ABSTRACT
In Europe, as well as generally throughout the global north, there has been a consistent drive for ever stricter border and migration policies. Irregular migration has become a field in which estimations often prevail over researched actualities, and hearsay and myths over concrete evidence. The situation has become increasingly paradoxical: what was branded as a “refugee crisis” has become increasingly about filtering between the welcomed and the unwanted rather than a question of mere numbers. The interpretation of the recent events that this chapter seeks to advance with evidence is that the question of migration has indeed become an existential challenge for the European Union. The chapter shifts the discussion of migration as a phenomenon in its own right and with its own dynamics to its broader societal implications. The widespread, less-than-welcoming mindset towards immigration throughout Europe cannot be taken explicitly to indicate an anti-migrant attitude. Rather, it is a symptom of the much broader insecurities many Europeans have felt.
