The United Nations estimates that more than 280 million people live and work outside their countries of origin, of which some 40 million have forcibly emigrated. In Europe, this reality has unleashed an increasingly polarized discourse on migration, which extends from the media to parliaments and everyday conversations, consolidating itself as one of the central topics of public debate.
Although the right to migrate is recognized in the main international human rights treaties, the criminalization of migrants is growing and spreading like an epidemic. While many Africans who arrive through irregular routes face walls and barbed wire, the hate speech that targets them circulates without barriers or limits.
Proof of this are the numerous anti-immigrant mobilizations that, throughout 2025, have led to violence in several European countries: in the United Kingdom, more than 100,000 people marched against the migration policies of the European Union (EU); in Poland, thousands protested against the reception of refugees; In Spain and the Netherlands, there were riots and attacks driven by far-right groups, with a clear Islamophobic component.
As misinformation about an alleged “invasion” spreads like wildfire across the continent, the International Organization for Migration estimates that, in the last decade, more than 30,000 people have died trying to reach the shores of Europe. Although every year we hear political statements of concern about deaths in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the EU’s securitized migration policy is what pushes thousands of people fleeing violence towards increasingly dangerous routes.
The European response to the war in Ukraine demonstrated that a fair, efficient and humane migration and asylum system is possible. Millions of refugees accessed humanitarian pathways and received support to rebuild their lives in Member States. However, when it comes to African people, instead of offering protection, floating prisons and extraterritorial detention centers are built that seek to stop immigration, even at the expense of international legality.
After the approval in 2024 of the Migration and Asylum Pact, which consolidates the externalization of border control, the structural racism that permeates European migration policy became evident again the following year. In 2025, the European Commission presented the proposed Return Regulation, which expands the detention and deportation of migrants, including children, with a disproportionate impact on those from African countries.
The solution to the “migration crisis” does not involve building more walls, perfecting surveillance technologies or signing containment agreements with African governments, but rather by strengthening the conditions that allow people to live with dignity on their continent. Thus, the pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist leaderships that emerge in various African countries would provide effective solutions to the structural causes of forced mobility.
This new generation of leaders, who claim the right to define the destiny of their people without external interference, have before them the historic opportunity to build a future in which migrating is a choice, not a necessity. To achieve this, they must regain full control of their economies and work from the conviction that the future of the continent is forged in the empowerment and active participation of its youth.
