Ten years in the past marked the “summer season of migration”, a sequence of main inhabitants actions in direction of the European Union. In the 2015 “disaster” alone, over one million individuals entered the EU by irregular means. Most have been Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis.
In 2025, greater than 95,000 individuals took the street of exile and reached the EU irregularly.
Over 32,000 individuals have died attempting to achieve Europe’s borders through the Mediterranean since 2014, in line with the International Organization for Migration.
As the years have handed, 2015’s “summer season of migration” has grow to be the brand new actuality: that occasion was in actual fact only one episode in an extended sequence. Everywhere borders have been beneath stress: between Poland and Belarus in 2021; between Russia and Finland; between Russia and the Baltic states. There has been the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and, in fact, the warfare in Ukraine. All these occasions bear witness to the truth that, in a relentlessly unstable world imperilled by world warming, migration is – and can stay sooner or later – inevitable.
This incapability to grapple with the current and the long run is compounded by an incapability to know the previous. In 2015, we keep in mind Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s historic speech, “Wir schaffen das!” (“We’ll handle!”). It signaled Germany’s willingness to tackle the unprecedented problem posed by the arrival of so many migrants. We keep in mind the outpouring of sympathy for exiles sparked by the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, a Kurdish-Syrian youngster discovered useless on a seaside in Turkey.
More simply forgotten are the dysfunctions in receiving these migrants, which grew to become obvious within the subsequent years: border patrols between Northern Macedonia and Greece; plans to shut Germany’s borders; disputes between member states over the way to take care of asylum seekers; the controversial migration settlement between the EU and Turkey, and so forth.
Then there was the momentary reintroduction of controls at inner EU borders, and the rampant human-rights violations on the exterior borders. Faced with an unprecedented disaster, European solidarity did not final lengthy. If Angela Merkel was in a position to withstand the disaster, it was as a result of she had the political capital essential to take action. Not all the opposite EU international locations’ leaders have been in the identical state of affairs.
New deal
In the meantime, Europe and its international locations have tailored to the brand new actuality. One of a very powerful measures of Matteo Salvini, Italy’s inside minister in 2018-19, was the abolition of humanitarian safety standing. This had allowed migrants unqualified for refugee standing to remain in Italy. The system had protected round 40% of asylum seekers.
Its disappearance has left many individuals with no authorized technique of remaining in Italy, opening the door to deportations. The Salvini decrees additionally accelerated asylum procedures, prolonged police powers and allowed for simpler detention of migrants.
The clampdown in Italy echoes a extra world pattern. To handle migratory actions, there have been agreements between the EU and international locations comparable to Mauritania, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – a few of that are recognized for human rights violations on their soil. Europe appears to need to forestall migrants arriving, irrespective of the implications. Supranational initiatives such because the creation of migrant detention centres outdoors the EU, and nationwide initiatives comparable to Poland’s suspension of the precise to asylum, are additional proof of this dedication to closure.
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“Today, the narrative of European leaders on migration is a far cry from Angela Merkel’s rhetoric of 2015”, says Silvia Carta, advocacy officer for a company defending the rights of undocumented migrants. “The dominant narrative for the time being presents migration and migrants as an issue, to be solved basically with extra obstacles to entry into Europe and extra deportations.” The identical goes for migrant smuggling. This is known not as a consequence of the restrictive insurance policies in place, she says, however slightly as a justification for criminalizing migrants and the teams that assist them.
For Silvia Carta, this political local weather is main increasingly individuals “into irregularity and authorized limbo, disadvantaged of their elementary rights and uncovered to precariousness, homelessness, exploitation and extended detention.”
European solidarity just isn’t completely useless, nonetheless. In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered large inhabitants displacements, prompting the EU to activate the Temporary Protection Directive. This granted exiled Ukrainians speedy authorized residence and entry to work, training and healthcare.
An anti-immigration worldwide?
The final decade has additionally seen the rise of European far-right events, pushed by anti-immigration rhetoric.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown in reputation over the past ten years to grow to be the nation’s second-largest pressure (4.7% of the vote within the 2013 federal elections, rising to twenty.8% in 2025).
An analogous state of affairs prevails in France, the place the Rassemblement National, which did not actually have a seat within the National Assembly twenty years in the past, acquired 28.5% of the vote within the final legislative elections. It is now the nation’s main occasion.
Perhaps much more hanging is the instance of Fratelli d’Italia, the occasion of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Back in 2013, the Fratelli had received solely 9 seats out of 630 in parliamentary elections (2% of the vote).
This rise of right-wing extremism goes hand in hand with a shift within the political panorama as an entire on the subject of migration. Driven by the necessity to enchantment to voters who’ve been received over by reactionary arguments, and the crucial merely to exist in a world the place immigration performs a central position in politics, even centrist and leftist events are adopting extra restrictive positions on migration and asylum. From Sahra Wagenknecht, former figurehead of Germany’s left-wing Die Linke occasion to Keir Starmer’s UK Labour Party to the Danish Social Democrats’ anti-immigration legal guidelines: current historical past abounds with centre-left politicians searching for to capitalize on the struggle in opposition to immigration – with various levels of success.
“At European stage, we already noticed this shift in 2024 when the Pact on Asylum and Migration was adopted with the votes of the European Socialist group, regardless of appeals in opposition to it by civil society”, notes Silvia Carta. “However, the information exhibits that following this rhetoric solely strengthens the far proper, slightly than weakening it.”
In Carta’s view, the state of affairs reveals a political vacuum. “What’s lacking are leaders […] who can present how migration and migrants are getting used as scapegoats to divide the citizens and distract them from the rising failings of the welfare state and the financial, social and racial inequalities in our societies.”
Integration: an ongoing wrestle
For individuals from a migrant background, integration stays a problem. A Eurobarometer survey revealed in 2023, primarily based on greater than 25,000 respondents throughout the EU, reveals that greater than half of these questioned really feel that there’s widespread discrimination of their nation, notably on the idea of pores and skin color or ethnic origin.
In some international locations there was progress by way of integrating new arrivals into the labour market. However, language obstacles, housing prices and restricted entry to public providers have made the method extra advanced than it must be. Public debate oscillates between solidarity, the necessity to counter the ageing of the inhabitants by way of migration, and worries about reception capability.
In France, a examine revealed in 2022 by the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (Ifri) exhibits that, regardless of lively job-seeking, refugees in France are sometimes confronted with insecure contracts and poor profession prospects. They are over-represented in low-wage sectors comparable to development, motels and catering.
Difficulties in accessing housing and training have additionally been famous elsewhere in Europe.
Over the previous ten years, an thought has taken hold in lots of international locations and throughout the political divide: “Fortress Europe” is dealing with a serious peril and have to be defended in any respect prices. Whether throughout their journey or as soon as they’ve settled, displaced individuals proceed to face the implications of migration insurance policies justified by the supposed “disaster”. The “summer season of migration” by no means ended. It has grow to be a everlasting a part of our lives.
