For a decade, Europe has been locked in a perpetual state of crisis over migration. While the original meaning of crisis signifies a momentary break from the norm, since 2015 it has transformed into an enduring feature of the European political landscape. That pivotal year, around a million individuals escaped war and persecution to seek refuge in Europe. In the years that followed, the topic of migration has been so completely politicised that it is now difficult to recall a period when it was not described as an existential crisis.
This idea of a permanent emergency does not reflect a reality where Europe is genuinely incapable of handling new arrivals. Instead, it highlights the plain fact that many parties profit from creating a constant feeling of crisis.
These crisis narratives sustain a profitable system of fear and have catalysed profound changes to Europe's frontier systems and asylum rules. The continent's border security industry is experiencing a boom, with key beneficiaries including the EU's border agency, whose funding has skyrocketed from a relatively small sum in 2014 to exceeding one billion euros today—amid repeated accusations of complicity with human rights abuses. Throughout Europe, private defence and security firms have secured lucrative contracts that have further hardened the region's frontiers.
Promising that the events of 2015 will not be duplicated, right-wing and extremist political movements are on the rise across Europe, apparently intent on whipping up anti-migrant sentiment and normalising racist conspiracy theories. The xenophobic fringe has grabbed its opportunity. However, the fact that Europe has grown increasingly hostile for migrants and ethnic minority groups is in large part due to the calculated opportunism of centrist parties that attempt to outflank the far right at its own game.
Germany provides a paradigmatic case. Capitalising on the 2015 "migration wave", the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) first entered the federal parliament in 2017. Since then, as head of the opposition and later as chancellor, the CDU's Friedrich Merz has veered hard to the right. Pursuing an aggressive anti-migration agenda, he has uttered statements seen by many as racist, including a recent suggestion that mass removals were needed to address a "visible issue in urban areas". This approach of adopting rival rhetoric has had the opposite effect, with the AfD's support rising dramatically to now rival Merz's own party.
In the UK, the current Labour government faces a similar fate. Under huge strain from the hard-right Reform UK party, it has announced what it calls "the toughest asylum reforms in modern times". These severe plans would make refugee status temporary, cut support, tear apart families, and leave many in a legal purgatory for years. This strategy does not contain forces on the right flank; it emboldens them. Reform UK praised the announcement, while far-right activists hailed a perceived obliteration of the acceptable discourse.
For the hard right across Europe, the "political boon" of migration crises continues to deliver. A critical lesson must be restated: when you adopt a politics of cruelty to outdo those whose entire agenda is founded on cruelty, defeat is assured. Even if governments manage in implementing "tough" policies or lower asylum numbers, the far right will simply identify other minority groups to scapegoat, demonise, and hold responsible.
This aggression shows no signs of abating. Turning vast regions like the Sahara and the Mediterranean into areas of peril is insufficient for those who frame their struggle as a civilisational war, rooted in ethnic myths and "remigration" fantasies that ultimately target Europe's own minority citizens.
The ideas of the far right are gaining momentum, forging alliances globally and enabling migration to be employed as a tool for democratic erosion. Internationally, influential voices are echoing this rhetoric, with recent strategy documents from a former U.S. administration calling to end the "age of large-scale movement" and to oppose Europe's "cultural dilution". Such statements are celebrated as wins by far-right parties within Europe.
What, then, lies ahead for fortress Europe? The EU's current trajectory appears set. With the new pact on migration and asylum coming into full force in 2026, another landmark in securitisation will be reached. Rather than challenging narratives of never-ending emergency, the pact effectively turns crisis into official procedure. It will enable member states to speed up border processes, extend detention, and curtail asylum rights during broadly stated "exceptional situations" of mass arrival. Critics argue these measures are so broad that they risk turning into the norm, indefinitely weakening rights across the continent.
In a world full of reasons for people to flee—from war and genocide to capitalist extraction and environmental collapse—increased border security, mass deportations, and a generalised politics of cruelty will never "resolve" migration. What they will achieve is the erosion of democratic norms, widening social rifts, and increased racist hostility.
Given that migration has become the central issue of the current anti-democratic shift, it is exactly around migration that resistance must coalesce. How we will look back on the decade from 2026 to 2035 is, in the end, up to us. Carrying out rescue operations in the Mediterranean, disrupting immigration raids and deportation flights, and reasserting cities as spaces of plurality and solidarity—these are all urgently needed actions that protect our fellow human beings and challenge the anti-democratic movements expanding around us.
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