The systemic ‘problem’ and oversimplified ‘solution’: migration and remigration

On both sides of the Atlantic, 2025 has marked a significant moment for the far right. Parties articulating anti-immigration, anti-left, and anti-establishment positions have surged in popularity, including Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Rassemblement National, while similar forces have consolidated governing power in countries such as Italy, Slovakia, and the United States in recent years.

Following the re-election of Donald Trump and the aforementioned broader entrenchment of anti-immigration parties across Europe, “remigration”, a concept once confined to neo-Nazi discourse and discussed in clandestine settings, is increasingly being reframed as a mainstream instrument of government policy.

Today, the term remigration has come to refer to the forcible, en masse expulsion of unwanted, often non-white, minority populations. Its historical origins can be traced to the expulsion of Jews from Germany during the Second World War, before being rearticulated in contemporary far-right discourse as a proposed response to the so-called “Great Replacement”, a far-right conspiracy theory popularised in the 2010s by the French author Renaud Camus, fearmongering the replacement of Christians in Europe by Muslim migration.

In its current form, remigration is embedded within European identitarian movements, which seek to both stop immigration and promote the return of migrants to their home countries. Nevertheless, the concept remains deeply rooted in the ideological frameworks of neo-Nazi groups, such as Patriotic Alternative in the UK and Blood & Honour in Germany, which, alongside the AfD, have called for the mass deportation of non-European immigrants.

The American Accelerator

While remigration has historically been embedded in European far-right and neo-Nazi discourse, its underlying narratives have increasingly travelled beyond the continent, informing policy frameworks elsewhere. Recent American remigration policies have institutionalised this use of extremist European rhetoric to curb immigration within its own borders, bridging the values held by right-wing actors on the other side of the Atlantic.

For instance, mechanisms for the extraterritorial processing of migrants and the prevention of immediate acceptance of asylum seekers have been present across Europe in recent years. In November 2023, the Italian government signed a migrant offshoring model with Albania.

Intended to process 36,000 migrants annually saved at sea by the Italian coastguard, the model illustrated how the immediate acceptance of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers could be prevented through coordination with a third state. Additionally, efforts to uphold ‘return efficiency’ in the EU (with rates of return to countries of origin historically hovering around 20%) are being reconsidered, as states explore remigration mechanisms to third countries. Furthermore, in September 2025, the Netherlands announced the signing of a letter of intent with Uganda to establish such return hubs for rejected asylum seekers.

On 8 December 2025, Greece’s Minister for Migration, Thanos Plevris, and Denmark’s Minister for Immigration and Integration, Rasmus Stoklund, expressed support for the establishment of third-state hubs following the finalisation of the EU agreement aimed at simplifying return procedures and defining the conditions under which such hubs may be created.

In a step further towards the expulsion of migrants already inside a state’s territory, aggressive migration rhetoric featured heavily in Trump’s campaign in the run-up to his second presidency, where he pledged to launch the “largest deportation operation in American history” to target between 15 and 20 million people. Unlike the focus on border walls in Trump’s first term, which prevented immigration through physical exclusion, the 2025 agenda focuses on remigration, the physical expulsion of immigrants; consequently, the scope has widened significantly. The administration moved swiftly during the first year of the presidency to operationalise this rhetoric.

As of August 2025, the number of deportations by American law enforcement is reported to be over 300,000 people, including those who chose to self-deport. In California, aggressive deportation tactics by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resulted in 20,000 arrests in the first 10 months of the Trump presidency, sparking social unrest in Los Angeles and doxing ICE agents in Portland.

This rapid operationalisation of remigration rhetoric has not only expanded the scale of deportations but has also fundamentally transformed the modalities of immigration enforcement, with profound implications for constitutional protections and civil liberties.

Opposition to this wave of arrests has been driven not merely by the unprecedented scope of enforcement operations, but more critically by the institutionalisation of racial profiling as a lawful enforcement practice, particularly by ICE. Following a ruling issued in August 2025 by the Supreme Court of the United States, ICE agents are permitted to detain individuals for questioning solely on the basis of language use, perceived ethnicity, or occupational profile.

This judicial endorsement represents a significant departure from established principles of equal protection and due process, effectively lowering the threshold for state coercion. As a consequence, arrests have increasingly encompassed US citizens, with documented cases of individuals being forcibly detained for extended periods based on appearance alone.

Hidden costs: from economic stability to safety

A core claim advanced by far-right movements worldwide is that remigration constitutes a common solution to manage problematic migration systems. President Trump himself won major political battles and achieved public support for his campaign on the issue. Yet, remigration risks not only infringing upon fundamental rights, but also undermining the domestic economic stability of expelling states by generating high deportation costs, contributing to brain drain through restrictive immigration policies, and endangering the safety of those expelled to third-country hubs.

First, a blanket application of remigration across states ignores the varying structural impacts on their respective economies, offering a solution that is not aligned with a country’s specific needs. Yet, for political players in these countries, migration is presented as the systemic problem that must be addressed. The AfD party in Germany has long campaigned for mass deportations, especially targeting Syrian refugees.

This has also been echoed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, asserting that after the toppling of the Assad regime, there are no longer grounds for asylum in Germany, and those who refuse to do so voluntarily may be repatriated. Crucially, asylum seekers are permitted to work in Germany, with migrants in total contributing over €700 billion to the German economy and representing an estimated 13% of GDP.

Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has pledged to deport 600.000 migrants if elected in 2026. Farage has also attacked long-term legal migration under Boris Johnson’s leadership, vowing to scrap the “indefinite leave to remain” status, the main route for legal immigrants to obtain British citizenship. It’s important to note that, in the UK, 19% of the workforce are ‘adult migrants’.

Furthermore, the processing, transportation, and expulsion of irregular migrants from the United States entail substantial public expenditure. The Penn Wharton Budget Model, released in 2025, estimates that over 10 years, the costs of such removals would total $987 billion when accounting for economic feedback.

The model also warns of economic costs arising from long-term legal and operational complications in the removal of such individuals, which would increase the per-person cost to over $70,000, thereby further increasing the government expenditure required for such transfers. A caveat exists, as low-skilled immigration and employment decrease, wages are expected to rise. However, the extent of this increase remains to be determined.

In addition, economically weaker states, such as El Salvador or Uganda, are poised to absorb migrants in exchange for financial concessions or under political pressure. But deportees are reported to have ended up in prisons deemed unsafe and unfit for migrants, as in El Salvador, or in countries with a history of human rights abuses, such as Ecuador.

Some of the countries mentioned to take part in as a third-party hub include South Sudan, Eswatini, Honduras, and Uganda, all of which have come under scrutiny for their unsafe treatment of migrants, human rights abuses, or due to a civil war in the country, as in South Sudan. The government has already accepted 8 people in July 2025, and is expected to accept others in exchange for financial and security assistance.

Broadly, and of particular relevance to this discourse, is the fact that the new American administration is no longer targeting undocumented migrants alone, but has begun reviewing the status of legally resident foreign nationals, signalling that the definition of who is deemed “unwelcome” has expanded beyond legal status to encompass identitarian considerations.

The aggressive US migration restriction and remigration ‘solution’ borders on incoherence, as the key innovation component of American companies and universities is foreign-born workers, posing the threat of a brain drain. For instance, artificial intelligence, a US asset predominantly fueled by the domestic workforce and an integral part of the economy, has in the last 5 years become increasingly dependent on foreign, and specifically Chinese, researchers.

In 2022, top AI institutions employed an estimated 38% of researchers of Chinese origin. This clashes with increasing restrictions and visa revocations for Chinese students, impeding education and research flows, and risking a shortage of qualified expertise. The forecasted domestic workforce in the US accounts for just 50% of the baseline demand for AI-related jobs in 2027.

Conclusion

Remigration should be a stark warning against accepting racist and xenophobic policies as the new normal in political discourse. European identitarian movements, in the strictest of terms, propose the removal of every ‘unwelcome’ individual to homogenise society.

This has been echoed in a US policy shift from deterrence to large-scale expulsion, and it has had an impact, both physical and mental, on US citizens from various ethnic groups.

This ‘solution’ conceals high hidden costs, including fiscal and logistical burdens, the economic effects of migration, the risk of draining the country of top researchers, and the human toll of sending people to unsafe places. As more countries explore third-country processing, and the US further institutionalises the approach through ‘remigration’, states risk pursuing remigration hubs for ideological reasons rather than utilising them for migration management.