Anti‑immigrant campaigns in the United States, Canada and parts of Europe have intensified in recent years, driven in part by conservative movements and provocative political rhetoric, according to an analysis of migration trends and political discourse.
Italy as a case study
The piece argues that Italy, situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, illustrates how a country’s imperial history can shape contemporary migration politics. Having shifted over recent decades from a country of emigration to one of immigration, Italy faces social and political stresses that have been amplified by episodes such as the 2015–16 European migrant and refugee crisis.
That crisis, the analysis says, helped crystallise a populist, anti‑immigrant sentiment that political actors have since mobilised. The commentary links current hostility towards migrants and refugees to deeper patterns: the persistence of white‑supremacist ideas among some movements and a reluctance in Western public life to confront the effects of historic intervention and colonial domination on global migration.
"It is clear that the international community continues to overlook its colonial past and fails to take responsibility for the subsequent impacts on populations worldwide," the analysis states.
According to the report, this avoidance of responsibility both distorts public debate and permits narratives that cast migrants from the Global South as problems rather than as people affected by long‑term political and economic processes in which Western states played a formative role.
Policy and political consequences
The commentary notes that Italy has passed legislation since the 1980s intended to respond to the country’s changing migration profile. It suggests that these legal changes have not, on their own, resolved tensions over identity, security and welfare that migration provokes. Instead, the political space has become fertile for parties and movements that exploit fears about migration for electoral gain.
- Electoral advantage: Populist and right‑wing parties have benefited electorally from anti‑immigrant rhetoric.
- Public discourse: Hostile narratives about migrants and refugees have become more frequent in protests and incidents of violence.
- Historical accountability: The analysis argues Western states have not adequately acknowledged the link between their interventionist histories and contemporary migration.
The piece stresses that the phenomenon is transnational: it is not confined to a single country but is visible across several Western democracies, where migration has become a central fault line in politics.
Who benefits, who pays
As presented, the short‑term beneficiaries of amplified anti‑immigrant rhetoric are political actors who convert social anxieties into votes. In contrast, the costs are borne by migrant and refugee communities — subject to heightened stigma, violence and exclusion — and by democracies at large when historical context is elided from policy debate.
| Period | Relevant development |
|---|---|
| Since the 1980s | Legislation adopted to respond to Italy’s transition from emigration to immigration |
| 2015–16 | European migrant and refugee crisis that intensified anti‑immigrant politics |
The analysis concludes that without a broader reckoning with imperial histories and a willingness to take responsibility for past interventions, Western states risk perpetuating the same narratives that produce cycles of migration and marginalisation. For readers in South Africa — a country with its own fraught history of migration and xenophobia — the argument underscores the global dimensions of migration politics and the political utility of forgetting.
