Remigration and the normalization of exclusion
I have learned to pay close attention to language in politics. Not because words are harmless, but because they are powerful. Long before laws are passed or policies implemented, language quietly reshapes what feels normal, reasonable, and acceptable. That is why the growing use of the term remigration worries me.
Political history shows that controversial ideas rarely arrive openly. They enter gradually, disguised as technical terms, repeated until they feel familiar. Familiarity lowers resistance. Over time, what once seemed extreme becomes debatable, and what is debated soon becomes politically possible.
This is how the phrase creeping Islamization gained ground in Scandinavian public discourse. It was initially dismissed as conspiratorial. Yet repetition did its work. The real danger was not the term itself, but how it shifted the boundaries of what could be said without consequence. I see the same mechanism at work today, now centered around the concept of remigration.
At first glance, remigration sounds neutral. It is often framed as voluntary return, presented as pragmatic governance rather than ideology. But beneath this language lies a deeper message about who truly belongs. Remigration implies that some people do not have unconditional membership in society. Their presence is treated as temporary, reversible, and open to reassessment.
Language, in this sense, does not follow policy. It prepares it.
Although remigration is often described as an individual choice, the term has been widely adopted by far-right movements across Europe, North America, and Australia to legitimize mass deportations and the erosion of rights. Research on political discourse is clear on this point. Political change is usually preceded by linguistic change. Proposals do not need to be implemented to have real impact. Repetition alone expands what is considered reasonable.
We can already see this across countries. In the United States, remigration rhetoric appears in debates about mass deportation and even citizenship revocation. In Canada and Australia, similar arguments are used to question rights that were once considered settled. Across these contexts, entire groups are framed as conditionally present. Their belonging is treated as something that can be withdrawn. This is not accidental. It is a strategy.
Supporters often describe remigration as rational governance. But voluntary return programs already exist in most liberal democracies and are used by people who freely choose to leave. Remigration signals something else. History shows that large-scale “voluntary” returns almost never occur without pressure. They depend on legal insecurity, exclusion from work or welfare, and a slow tightening of conditions that make staying increasingly difficult.
What makes the current moment especially concerning is the growing role of digital governance. States are experimenting with systems that assess people according to their “returnability,” using indicators such as language skills, employment history, or perceived integration. These systems are presented as objective and efficient. In reality, they often reproduce existing political and social biases. Language becomes infrastructure. Categories created in public debate are translated into administrative tools that sort people and distribute rights. This is not integration policy. It is population management.
The consequences reach far beyond immigration debates. What is at stake is a core democratic principle: the stability of citizenship and equal rights. High-trust societies depend on the belief that rights are durable and non-negotiable. When parts of the population are framed as conditionally belonging, trust in institutions weakens and political participation declines. For people born and raised in countries now debating remigration, there may be no other place to “return” to. Yet their membership is still questioned.
Research consistently links conditional belonging to political alienation and disengagement. When people are treated as provisional members of society, they withdraw. These dynamics weaken democratic resilience and create fertile ground for polarization. Remigration functions as an ideological tool by turning belonging into an administrative decision rather than a democratic guarantee.
The paradox is striking. Many societies face labor shortages and aging populations, yet they are simultaneously normalizing language that treats parts of their population as disposable. Framed as a response to insecurity, remigration discourse ultimately undermines the social cohesion it claims to protect.
Democracy requires more than efficient administration. It requires moral clarity and political courage. Integration works when people experience their rights as stable and their membership as unconditional. Public institutions play a crucial role in reinforcing this sense of security. Remigration moves in the opposite direction. It legitimizes exclusion, fuels fear, and weakens democratic foundations.
Remigration resembles earlier moral panics not because the situations are identical, but because the mechanism is the same. An extreme idea seeks legitimacy through repetition and normalization. If we wait until policy is enacted to respond, we have already waited too long. The time to challenge this language is now, before exclusion once again becomes politically reasonable.
This text is a personal version of an article first published in Agenda Magasin and Utrop