Introduction
Whereas multiculturalism and populism are values that liberal European societies claim are deeply embedded with, during electoral processes, right-wing parties weaponise xenophobic and racist narratives to induce political support. Whereas left-wing parties or more liberal parties might focus on other policy issues during elections, they abandon the discourse on immigration, which makes the anti-immigration narrative by right-wing parties even more prominent (Carreras, Vera, & Visconti, 2025). Anti-immigration sentiments have been on the rise in almost all European countries due to several different reasons. Whereas some believe that a multi-ethnic society would ensure Europe’s prosperity, others believe that nativism is the only way forward, ensuring the preservation of European culture (Springford, 2024).
It is human nature to preserve one’s traditions and own culture (Cobb, Schwartz, & Martinez, 2025). Thus, when the uncertainty around self-identification rises, it becomes easier for people to start identifying with extreme ideologies, and immigrants or refugee groups become the scapegoat (Alves, Pinto, & Marques, 2024). “A Seventh Man”, a book published by John Berger and Jean Moh, documented the lives of migrant workers in Europe and shows how European society accepts their labour but not their presence (Spring, 2025). Whereas Europe has historically faced labour shortage, especially after the World Wars and exporting labour from foreign countries was necessary to rebuild Europe. Even though initially in some countries it was supposed to be temporary, immigrants played a huge role in rebuilding the continent (Ratzmann & Bauer, 2020).
More recently, across Europe, there has been a growing electoral success of right-wing parties, an increase in hate crimes, protests and riots targeting immigrants and refugee centres, all of which reflect a growing intolerance towards immigrants and a shift towards xenophobia. European states, such as Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and Slovakia, have right-wing parties in power or are supporting ruling coalitions, whereas in Germany, Portugal and Austria, far-right parties made gains (The Soufan Center, 2025). Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) received double the votes of the last election, had a historic win in the state election in Thuringia, and remains under domestic security surveillance following a German court ruling in May 2024 claiming that AfD is a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party (Ngendakumana, 2024; Marsh & Heine, 2025).
The summer of 2025 saw several anti-immigration rallies, rhetoric, and national flags across Europe; the United Kingdom (UK) in both 2024 and 2025 witnessed violent riots that deliberately targeted refugee centres and immigrants (Addley, 2025). It has become increasingly important to address the rise of the far-right narrative in Europe that is directly targeting immigrants with hate speech as well as posing physical threat.
Anti-immigration sentiments are rising in Europe because of political opportunism by far-right parties, with social anxieties inducing nativist sentiments, and can only be tackled by understanding the historical roots that led to mass immigration to Europe. Firstly, the article will look into what drives the anti-immigration sentiments in Europe, then it will look into historic roots of anti-immigration. Later, it will briefly analyse how the rise of the far-right has manifested in Germany.
Driving Factors of Anti-Immigration
There are several scholarly concepts that help to explain anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. The present popularity of right-wing radicalisation is associated with nativism, a radical concept that defines anything alien as a threat to national cohesion (Betz, 2017). Nativism is often considered a form of nationalism or xenophobia, though xenophobia can exist without nativism. Nativism is essentially a philosophical position which evolves into a political movement whose primary goal is to restrict immigration (Guia, 2016). Several European political parties that oppose immigration and advocate for a more “white ethnic Europe” are inclining towards a nativist inspired anti-immigration policy agenda (Raj, 2020). This trend has risen across Europe and the United States (US) over the past decade, driven by economic, religious, cultural, and political anxieties.
The rise of right wing populism might have spread differently across various European countries, but it has similar triggers (Betz, 2017; Perocco, 2018). A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology concluded that economic struggles can be a key trigger for conspiracy theories about immigrants, which in some cases have even led to riots or violence. People facing economic hardships and social decline are more prone to prompting hate against immigrants, as they need an outlet for their frustration (Pandey, 2025).
Some also argue that pro-immigration liberal policies ignore the issues faced by the working class population, as local populations link job loss to the migrant labour force (Kundnani, 2023). Whereas others suggest that opposition to immigration stems less from economic threats, and more from threats to national identity or societal decline (Davis et al., 2019).
Large-scale immigration and the failure of integration policies have only fuelled the anti-immigration sentiment further (Berman, 2024). Particularly since the 2015 Refugee Crisis, both xenophobia and Islamophobia have intensified in Europe (Osiewicz, 2015). Islamophobia is considered as one of the highest, most acute, and widely spread forms of xenophobia in Europe (Perocco, 2018). Many Muslims across Europe have reported that they widely face discrimination because of their religious practices (Kassam, 2024). Religious anxieties as well as cultural fears have amplified anti-immigration attitudes, especially towards Muslims.
Another driver of anti-immigration sentiment is social media, as Shah (2024) claims that online spaces are not just abstract forums but also have the ability to incite hate and violence. In the contemporary era, social media plays a huge role in the dissemination of hate speech and misinformation about ethnic minorities (Shah, 2024). Democratic societies face challenges as through social media hate speech can spread uncontrollably and massively. A study concluded that in Spain, Italy, and Greece, hate speech targeting immigrants, which spread through X (former Twitter), Youtube channels, were mainly targeted at Arab and Muslim communities (Amores & Arcila-Calderón, 2025).
Social media plays a huge role in mobilisation of far-right sentiments, and the success of a right-wing party in one country can troublingly have a global influence. For instance, American politics and Donald Trump’s win in January 2025 also reshapes European culture and politics, as US’s action in the geopolitical sphere is deeply tied to Europe’s security (Balfour, Lehne, & Ventura, 2025).
Additionally, failed integration policies have increasingly contributed to anti-immigrant hate in Europe. Some argue that assimilation is difficult among divergent cultures, and “failed integration” cannot be just be blamed on the “Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, French, Brits, or Belgians” (Hansson, 2025). However, this perspective overlooks the fact that many European societies have promoted multiculturalism and a system in which natives and immigrants can live peacefully.
When integration fails, immigrants are often the ones who are blamed for the inability to integrate, rather than acknowledging that it has failed due to structural discrimination within social institutions and labour markets (Knocke, 2000). This narrative only deepens already existing cultural divides, and reinforces nativist attitudes. It highlights the need to better understand the reasoning of immigrants that move to European countries, and to challenge these anti-immigrant narratives.
Historical links to Anti-immigrant hate
Anti-immigrant sentiment is deeply rooted in historical processes that created social hierarchies and shaped migration in contemporary Europe. This section will dive into how colonial and neocolonial theories challenge the anti-immigrant sentiments, and how labour migration led to mass immigration which created minority communities in Europe. And lastly, it will also look into how the Refugee Crisis of 2015 was a major turning point that led to further instigation of anti-immigrant sentiments.
While not all European states were former colonies, the colonial, or neocolonial histories of certain states have greatly impacted migration patterns, as well as societal attitudes in Europe. Whereas in the beginning immigrants came to Europe as slaves, in the twentieth-century, immigrants usually came to serve as soldiers or labour workers in Europe mainly from countries in Africa and Asia (Emmer & Lucassen, 2012). In addition, the reason that the UK, France, Portugal, Belgium, or the Netherlands have so many ethnic minorities is mainly because these communities hail from former colonies, as colonialism created strong ties between colonies and imperial powers (Astolfo & Allsopp, 2023).
Colonialism is also not just an historical event, it continues to be an ongoing structural attribute that has created personal, geographical and ancestral links to Europe (El-Enany, 2020). Colonial effects run deeper than exploitation of human labour through war and commerce; it led to loss of culture, respect, self-actualisation, dignity, and other aspects of dehumanisation (Aregbeshola & Adekunle, 2024). The denial or disregard of colonial history has done a greater damage to the effective integration of immigrant communities. There is a direct link between colonialism and the mass immigration of the Global South population to Europe.
Additionally, in the post-World War II period when Europe was rebuilding and undergoing labour shortage, Europe needed an increased supply of labour, and deemed migration necessary to the country’s economic growth. In the UK, migration was especially encouraged from former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia (Hampshire, 2005). Colonialism might have created migration patterns, but it was political and economic needs that drove migration to Europe. And once communities started forming in Europe, it drove migration of people with the same ethnic groups to certain countries.
The 2015 Refugee Crisis was a major turning point for anti-immigration sentiments in Europe. The conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and parts of Northern Africa and Near East, displaced millions of people. So they sought refuge in Europe, which led to the 2015 Refugee Crisis. The huge inflow took a toll on the system that was managing the asylum seekers, resulting in deep divisions in public opinion across many European countries (Campo, Giunti, & Mendola, 2024).
Notably, between 2012 and 2016, almost one billion pounds worth of Europe-made weapons were exported to Syria and other conflict-regions in the Middle East (Angelovski, Patrucic, & Marzouk, 2016). While this arms transfer does not directly make Europe an instigator of these wars, it definitely highlights the indirect role of Europe in causing and contributing to human rights violations, and producing the very refugee flows that it not only struggled to accommodate, but has continuously criticised.
Germany
Anti-immigration narrative in various European countries might share similar factors that trigger it, but it is not uniform across Europe; each country’s response is reflected by its history, political climate, as well as migration patterns.
Due to Germany’s historical past and atrocities committed in the period of World War II, far-right parties were quickly dissolved or banned, and did not gain significant momentum till the twenty first-century (Kruglanski, Webber, & Koehler, 2019). Between 1955 and 1973, Germany, like many other European countries, welcomed Gastarbeiter (first-generation guestworkers) under formal recruitment agreements to fill labour shortage. Many of these workers returned to their home countries, but the success of the recruitment agreement led many of them to settle in Germany and their families joining them overtime (Rieder, 2019).
Despite the presence of far-right parties across Europe, especially in Austria, France and Italy, in Germany, historical memory and post-war institutions made it difficult for such parties to be established. However in recent years, Germany’s AfD party has gained significant momentum, and has become the first far-right to win a German state election since the Nazi regime (Baker & Quince, 2024).
Angela Merkel, who was Germany’s Chancellor during the 2015 Refugee Crisis, ensured that Germany became a major refugee hosting state in Europe, which would later play a huge role in taking in refugees from the rest of the world, including Ukraine. Whilst praised internationally for humanitarian response, German authorities registered over 2.5 million refugees between 2015 and 2016 (Shukla, Schmidt, & Otto, 2025).
While AfD represents the extreme stance on immigration, more mainstream political actors have also adopted a stricter stance on migration. The current ruling coalition, led by Friedrich Merz, in his campaign promises emphasised on a hardline migration agenda (Paternoster, 2024). More recently, Merz has plans to strip away asylum seekers of the right to a lawyer, in order to expedite the deportation processes (Penty, 2025).
Germany’s case shows how despite the memoirs and post-war migration success, there is still a rise of political parties that have produced an anti-immigration climate in the country. In addition to the far-right, the centre right coalition also adopts hardline migration strategies.
Conclusion
Whereas far-right parties might be weaponising migration as a political tool to gain momentum, it is a product of historical legacies and its populism is drawn from deeper structural issues. The post-war labour migration, although building the European economies, did not solve social divides, and the 2015 Refugee Crisis further crystallised cultural insecurities and anxieties.
These narratives thrive when structural discrimination remains unaddressed as “failed integration” and is blamed on immigrants; when economic and identity insecurities are projected onto immigrants; and when social media can serve as a stable breeding ground for xenophobia. The German case study shows how a country, in which there are strong post-war safeguards due to xenophobic past, has still managed to mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric. Unless Europe recognises its role in creating migration flows, through colonial exploitation, arms exports and foreign policy, and strengthens integration policy aimed at reducing structural inequality, it will be impossible for Europe to address anti-immigrant sentiments. And besides the protection of immigrants, confronting historical and social roots of anti-immigration will preserve democratic and pluralistic values.
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