BRUSSELS — The political reaction to the surge of migrants into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta laid bare how sharply Europe’s migration debate has shifted, and how it’s forcing migrant-rights groups to rethink the way they make their case. Where previous migration crises often divided European leaders between calls for solidarity and demands for tougher controls, the response to Ceuta — where more than 100 people died last month as they tried to enter — was strikingly uniform. From the far right to the center left, political leaders overwhelmingly called for stronger borders and more effective deterrence.
In response, migrant-rights groups are changing tactics. As humanitarian appeals lose political traction, they are turning more heavily to the courts, building broader alliances and experimenting with new ways to talk about migration. In 2013, the death of hundreds of migrants in a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa shocked the continent.
Top EU officials, including then-Commission President José Manuel Barroso, traveled to the site to declare that “the European Union cannot accept that thousands of people die at its borders.” The bloc’s then-Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström called for a “change of approach towards migration,” adding that “this restrictive approach is not sustainable and that it is now time to move towards more openness and solidarity.” The 2015 refugee crisis initially generated a similarly humanitarian reaction, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling on Europeans to welcome more than 1 million people fleeing war in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The European Commission sought to manage the crisis through measures including the redistribution of asylum seekers among EU countries. But that approach ran into resistance from figures like then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice party.
Florian Trauner, an expert on EU migration at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the College of Europe, said a handful of right-wing politicians succeeded in establishing an “institutional deadlock” that halted EU efforts to integrate migrants and allowed for a “wider shift to a more restrictive, control-oriented approach to migration.” That evolution is visible in the EU’s response to Ceuta. Center-left figures like Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen echoed right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s call for a more robust defense of the bloc’s external borders, and twenty-two EU leaders signed onto a letter demanding a coordinated effort to “deter and relentlessly combat illegal migration.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likewise stressed that “control of our European borders matters.” Without mentioning the rising death toll, she instead celebrated the fact that “not a single person reached mainland Spain or the rest of the EU.” The bloc’s shift on migration has been accelerated by the rise of far-right parties and a scramble by centrist rivals to neutralize them by embracing parts of their agenda. As hard-line positions have gone mainstream, the far-right has started to push for further measures, including “remigration” — the removal of immigrants from Europe.
The Trump administration’s approach to migration — including large-scale deportations — “has given legitimacy to European actors who have been able to reject criticism by pointing out that the world’s major international power is embracing the exact same position,” Trauner said. Helena Maleno, spokesperson for Caminando Fronteras, an NGO that defends migrants’ rights along the western Euro-African border, said her group was increasingly being targeted by the far right. He accused migrants’ rights groups of being “21st-century pirates” who use “hybrid warfare” to undermine Spain’s territorial integrity.
In the new climate, the humanitarian argument traditionally used by rights groups — that migrants are human beings in need of protection — no longer carries the same political weight, said LeVoy. Increasingly, NGOs have found themselves on the defensive, fighting criminal sanctions and restrictions on their activities rather than shaping the broader debate. That pressure is pushing migrant-rights groups to rethink where — and how — they fight.
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