FEPS Newsletter 15 Dec 2023 – 🧳 International Migration Day

Every year, on 18 December, the world celebrates migrants. But fewer topics are more contentious in Europe (and beyond) than human mobility. Migrants are, more often than not, portrayed as a threat to our ‘way of life’, our economy, our welfare states and our communities. Migrants are often used as scapegoats for deep-rooted economic and societal problems, while simplistic and inadequate migration policies serve as a smokescreen to hide politics’ shortcomings.

By contrast, migrants’ contributions to our societies, our countries’ development and our social systems are regularly disregarded, when not utterly denied.

The result of such a distorted view of migration is, of course, deficient policy solutions, which may exacerbate the mismanagement of migration and its consequences rather than improve them. This awareness informed FEPS’ work on migration in 2023.