Normalizing the Exceptional: Migration Governance and the Authoritarian Turn
Photo by Renata Miwa
We are now standing at the edge of an abyss. We cannot predict the future, but what I do know is this: How those of us who believe in an equitable, inclusive, multiracial democracy respond now will shape the country’s path forward.
— Marielena Hincapié in “The Democrats and Immigration”
For the past ten years or more, I’ve had the sense that debates on migration policy keep looping back on themselves, like a political Groundhog Day–at least, on the surface. Amongst most of the political leadership in Europe and North America, the predominant themes, once the remit of far-right politicians, seem to stay the same: securitization, outsourcing, deportation. That, when not outright vitriol and cruelty. Meanwhile, public opinion is often treated as if it is always hostile, even though the evidence shows us that on migration, as on many other topics, public opinion can shift significantly.
But even if it feels like Groundhog Day, a closer look at how policy and governance are evolving—and at how migration policy fits within the larger context—reveals a definitive progression. This progression is entrenching shifts in the public imagination over what is feasible and acceptable, in turn driving changes not only in migration policy but also, through migration, in our constitutional order and the very nature of democracy itself. Under the auspices of migration governance, previously unacceptable policies are normalized, while the fundamental rights of all are made more vulnerable. Under the pretext of tackling migration, the way we coexist and govern is being redefined. Were these shifts to occur overnight, they would likely be experienced as tectonic.
Rebranding Abuse as “Innovations”: Outsourcing and Detention
The European Union’s migration policy has moved from one stalemate to another, even though after years of negotiations, the Pact on Migration and Asylum–a set of new rules managing migration and establishing a common asylum system at the EU level–was finally passed in 2024. Much is still unclear about its implementation, yet it enshrined the toughening of the asylum system and the reliance on third-party countries. The latter is a model whereby wealthy European countries, through financial agreements, export migration control to poorer countries outside the EU in an attempt to reduce arrivals at any cost, even if it means redefining the EU’s supposed commitment to human rights and international protection.
As EU leadership continues to debate the details of migration policy, the political shifts are remarkable.
When the United Kingdom tried to pursue its “Rwanda plan” in 2022–a policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and potential resettlement–EU leaders met the plan with condemnation. Only three years later, similar outsourcing efforts have been rebranded on continental soil as “innovative solutions,” as if the change in name changed their nature. Now, many EU member states are endorsing changing the EU definition of "safe third countries" in order to be able to “dismiss asylum applications without consideration, and transfer applicants overseas, even if the migrant has no connection to the place in question.” It doesn’t stop there: “The other innovative idea, enshrined in the return regulation, would enable member states to transfer rejected asylum seekers to ‘return hubs’ outside the EU.”
In the United States, the Trump administration has ramped up its cruelty targeting migrants, doing so in ways that also affect citizens. To cite a few examples, the Trump administration used an eighteenth century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, a country most recently notorious for human rights abuses. As Andry Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker with no criminal record, was raped and beaten in the Salvadoran CECOT facility, the State Department responded by scrubbing the government’s own 2024 human rights report on El Salvador. As my colleague Joshua Clark remarks, this looks like the State Department whitewashing El Salvador's human rights record so as to not have one part of the Executive Branch producing accurate knowledge of the Salvadoran government’s acts of torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and inhumane prison conditions while another (the Department of Homeland Security) simultaneously ships people there without trial or recourse. A very Orwellian way of rewriting reality as it happens.
U.S. authorities are increasingly arresting more and more citizens during immigration sweeps, a crackdown that is expected to increase after Congress approved a new budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Children are included amongst those arrested, such as a four-year-old citizen getting treatment for stage 4 cancer who was deported with his family. The U.S. government is also suspending all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza, many of whom are kids suffering from severe injuries, psychological trauma and malnourishment that come to the U.S. to receive care.
Where is this leading us? Constitutional and human rights changes and Normalizing Violence
Treating the above changes in migration policy and rhetoric as a normal evolution of debate and governance misses the bigger picture: they are part of a broader pattern of democratic erosion and deliberate efforts to reshape the political order into new authoritarian forms.
Consider each of the following (this list is non-exhaustive, and includes just a few of the most recent examples):
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
Political leaders are leveraging fear of migration not to expand protections or improve people’s wellbeing, but to justify revisiting our constitutional systems in ways that curtail human rights and freedoms.
In the UK, far-right politician Nigel Farage is advocating for his country to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. The leader of the conservative party, Kemi Badenoch, followed suit. Both argue that it is necessary to do so in order to control the UK’s borders. Human rights legislation is, apparently, holding Britain back.
The head of the Council of Europe is now openly stating that the “Convention on human rights must adapt,” as its human rights provisions make harsh measures against migrants difficult.
A hallmark of the European Union—its open borders between member states—is increasingly under pressure, with Poland extending border controls with Germany and Lithuania. As of the summer of 2025, in Germany, border controls are carried out at 52 locations. Maintaining controls at the internal Schengen borders undermines the EU principle of free movement of people.
In addition, the EU’s next long-term budget proposal includes the idea of tying development aid to migration: “the funding would be conditional on recipient countries co-operating with Brussels’ hardening migration stance, including taking back people EU countries are struggling to deport to their home countries” (demands that sound incredibly paternalistic).
In the U.S., the Trump administration is taking measures that challenge the constitutional order and risk reshaping the nation’s foundations in unprecedented ways. President Trump is pushing for a new census that excludes migrants, despite the fact that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution plainly states that the census must count “the whole number of persons in each state” for purposes of Congressional apportionment. Trump’s efforts here have been called part of a “campaign to flout the U.S. Constitution in order to predetermine election outcomes so he can consolidate his power and avoid accountability to the American people."
Separation of Powers
Because much of what is being proposed runs counter to human rights and constitutional obligations, tensions inevitably arise between judiciaries tasked with upholding legal protections and politicians determined to bypass them. This deepens the strain among the branches of government and threatens the separation of powers.
In the UK, political leaders and the press attacked British courts and specific judges after British rulings on human rights and migration. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has continuously lashed out against judges who ruled the Italian government’s deal to transfer asylum-seekers to detention centers in Albania unlawful. Most recently, Meloni’s office accused the European Court of Justice “of over-reach and of straying into migration policy — a domain that it said should be left to governments, not judges,” after the ECJ ruled unfavorably on the same deal.
Targeting courts in such a manner is not part of the normal and valid critique of the functioning of democratic institutions. It is an interim step to undermining judicial independence and eroding the rule of law. After all, deteriorating trust in the judiciary and politicizing institutions is a common step in the authoritarian playbook to do away with democracy.
Normalizing Political Violence
And if all of the above weren’t enough, the use of violence is becoming normalized in response to what is perceived (and promoted) as a migration crisis, both by the state and by private individuals.
In the United States, while ICE raids continue, as reported in the New Yorker, “The chaotic and lawless tactics of the Trump Administration are helping to blur the lines between the military, law enforcement, and civilian enthusiasts. Almost as soon as Trump announced his plans for ‘mass deportations,’ private citizens expressed their eagerness to participate.”
In Europe, citizens are also taking things into their own hands. While in the Netherlands, some citizens carry out their own border checks in a pushback against migration policy, Spaniards were shaken in July as violence broke out in the small town of Torre Pacheco. After a pensioner was assaulted by a local man of migrant background, three nights of anti-migrant violence ensued, fuelled by the far-right and a disinformation campaign (which included a far-right group named "Deport Them Now" posting a message calling for attacks against people of North African origin).
Lest we forget, violence may at first be normalized against migrants, but can be turned against anyone at any point in time.
But what about public opinion?
The excuse that public opinion demands all of the above has proven unsustainable.
The latest Eurobarometer shows that Europeans rank immigration 14th among issues affecting them personally. Asked about the main issues facing their country, migration ranks fourth—behind rising prices/inflation/cost of living, the economic situation, and security and defense—and is down 6% from the previous survey.
The tide of public opinion on migration in the U.S. is also turning. According to recent surveys, the perception that immigration is the most important issue of the moment is dropping, and a record high 79% of Americans consider immigration good for the country.
That too could change again. Immigration may once again become the public’s primary concern. But this is the key: public opinion does change, and political leaders, the commentariat, and civil society have a key role in shaping public opinion. They are only bystanders if they choose to be. Polls themselves are not agnostic either, and coverage of polls deeply impacts public opinion. As writer John Ganz asserts in his critique of politicians and campaigns that chase after public opinion rather than seeking to influence it: “The approach of issue polling and then building a campaign around it completely ignores the human faculties of judgement and imagination. [...]. Everyone has very different images in their mind. The key is to put the right images in their mind, hopefully, good, inspiring, grand, and virtuous ones.” (emphasis added.)
This is not to pretend that migration, or many of the aspects related to it, can not pose real challenges or raise opposition–it does. But it also presents opportunities. We must hold that respect and dignity should be afforded unconditionally to all humans, migrants or not. Furthermore, it is also true that migration can bring about a host of socioeconomic and demographic benefits.
Simply stating that we need to take the public’s concerns seriously and into account, however, falls short of providing solutions. Isolated readings of the polls and assuming that public policy can only go in one direction is more a product of short-term vision and lack of imagination than inevitable.
Migration Beyond the Debate: A Human Constant
At this stage, it is trite to say that we are at a critical juncture–a crucial point in time when the future of our societies is shifting more rapidly than at other points in history. Changes in the political order are natural and have occurred for as long as humans have existed. Migration is one of the key issues (as well as gender) that is now leveraged in order to advocate and justify the turn towards, if not an authoritarian political order, then to competitive autocracy. Migration is also an inevitability and evidence seems to predict that it will increase, not decrease. Migration, beyond simplistic and binary debates about whether it is a problem or beneficial, whether the numbers should be increased or not, is, without a doubt, a definitive reality. It is the past, present, and it is the future. When the short-term security-driven measures continue to fail, in Europe and North America, we may be left with weaker or transformed democracies and beholden to other authoritarian regimes with which our governments have partnered. The shifts narrated above may be negative, but they also show us that change, even drastic change, is possible.
Coming up with solutions is never simple, and with such complex phenomena we will have to live with uncertainty and constant change. At OBI, we believe that even as we navigate the challenges and opportunities migration brings, certain principles can guide us. As my colleague Josh notes—speaking of the U.S. but in ways that resonate more broadly—our starting point should be that no human being is disposable or subject to dehumanizing acts of banishment, destitution, or dispossession. To honor people’s humanity is to recognize that no one is reducible to a single identity; we are all multidimensional. Yet in the U.S., the federal government has in a short time reduced everyone born abroad to that single trait, making them vulnerable to abuse in the name of arbitrary deportation quotas. This erodes what was once a distinctive strength of American society: that newcomers could quickly shed the identity of “outsider” and become, instead, members of faith communities, proud parents, union organizers, and more—far more than simply “from elsewhere.” Europe may never have perceived itself as a nation of migrants, but at least it had the aspiration, flawed as it was, to come closer to human rights and democratic values, one that European leaders are openly shedding with the pretext of tackling the migration crisis.
As the author of the quote that opens this essay states, we will need a “long-term strategy that acknowledges migration as a global reality to adapt to, rather than a crisis to be solved or a war to be won.”
If you have ideas or initiatives that respond to these challenges, we’d love to hear from you!
In other news…
Bardella or Le Pen? “Tension is brewing at the top of France’s most popular party over whether it will be Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen who leads the National Rally into the all-important 2027 presidential election — and what that means for the party’s vision and identity.”
Ivan Krastev writes about When anti-corruption campaigns become corrupted, “Is the lesson that we favour anti-corruption bodies when they expose the sins of our opponents but despise them when they expose the wrongdoing of our allies, or is it more than this? Bulgaria’s protests show that citizens are well aware of the corrosive power of corruption but they also understand the damage caused by weaponising the institutions designed to root it out.”
Can political systems bounce back after authoritarian turns? This recent paper on the myth of democratic resilience explores this topic: “since 1994, many of the political systems that supposedly returned to democ- racy after an authoritarian episode did not manage to reverse the damage”
And for the soul…
As I wandered around a bookstore in London, I was drawn to Anita Desai’s latest novella, Rosarita. I highly recommend the book if you are craving a short but heart-warming read.
Last time I mentioned the Buddhist psychologist Mark Epstein, this interview with Ezra Klein is good: “But as a one-time teacher of mine used to say: At one point they [your negative thoughts] were these big monsters, and the monsters became like little shmoos in the mind. So you’re trying to cultivate equanimity. The Buddha talked about gain and loss, pleasure and pain, sorrow and so on, as the great winds that blow through us. It’s trying to get your mind into a place, like on the top of a great mountain or under a big tree, where all the ebbs and flows, all the fluctuations, are part of what the mind can tolerate.”
Connecting the Dots: Musings on Bridging and Belonging is a monthly column by Míriam Juan-Torres. In it, Míriam reflects on current events, connecting the trends and considering the specificities across countries, applying a bridging and belonging lens and translating concepts from academia for a wider audience. Join our mailing list to stay up to date on the latest of the Democracy & Belonging Forum's curated analysis from Miriam and more.
Editor's note: The ideas expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the authors.