Remigration
Remigration is a far-right concept, originating in Europe and now prominent in North America, of ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including those that are native-born and holding citizenship, to their place of racial ancestry. Originating in Europe, the concept has spread to the United States and other countries, and it is popular especially within the Identitarian movement. Some proponents of remigration suggest excluding some persons with non-European background from such a mass deportation, based on a varyingly defined degree of assimilation into European culture.
Advocates of remigration promote the concept in pursuit of ethno-cultural homogeneity. According to Deutsche Welle, ethnopluralism, the Nouvelle Droite concept that different ethnicities require their own segregated living spaces, creates a need for remigration of people with "foreign roots". The Mexican scholar José Ángel Maldonado has described the idea as a "soft type of ethnic cleansing under the guise of deportation and segregation".
Presented by its proponents as a remedy to mass immigration and the perceived Islamisation of Europe, remigration has increasingly become an integral policy position of the Identitarian movement and other far-right political movements and parties. Research from the British Institute for Strategic Dialogue, conducted in April 2019, showed a distinct rise in conversations about remigration on the social media website Twitter between 2012 and 2019. Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, and Telegram have been at the forefront of spreading the term into the mainstream.
Etymology and development
The term remigration stems from Classical Latin remigrāre, "to return home", and was first used in English in the writings of Andrew Willet, an early-17th-century theologian within the Church of England. It had originally meant simply "returning", later was applied to the voluntary return of an immigrant to their place of origin, and is still used as such in social science.Examples of the historic usage of the term remigration include the return of European Jews after the Second World War, as well as migration of people who had fled socialism and then returned postsocialism. According to journalist Ana P. Santos, up until the 2020s, "The term 'remigration' was primarily used in migration studies to describe the voluntary return of migrants and foreigners to their home countries." But during those years, there was also some discussion of involuntary migration, for example the economist Wolfgang Franz used the term remigration in 1987 for the involuntary return of foreign workers to their home countries.
Early evocations of the modern far-right concept of remigration can be found in French 1960s movements such as Europe-Action, considered the "embryonic form" of the Nouvelle Droite. Jean-Pierre Stirbois, then General Secretary of the National Front, coined the expression "we will send them back" in an interview. He was the architect of the first electoral breakthrough of the FN in 1983, earning nearly 17% of the vote in the city of Dreux with the promise of "inverting the migratory flows". The idea is also expressed in the German slogan "Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus", and in the motto of L'Œuvre Française "La France aux Français".
Adoption by Identitarians
A core tenet of the Identitarian movement is the "Great Replacement", a conspiracy theory which states that white people are being replaced through migration, violence, and high birth rates by people from Africa, Muslims in particular. Reducing or halting immigration and removing migrant populations are presented as a solution to social issues caused by the Great Replacement.In the 2010s the Identitarian movements were trying to avoid the use of historically tainted vocabulary while expressing their ideas, trying to create a "new language", for example, by replacing "race" with "culture". In the process, a successful strategy of reusing old terms with a new meaning had been discovered. In particular, while their meaning of "remigration" was a neologism intended to replace the tainted "deportation", the word itself had a reputable history. This was especially in the German-speaking countries, where remigration denoted the post-Second World war return of German refugees who fled from Nazism, thus creating positive associations. Similarly, the "infiltration" got a new name, Great Replacement, a myth which states that the white Christian European population is being progressively replaced with non-European populations, specifically from North Africa and the Middle East, through mass migration, demographic growth, and a European drop in the birth rate.
The French movement Generation Identity adopted remigration as part of its platform in 2015, but the new term remained obscure until January 2024, with mass interest generated by widely publicised 2023 Potsdam far-right meeting. The situation in Germany was similar; between 2018 and 2023, Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland and Alternative for Germany occasionally used the term, and the AfD adopted it as part of its platform in 2021, but widespread use only began in 2023.
As of 2024, the discourse on remigration remained on the back burner within the AfD, with no radical proposals, allowing the party to appeal to a broad electorate. At the same time, the concept was becoming increasingly normalised, with a wider audience now familiar with what was once an obscure Identitarian term.
Proponents of remigration often use the historical example of the expulsion of Pieds-Noirs from Algeria in 1962 as a successful past instance of organised forced remigration, even though the exodus is described by some historians as an ethnic cleansing stimulated by violence and threats from the National Liberation Front and part of the native Muslim population, as evidenced by the slogan "the suitcase or the coffin" promoted by the FLN, the kidnappings of Pieds-Noirs, or the Oran massacre of 1962.
Modern use
Europe
Since the 2010s, the idea of remigration has been used by thinkers and political leaders of the Identitarian movement, such as Guillaume Faye, Renaud Camus, Henry de Lesquen, or Martin Sellner, as a euphemism for the mass deportation of non-European immigrants and native residents with a migrant background, back to their country of origin, the criteria of exclusion being a vaguely defined degree of assimilation into European culture.Austria
In March 2019, a week after the Christchurch mosque shootings and release of the shooter's manifesto, Identitäre Bewegung Österreich, the Austrian branch of Generation Identity, held a protest in Vienna driven by the conspiracy theory known as the "Great Replacement" of Austrians and openly calling for remigration of residents with a migrant background. By April 2019, a branch of the Freedom Party of Austria, who at the time were in coalition government as a junior partner with the Austrian People's Party, announced a "national call for remigration".The FPÖ heavily emphasised remigration, particularly to Islamic countries, during its 2024 Austrian legislative election campaign. Party leader Herbert Kickl has called for the "remigration of uninvited strangers" from Austria with a focus on those who break the law.
Belgium
The Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang has called for "remigration" since 2011. In 2021 they called for the formation of an "Agency for Remigration".In March 2025 Vlaams Belang leader Tom Van Grieken suggested the implementation of a "remigration policy" that would include illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and foreign national criminals. In April 2025 Mercina Claesen, a Vlaams Belang MP and leader of the party's youth wing, Vlaams Belang Jongeren, has called for the remigration not only of illegal immigrants, but also legal immigrants who have committed crimes.
Denmark
The Danish People's Party leader Morten Messerschmidt has called for "consistent remigration of maladjusted people" to prevent ethnic Danes becoming a minority in Denmark. The party has used "remigration now" as a campaign slogan.Finland
Remigration has been featured prominently by the Finnish anti-immigration and populist right. The right-wing populist Finns Party declared in their party organ that "We have to shift from integration to remigration". The party leader and current Deputy Prime Minister Riikka Purra declared that "Remigration and strict immigration control are the main tools to prevent problems caused by immigration." The "Remigration Summit" in Milan was attended by a delegation from the neo-fascist Blue-and-Black Movement.France
In October 2017 Generation Identity announced policy plans to its members, for France to force former colonies to take back migrants by using its status as a nuclear power and making development subsidies and aid conditional on the repatriation of immigrants.In March 2018 an Al Jazeera investigative team released footage and audio revealing Marine Le Pen's close confidant and former accountant, Nicolas Crochet, saying that the National Rally party would introduce a remigration programme to force immigrants back to their country of origin, in the event that they came to power in France.
In February 2019, speaking with L'Opinion, Debout la France candidate Emmanuelle Gave, advocated for remigration as a policy for voters in the European Parliament elections in May. In what Libération described as a "dangerous penetration of the ideas of the ultra-radical extreme right in the French political space", Gave announced that she was in favor of the party putting remigration "on the table".
According to an IFOP poll conducted in March 2022 prior to the French presidential elections, 63% of French people claim "not to be shocked" by the use of the word "remigration" and 66% support the idea of remigrating illegal immigrants, foreign criminals and "Fiche S" foreigners.
According to an OpinionWay poll from March 2022, 55% of French people also support the establishment of a Ministry of Remigration, an idea proposed by Eric Zemmour during the French presidential elections campaign.
As of 2024, Marine Le Pen's party, National Rally, is opposed to remigration and cited Alternative for Germany's support for it as a reason to cut ties. Nevertheless, remigration continues to be supported by the National Rally's rival, Zemmour's Reconquête, and Marion Marechal's Identity–Liberties, a split from Reconquête.