Anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies intensify across Europe

Europe experiencing a growing sense of division

Immigration has risen dramatically over the past decade in some European countries, driven in part by millions of asylum-seekers who have come to Europe fleeing conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine.

Asylum-seekers account for a small percentage of total immigration, however, and experts say antipathy toward diversity and migration stems from a mix of factors. Economic stagnation in the years since the 2008 global financial crisis, the rise of charismatic nationalist politicians and the polarizing influence of social media all play a role, experts say.

In Britain, there is “a frightening increase in the sense of national division and decline” and that tends to push people toward political extremes, said Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Unit at King’s College London. It took root after the financial crisis, was reinforced by Britain’s debate about Brexit and deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic, Duffy said.

Social media has exacerbated the mood, notably on X, whose algorithm promotes divisive content and whose owner, Elon Musk, approvingly retweets far-right posts.

Across Europe, ethnonationalism has been promoted by right-wing parties such as Alliance for Germany, France’s National Rally and the Fidesz party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Now it appears to have the stamp of approval from the Trump administration, whose new national security strategy depicts Europe as a collection of countries facing “economic decline” and “civilizational erasure” because of immigration and loss of national identities.

The hostile language alarmed many European politicians, but also echoed what they hear from their countries’ far-right parties.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella told the BBC he largely agreed with the Trump administration’s concern that mass immigration was “shaking the balance of European countries.”

Racist rhetoric and hate crimes on the rise

Policies once considered extreme are now firmly on the political agenda. Reform UK, the hard-right party that consistently leads opinion polls, says if it wins power it will strip immigrants of permanent-resident status even if they have lived in the UK for decades.

The center-right opposition Conservatives say they will deport British citizens with dual nationality who commit crimes.

A Reform UK lawmaker complained in October that advertisements were “full of Black people, full of Asian people.”

Conservative justice spokesman Robert Jenrick remarked with concern that he “didn’t see another white face” in an area of Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city Neither politician had to resign.

Many proponents of reduced immigration say they are concerned about integration and community cohesion, not race. But that’s not how it feels to those on the receiving end of racial abuse.

“There is no doubt it has worsened,” said Dawn Butler, a Black British lawmaker who says the vitriol she receives on social media “is increasing drastically, and has escalated into death threats.”

UK government statistics show police in England and Wales recorded more than 115,000 hate crimes in the year to March 2025, a 2% increase over the previous 12 months.

In July 2024, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim violence erupted on Britain’s streets after three girls were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. Authorities said online misinformation wrongly identifying the UK-born teenage attacker as a Muslim migrant played a part.

In Ireland and in the Netherlands, protesters often demonstrate outside municipal meetings in communities where a new asylum center is proposed. Some protests have turned violent, with opponents of asylum-seekers throwing fireworks at riot police.

Across Europe, the main focus of protests has been hotels and other housing for asylum-seekers, which some say become magnets for crime and bad behavior. But the agenda of protest organizers is often much wider.

In September, more than 100,000 people chanting “We want our country back” marched through London in a protest organized by a far-right activist and convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson. Among the speakers was French far-right politician Eric Zemmour, who told the crowd that France and the UK both faced “the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture.”