The Populist Turn of Migration Laws

Dangerous trends and forces of populism are most observable in connection with issues of migration, where they function as a pretext for scrapping legal protections and increasingly hostile laws and practices such as push backs, deterrent measures, and externalisation. Indeed, legal norms and institutions that allow in the migrants and protect them are losing their significance as a ‘counter-weight’ to popular demands and claims of community values. At the same time, popular resentment and backlash against migrants are increasingly viewed as legitimate and justified. Popular demands that are formed along national, religious, ethnic, etc lines do not always, if at all especially at a time of populism, want to hear the claims of strangers, foreigners, refugees, ‘others’, and that is the reason they become antagonistic to the laws and institutions that do hear and protect such claims. Populist forces have been seizing on these sentiments by putting the blame on protective laws and institutions for triggering and exacerbating the populist backlash and hostility towards migrants. Crucially, these developments and pressures extend beyond theoretical debates or public discourse, creating tangible impacts in the real world. This paper argues that what we are witnessing is a turn towards populism in migration laws, policies, and practices which are increasingly restricting protections for migrants and eroding safeguards against populist pressures.