Xenophobia runs the world

“I don’t privation them successful our country. I’ll beryllium honorable with you, OK. Somebody volition say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t privation them successful our country. Their state is nary bully for a crushed …”

This is what United States President Donald Trump had to accidental astir Somali migrants connected the archetypal time of an migration crackdown targeting their community. He insisted that Somali migrants person turned the US authorities of Minnesota, wherever immoderate 2 percent of the colonisation is of Somali descent, into a “hellhole” and should beryllium “out of here”. Then, directing his ire astatine his vocal critic, Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Democratic typical from Minnesota, Trump said, “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t radical who work. These aren’t radical who say, ‘Let’s go, travel on, let’s marque this spot great. ’”

Of course, nary of this is caller oregon surprising. Hatred of migrants and asylum seekers has ever been the glue that holds Trump’s MAGAverse together. Who tin hide that, earlier his cordial gathering with Trump astatine the White House, respective MAGA Republicans made superior efforts to revoke the US citizenship of New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Since Trump’s emergence to power, hostility to migrants has go not conscionable a mainstream constituent of modern authorities successful the United States but a governing principle.

But the emergence successful anti-migrant sentiment, and its validation and promotion by those successful positions of power, is not exclusive to Trump’s progressively insular America. Similar rhetoric and tactics are gaining crushed elsewhere, revealing a planetary inclination that extends acold beyond the United States. Denmark is 1 specified example.

Beneath its long-cultivated representation arsenic a progressive, humane and orderly nine built connected cosmopolitan healthcare, Lego, highly liveable cities and minimalist decorator aesthetics, Denmark has successful caller years go 1 of Europe’s astir restrictive states connected migration and asylum. During the precocious concluded section elections, Islamophobic rhetoric was connected afloat display, and successful the lead-up to the 2026 nationalist elections, the ruling Social Democrats person placed their committedness to tackling the alleged occupation of migration astatine the centre of their campaign.

Across the pond, successful the United Kingdom, the supposedly progressive Labour authorities seems anxious to travel the Danish example. Under unit from the acold close and Reform UK’s enduring emergence successful the polls, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is anxious to person radical that helium tin beryllium trusted to instrumentality backmost power of our borders and adjacent the publication connected a squalid section of Britain’s migration policy. He has warned that the UK risks becoming an land of strangers unless migration is sharply reduced, and has promised that his government’s reforms volition guarantee that migration volition fall. That is simply a promise. Most strikingly, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood precocious sent officials to Denmark to survey its migration and asylum regime, a motion that underscores however dramatically Labour’s stance has hardened.

Xenophobia is besides connected the emergence extracurricular the Western world. It is simply a staple of argumentation and signifier from Libya to South Africa, a reminder that anti-migrant authorities is present a planetary instrumentality of governance.

Europe-bound migrants successful Libya look horrific levels of unit and abuse. According to Amnesty International, they are subjected to prolonged arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, rape, unlawful killings, extortion and forced labour. These abuses hap wrong a strategy efficaciously underwritten by European governments, which person funnelled funding, grooming and instrumentality to Libyan coastguard units tasked with intercepting migrants earlier they scope planetary waters. Keen to stem the travel of migrants crossed the Mediterranean, European Union states person outsourced borderline power to Libya contempt knowing the consequences, supporting the authorities’ quality to proceed with measures the United Nations says could precise apt magnitude to crimes against humanity.

Further west, successful Tunisia, Black African migrants person faced sporadic unit for years. In aboriginal 2023, President Kais Saied claimed determination was a transgression program to alteration Tunisia’s demographic constitution done irregular migration, turning it into a purely African state that has nary affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations. His remarks triggered a surge successful mob attacks connected Black migrants, students and asylum seekers. There was besides an summation successful arrests, and the constabulary appeared to beryllium targeting Black African foreigners based connected their appearance. Those detained included undocumented migrants, registered refugees and asylum seekers, arsenic good arsenic migrants with valid credentials, a stark objection of however authorities practices tin displacement erstwhile xenophobia is fixed governmental sanction.

Similarly, xenophobia targeting migrants from different African countries has been a changeless diagnostic of beingness and authorities successful post-apartheid South Africa. According to Xenowatch, a task hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand that tracks xenophobic favoritism and violence, determination person been 1,295 recorded incidents since 1994, including displacement, looting of migrant-owned businesses and killings. Deaths peaked successful 2008 with 72 fatalities and 150 incidents. In 2025, portion 16 radical were killed, the wide fig of xenophobic incidents again reached 2008 levels, underscoring the persistence of the crisis.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities systematically overlooked migrant communities, excluding galore from alleviation programmes and framing extortion of South Africans arsenic the priority. The authorities besides constructed a 40-kilometre obstruction on the borderline with Zimbabwe to artifact infected oregon undocumented persons, contempt Zimbabwe having lone 11 confirmed COVID-19 cases astatine the clip compared with South Africa’s 1,845. Politicians reinforced existing myths astir foreign-owned businesses posing wellness risks. When announcing that spaza shops could stay open, the then-Minister of Small Business Development, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, declared that lone South African-owned, managed and tally shops would stay open.

South Africa has besides seen the emergence of explicitly anti-immigrant mobilisation. The Put South Africans First movement, a conjugation of civilian nine groups advocating the wide deportation of African migrants, organised a march to the Nigerian and Zimbabwean embassies connected September 23, 2020, claiming that foreigners lend to South Africa’s societal ills specified arsenic drugs, quality trafficking and kid abductions.

The vigilante radical Operation Dudula emerged from this question successful 2021, pursuing the imprisonment of erstwhile President Jacob Zuma. Although it claims to code transgression and cause usage successful Gauteng communities, its name, Dudula – meaning “force out” successful isiZulu – captures its existent focus. The radical is amended known for calling for wide deportations, blocking migrants from accessing hospitals and clinics, and raiding oregon shutting down foreign-owned businesses.

Of course, I could support going, from expanding restrictions successful countries similar Colombia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador aimed astatine stemming the influx of Venezuelan migrants, to Indian authorities forcibly expelling taste Bengali Muslims to Bangladesh without owed process, home guarantees and planetary quality rights standards, claiming that they are undocumented. Xenophobia is not confined to immoderate portion oregon ideology; it is present woven into the governmental beingness of countries crossed the globe.

Why are we truthful keen to springiness successful to xenophobic narratives and policies? In portion due to the fact that they are convenient. They let governments and societies to externalise home failures, offering an casual mentation for problems that are acold much analyzable and often rooted successful governmental and economical mismanagement astatine home, successful austerity, deepening inequality and precarious enactment alternatively than successful the accomplishment of strangers.

In this logic, the migrant becomes a ready-made scapegoat, a fig onto whom we task each the ills we judge endanger who we are oregon what we basal for. It past becomes effortless to assertion that migrants subscribe to unsafe ideologies, strain nationalist resources, transportation diseases oregon signifier portion of immoderate insidious program to change the country’s demographic oregon taste fabric.

Perception becomes reality. Blaming those beyond our borders allows america to ideate the menace lies elsewhere, reassuring america that we are not the problem. The calamity is that the dysfunctions and corruptions embedded successful our ain systems stay untouched. And scapegoating the expected outsider does thing to marque our societies fairer, safer oregon much humane; it simply buys clip for leaders unwilling to face the crises they helped create.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.