In Europe, the Age of Deportations Has Begun
This decade, we have regularly witnessed scenes reminiscent of the darkest chapters in European history. Whether it is the Kristallnacht-like riots in the UK, such as those in Northern Ireland, the array of government leaders who have knowingly expressed support for a government actively conducting genocide, or the vastly increasing number of representatives that openly embrace racist conspiracy theories fearing that Europe would no longer be “white”.
Last month’s session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg added another grim image. After decade-long negotiations, the European Parliament voted on the highly controversial Return Regulation, which enables member states to transfer migrants and asylum seekers to non-EU countries, where they await the outcome of their procedures. The current balance of power in the European Parliament meant that attempts to make the legislation even slightly more humane failed direly. After the final vote, in which the regulation passed by 418 votes to 218 (with 30 abstentions), far-right parties in the European Parliament not only applauded the regulation but also rose from their seats and repeatedly chanted: “Send them back! Send them back!”
Though loudly acclaimed by the European far right, the law could only pass because it was supported by the European People’s Party (EPP), which encompasses Christian Democrats as well as other European conservative parties of sorts. Liberals also supported the regulation by a majority, as did even a handful of Social Democrats. The vote followed an earlier Migration Pact, which came into effect on 10 June after being adopted by EU decision-makers in 2024. The new regulations place the European Commission on the same track as the Trump administration, from which it commonly tries to dissociate itself.
These policies result from the inability of political establishments to effectively respond to the far right and its favourite talking point. In part, this is because decision-makers from left to right fail to recognise that calls to limit migration are less about the number of people moving from one country to another – and that reducing those flows will do little to change the electoral fortunes of the far right.
Criticism of migration is much more a stand-in for racism, cloaking Islamophobia and white supremacy. This aids to keep muslims, migrants, their descendants (or simply non-white people) in a permanent position of dependence and precarity. Starting from this observation, the left should direct its focus from presenting itself capable of solving the alleged problems that the far right defines, to defining the problems central to politics itself.
The EU Migration Pact
What did the European Union agree to? The Migration Pact, which has just come into effect, consists of ten binding laws that reform how the EU manages its borders, processes asylum claims, and shares responsibilities among member states. The new rules allow governments to fast-track decisions by reducing procedural safeguards while expanding the maximum period of detention. They also include a Crisis Regulation that enables EU countries to restrict access to asylum procedures in vaguely defined situations of “mass influx” or the “instrumentalisation” of migration by third countries.
The Return Regulation, which was voted on last month, also enables EU countries to conclude agreements with “safe third countries” outside the EU, where asylum seekers can be detained while their applications are processed. As a result, authorities may reject an asylum claim without examining it on its merits and transfer the applicant to a country where they have no family, community, or other meaningful connections. NGOs warn that such arrangements often serve to shift responsibility rather than provide effective protection.
These “return hubs”, as they are euphemistically called – “deportation centres” would be equally apt – have been described as “legal black holes” that “allow EU states to conduct immigration raids on communities, systematically detain people for up to 30 months or, in some cases, indefinitely.” EU policymakers cannot guarantee that the rights of those transferred there will be upheld.
Italy pioneered this type of policy after striking a deal with Albania to build a so-called “return hub”. The policy has proven highly dysfunctional, as Italian judges have often refused to transfer asylum seekers there, leaving the centres largely empty despite costing €700 million over the past five years. Yet those detained there have their phones confiscated upon arrival and live under constant surveillance. They report widespread mental health problems as they are cut off from communication with the outside world and with their loved ones.
This is the type of policy of which the European Christian Democrats thought it would be a good idea to scale up and institutionalise at the European level.
The Detention Centers to Come
This is not all. EU countries, like the UK, have explored ways to transfer migrants to countries as distant as Rwanda, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and eight other allegedly safe countries outside EU territory. Of those proposed destinations for “return hubs”, Libya stands out in particular. The EU already funds the Libyan coastguard to intercept migrants at sea – sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Once returned to Libyan shores, they are often placed in detention centres that are sustained by humanitarian aid from the EU. Yet the conditions of those centres are appalling with perennial reports of torture, rape, abuse and human rights violations, including death, to the point that a German ambassador compared them to concentration camps. The new return regulations bring the EU a step closer to creating more detention centres like those in Libya, with little guarantee that detainees will be treated any better.
By the end of the June, the European Commission even welcomed members of the Taliban – whom many EU member states were fighting militarily less than a decade ago – to Brussels to discuss the possibility of transferring refugees to Afghanistan. At this point, one might wonder what remains of the fundamental values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and human rights on which the EU formally claims to be founded.
The Migration Theme
For decades, political establishments across Europe have struggled with the rise of the far right and its signature issue: migration. This extends even to some more radical left parties, such as Italy’s Five Star Movement and the Dutch Socialist Party. As polls indicate that migration restrictions enjoy significant public support, many parties have adopted more restrictive immigration policies, leaving few willing to advocate for migrants (who often lack voting power as well as other rights and protections).
Over the past decades, the far right was often instrumentalised by political establishments. At times, it made establishment parties appear more reasonable and humane, even while pursuing austerity measures and cuts to hard-won rights and social protections. At others, it served as a convenient opponent for especially Greens and Social Democrats, who could denounce its controversial rhetoric as morally repugnant. Even when unable to expand social welfare or tackle climate change, they could still gain legitimacy by denying the far right government power.
In some countries, such as Belgium and Germany, opposition to the far right took the form of a cordon sanitaire or Brandmauer-politics, under which establishment parties refuse to govern or even cooperate with the far right at any level.
The Age of Deportations
But little of the Brandmauer could be discerned in the vote on the Return Regulation in the European Parliament last month. Liberals and Christian Democrats voted in favour of what had long been far-right solutions to the alleged migration crisis. As the far right celebrated its victory by loudly chanting, “Send them back!”, it was difficult to refrain from comparisons with Europe a century ago, when Liberals, Conservatives, and Christian Democrats elevated the far right of that era to power – first in Italy, then in Germany.
Once the vote had concluded, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – a parliamentary group comprising many far-right parties that present themselves as more respectable and therefore fit to govern – gathered on a rooftop terrace in Strasbourg. There, they raised a glass to celebrate having achieved what they had so often openly called for: namely that the “age of deportations has begun”.
Is It Really About Migration?
Debates about immigration in Europe typically revolve around limiting new arrivals, particularly refugees and asylum seekers, who nevertheless make up a relatively small share of all immigrants. In policy terms, this translates into tighter border controls and ever more restrictive rules. Yet there is reason to believe that this focus is misplaced, as limiting migration, closing borders, and deporting refugees and asylum seekers does not fully address what is really at stake in the migration debate.
Indeed, it is quite plausible that most Europeans would notice little difference even if migration numbers were to double. On average, a European citizen is likely to encounter only one asylum seeker each year for every 700 people they know. How many people actually do? And how much difference would it make if that number increased to two?
In that sense, the issue may be less about immigration than about nativism, race, or white supremacy. Far-right leaders and intellectuals were well-aware that, in post-war Europe, explicit references to biological race or the preservation of a “white” Europe would provoke widespread condemnation and exclude them from mainstream political debate. For many decades, much the same was true of open hostility towards migrant communities and cultures. By recasting their concerns as a “critique of migration”, however, they succeeded in making their positions appear more policy-oriented and, therefore, more civic and legitimate.
Immigration thus became a more politically acceptable stand-in for race, while journalists, politicians, and even electoral scholars made little effort to problematise the racialised assumptions underlying the topic as well as Europe’s highly selective migration restrictions and policies. The subject of “immigration” was therefore largely treated at face value, as though it were simply a policy domain, when in reality European migration policies are deeply racist. Suffice it to say that Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s invasion have generally been able to travel, work, and enter the EU with relatively few restrictions, whereas Syrians fleeing many of the same missiles and attacks have faced far greater barriers.
Economic Drivers
So is it really about migration, or is it more about domination? Migrants are welcomed when they boost GDP or take jobs that non-migrant populations are unwilling to do. Many European economies would collapse without migrant labour, and countless families rely on migrant domestic workers. Yet the far right – and much of the mainstream right as well – argues that migrants should “go back” when they are no longer needed, receive social benefits, or cause trouble. At the same time, the far right has introduced terms such as “remigration” and “Umfolkung” into public debate, promoting the idea that people with migrant backgrounds – or simply those who are non-white – can never fully belong.
The economic logic behind this is not difficult to see. One explanation is the welfare-chauvinist claim that social provision can only be maintained if it is reserved for members of the nation. This position can, in turn, only be sustained by strictly policing the boundaries of the nation and exaggerating differences with those outside them – a task the far right has readily embraced.
Yet there is also a logic of class domination at work. Lengthening pathways to permanent residency, adding new requirements, and criminalising undocumented status place migrant workers and asylum seekers in a precarious position. When a legal mistake, job loss, or a call to the border authorities by an employer could destroy everything they have built, migrants are far less likely to resist employers’ demands.
The larger the share of migrant workers in the workforce, and the more dependent they are made, the easier it becomes for capital to exploit labour and reinforce its dominance. Native workers are also affected, as they are reminded that they are better off than their migrant colleagues and therefore should not demand more.
A Different Approach
As deportations become more common in Europe, the left must decide what role it wants to play in future migration debates. Heeding far-right calls for ever stricter migration controls will not halt the far right’s rise, as its concerns extend beyond immigration numbers alone. Empirical studies suggest that adopting tougher immigration stances mainly legitimises far-right positions and the actors promoting them, while offering little electoral benefit to the left. The resignation of Keir Starmer, the Danish Social Democrats’ recent electoral defeat, and the Dutch Socialist Party’s string of losses all seem to affirm this.
The left would be wise to rethink its strategy and redefine the terms of the debate. This first requires it to shift its focus away from presenting itself as competent at addressing the alleged problems defined by the far right and instead set its own agenda. Rather than making the best for some within a system determined by the logic of capital, it needs to put people first.
Alongside the hard work of humanising migrants and others whom capital and the nation-state so readily treat as disposable, the left should refocus political conflict on the power of capital itself. Demanding that the billionaire class pay its fair share and democratising economic power would help unite workers – migrant and non-migrant alike. For in the end, only a left that recentres the struggle against capitalist domination will be capable of ending the age of deportations.
Jouke Huijzer is editor in chief of ‘Jacobin Nederlands’.
transform! europe is a network of 38 European organisations from 22 countries, active in the field of political education and critical scientific analysis, and is the recognised political foundation corresponding to the Party of the European Left (EL).
This cooperative project of independent non-profit organisations, institutes, foundations, and individuals intends to use its work in contributing to peaceful relations among peoples and a transformation of the present world.