Colonial Roots and Continuities in Europe’s Migration System – In Conversation with Janine Silga

Migration is one of the most salient issues in European politics today. While its importance for voting decisions is widely acknowledged, many of its key characteristics remain the subject of vivid debate. Opinions about migration often diverge sharply: Does migration pose a threat to European societies, or is it essential for economic survival? Arepublic attitudes becoming more hostile, or more welcoming? Should European countries restrict migration, or embrace it? Competing narratives seem to strongly shape migration policy and the laws through which it is implemented.In this conversation, Prof. Andrew Geddes analyzes different narratives on migration and the role they play in policymaking, as well as the rise of right-wing populist actors across Europe. The discussion starts with the question of what narratives are and how they emerge. Prof. Geddes explains that narratives help people make sense of complexities through storytelling, in which plausibility might often matter more than accuracy.However, narratives are also a deeper expression of people’s worldviews and values, through which facts, evidence, and information are filtered. Since worldviews and values are very important to people and often formed early in life, Prof.Geddes points out that narratives tend to be resistant. The frequently made demand that narratives should simply be changed or replaced therefore seems more difficult to realize than is often suggested. The conversation then focuses on the 1990s, a period in which the overall discourse on migration grew more hostile and the narrative of migration as a security threat emerged. At that time, the Austrianpolitician Jörg Haider—often seen as a precursor to today’s right-wing populists—was heavily criticized in European politics. Today, however, his successors exert strong influence on European policymaking, and positions that would have been deemed unacceptable not long ago have entered the mainstream political debate. This shift indicates what many observers describe as the mainstreaming of the far right. However, contrary to what one might discern from public discourse, research by Prof. Geddes and his colleague Prof. James Dennison suggests that European attitudes towardmigration have likely grown more positive over the last thirty years. Their explanation for the rise of anti-immigrant parties in Europe is the sharp increase in the salience of immigration among some voters. While attitudes toward migration may have been more negative decades ago, they were lesselectorally decisive at the time. The constant increase in the salience of migration has thus allowed anti-immigrant parties to win by activating pre-existing opposition to immigration amongst a shrinking segment of the populations of western European states. Prof. Geddes warns that simply tellingpeople who have concerns about immigration—whether legitimate or not—that they are mistaken can harden these positions. Nevertheless, there remains room to shape narratives on migration differently by highlighting the many positive aspects.

When the first treaties that laid the groundwork for today’s European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights were signed after the Second World War, many of today’s member states were still significant colonialpowers—empires. It was only in the years that followed that these European empires eroded, and many countries in the Global South gained independence.However, while colonialism formally ended, many have argued that coloniality has persisted. Although this applies to different areas, one of the most important is migration governance. Here, European countries have been accusedof replacing explicitly racialized mechanisms with a facially race-neutral apparatus that nonetheless constitutes a system of neocolonial racial borders that benefits some and disadvantages others.In this conversation, Prof. Janine Silga analyzes thecolonial roots of the European migration system, highlights the continuities between the system before and after the formal end of colonialism, and discusses possible ways to overcome coloniality in EU law. The conversation begins with a focus on the nineteenth century, when large-scale migration took place across, for example, the British Empire. Prof. Silga explains that migration from colonized countries to Europe occurred primarily because colonial powers required cheap labor. At the same time, large numbers of Europeans began establishing settlements in the colonized world. These migrants could today be described as economic migrants, since they primarily left Europe to improve their economic circumstances—a reason for migration that Europeanstates now heavily contest when it occurs in the opposite direction. The conversation then shifts to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Western states adopted increasingly hostile stances toward migration and laid the foundations for a system of ostensibly race-neutral borders that nevertheless enabled racialized control over access to the benefits of colonial exploitation. The second part of the discussion examines colonial continuities in Europe’s contemporary migration system. Among other issues, Prof. Silga addresses the problem of “racial aphasia”—a term coined by Prof. Tendayi Achiume to describe the lack of debate about the role of race in migration law.The final part of the discussion explores potential ways to overcome both the colonial past and its ongoing legacies. Prof. Silga describes decoloniality as a broad and non-monolithic concept and movement that recognizes race as the central organizing principle of coloniality—a principle that hierarchizes human beings and sustains not only asymmetrical global power relations but also a singular Eurocentric epistemology. Decoloniality, therefore, is fundamentally concerned with the decolonization of knowledge and ways of knowing.

In our latest episode of the special series produced in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, we discuss the recent article co-authored by Steven Levitsky, Semuhi Sinanoglu, and Lucan Way, entitled “Can Capitalism SaveDemocracy?” (Journal of Democracy, Vol. 36, No. 3, July 2025). We engage this provocative piece against the backdrop of recent shifts in industrialized countries, where the private sector has assumed an increasinglyprominent political role. Way and Sinanoglu contend that the private sector can empower democracies by fostering creative competition. They argue that capitalism generates an autonomous business class, broadens economicopportunities, and mobilizes resources that in turn strengthen democratic institutions and expand civic participation. Drawing on both historical precedent and contemporary politics, the authors reflect on capitalism’senduring imperfections while presenting it as a plausible—if contested—force for democratic change worldwide.

In this episode of Democracy and Culture, we speak with Dan Edelstein, William H. Bonsall Professor of French at StanfordUniversity, about his new book The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Stasis to Lenin (Princeton University Press, 2025). His academic investigations range across literary studies, historiography, political thought and digital humanities. Throughout our conversation, we focuson providing a new understanding of the concept of revolution. In his latest book, by tracing the conceptual distinction between stasis and metabolē through Roman, medieval, and Renaissance thought, he recovers the overlooked role of Polybius in shaping the constitutional imagination of early modern Europe. In our podcast, Edelstein explains how the perception of revolution shifted from a destabilizing event to a future-oriented project tied to Enlightenment ideas of historical progress. As well, another point of discussion is howpolitical actors re-interpreted revolutions through inherited “scripts”. The podcast also focuses on the recurring modern pattern in which revolutions consolidate around a single leader. By situating revolutions in a longue durée conceptual history, Edelstein challenges us to see them not as sudden breaks, but as episodes in an evolving, centuries-long dialogue between inherited political imaginaries and the real events.Edelstein’s recovery of ancient and early modern frameworks enriches our understanding of modern revolutions. Particularly the “script” metaphor is a compelling tool for explaining why upheavals often replay familiar patterns.Yet this focus on elite textual traditions risks overlooking the revolutionary imaginaries of actors outside the Greco-Roman canon, from peasants to colonized peoples, whose visions of change may refer to different temporalities and symbolic repertoires. At the same time, the podcast is a fresh proposal for scholars and historians to rethink longue durée (dis)continuities of revolutions.

On 1 June 2025, the second round of Poland’s presidential election resulted in a surprise win for Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party, over Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the ruling Civic Coalition. The knife-edge campaign highlighted deep social divisions in the Polish society. In Part 1 of this podcast, Professor Maciej Kisilowski examined the reasons for this electoral development as well as its implications for Poland’s political dynamics overthe next few years. In this part, Professor Kisilowski lays out his proposals for a new constitutional settlement for Poland, aimed at addressing the roots and consequences of the severe polarization of the Polish society. He builds upon the arguments expounded in a volume edited by him and Professor Anna Wojciuk, Umówmy się na Polskę (ZNAK 2023), in which thinkers from all across the political spectrum shared their ideas for changing Poland’s political status quo. Thebook is due to be published in English on 9 September 2025 by Oxford University Press under the title Let’sAgree on Poland.

In this new episode of our special series produced in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley draw on their new article “Democracy After Illiberalism: A Warning from Poland” (July 2025, Vol. 26, No. 3) to discuss the challenges, dilemmas, and paradoxes ofliberalism after illiberalism in Poland. They reflect on the concepts of liberalism and illiberalism to dissect the approach Donald Tusk’s current government has taken and its major consequences. They also consider the wider lessons that may be drawn from recent and ongoing Polish experiences.Stanley Bill is professor of Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge. Ben Stanley is associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, SWPS University, Warsaw. They co-authored Good Change: The Rise and Fall of Poland’sIlliberal Revolution (2025).

In Part 2 of our latest episode in the special seriesproduced in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, Berk Esen turns to the other side of the equation: how Turkey’s opposition is pushing back against an increasingly hegemonic regime. This episode builds on Part1, where we explored the regime’s authoritarian escalation through thecourts, media, and economic coercion. Drawing on his co-authored piece with Şebnem Gümüşçü, “How to Fight Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn” (Journal of Democracy, July 2025, Vol. 36, No. 3), Esen analyzes President RecepTayyip Erdoğan’s recent attempts to court Kurdish voters through cross-party alliances and a renewed peace process. He discusses the main opposition party’s efforts to sustain mass mobilization after its presidential candidate Ekremİmamoğlu’s arrest, while navigating internal and strategic risks amid a judicial effort to reshape its leadership. Esen also reflects on what distinguishes Turkey from other authoritarian cases such as Venezuela, the resourcesand constraints shaping democratic resistance, and the key factors likely to determine the country’s prospects for democratic renewal.

How is war transforming Ukraine’s economy—and itsoligarchs? In this Review of Democracy podcast, political economist Inna Melnykovska (Central European University) discusses how the full-scale Russian invasion has led to surprising shifts in business-state relations, including a turn toward civic responsibility among Ukraine’s biggest companies. In conversation with editor Kristóf Szombati, Melnykovska explains why classic concepts like state capture and patronal politics no longer fully capture Ukraine’s evolving reality. She explores how wartime pressures have triggered new forms of corporate citizenship, how power has become more centralized politically but more diverse economically, and why EU conditionality and civil society oversight are key to shaping a fair postwar recovery. This timely conversation sheds light on Ukraine’s transformation in the face of existential crisis—andwhat’s at stake as the country looks toward reconstruction and EU integration.

In Part 1 of our latest edition in the special series in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, Berk Esen unpacks how Turkey’s competitive authoritarian regime is veering toward full autocracy.Drawing on his co-authored piece with Şebnem Gümüşçü, “How to Fight Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn” (July 2025, Vol. 36, No. 3), Esen charts Erdoğan’s intensifying use of courts, media, and economic coercion to silence dissent andsideline his chief rival in the next presidential elections, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. He discusses Turkey’s drift from electoral competitiveness toward hegemonic rule, the role of autocratic legalism, and the prospects for resistance in a rapidly shrinking democratic space.

In current public discourse, human rights violationsat the EU’s borders are inextricably linked to one specific actor: the European Border and Coast Guard Agency – or, in short, Frontex. Since its establishment in 2004, human rights activists have become increasingly aware of variousrights violations committed by the agency, particularly in the Mediterranean. To name just one example, Frontex has been accused of providing the locations of migrants intercepted at sea to the Libyan coast guard, which then transportedthem to camps where they have been systematicallyraped, tortured, and enslaved. Remarkably, despite accusations of the most severe human rights violations, Frontex has largely managed to avoid legal consequences. Currently, Frontex stands before the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the EU for the first time in its history.In this conversation, Dr. Joyce De Coninck explainswhy Frontex has so far evaded accountability for severe human rights violations and discusses legal pathways for change. The conversation begins with an analysis of Frontex’s history, during which its representatives have consistently promoted a specific narrative that remains central tounderstanding why the agency has been able to avoid accountability for so long: that Frontex acts only in a “coordinating and supporting” role. According to De Coninck, this is problematic because, although Frontex has grown substantially in both budget and competencies overthe past 20 years, the narrative of it playing only a minor role has remained unchanged. The conversation then turns to how this narrative is reflected in concrete cases, as De Coninck explains how Frontex’s joint operations with EUmember states shield the agency from legal consequences—and offers legal solutions to address this issue. The discussion then shifts to the broader challenges faced by human rights litigants in the EU. The final part of the interview focuses on the risk of frustration and fatalism among human rightsactivists confronting an EU that appears increasingly willing to contribute to the erosion of those rights. De Coninck cautions against adopting a defeatist stance and references Professor Gráinne De Búrca’s concept of HumanRights Experimentalism. Despite its challenges regarding effectiveness and potential negative consequences, this approach views the human rights project as an iterative and deliberative process—one in which attempts by publicauthorities to circumvent rights are far from abnormal. Human rights remain an ongoing struggle, and such actions must be met with counterarguments, not defeatism.