is in fact a term coined in the nineteenth century when the Balkans and Greece were already ‘East’ in the West European perception, whereas at the same time China and Japan entered the general perception as ‘Far East’. Something in between became then the ‘Middle East’. This of course does not help us very much in a discussion of modern migration flows and immigrant settlement.
