Since humanity has been grappling with a myriad of contentious conflicts across the world, one of their core repercussions has been mass displacement and migration. A highly devastating phenomenon for war-torn lives, inflicted by the heinous desires of certain leaders, the sheer number of forcibly displaced people in 2025 reached 117.8 million — roughly one in every 70 people on Earth.
It is an unequivocal reality since the formation of communities on the planet — not a new issue, but nowadays it broods over our minds. As the political weaponisation of migration and its policies has been dominating mainstream social interest, it has transformed to such an extent that it can even determine the direction of transnational relations and national politics. This is apparent from its rousing consolidation since the end of the Cold War. So the question remains: Has migration become the most potent political weapon in contemporary geopolitics?
The Global Migration Crisis
To begin with, the immigration crisis is a real-world issue, yet not an isolated episode. It is a ubiquitous operation spanning throughout the presence of nation-states. However, in today’s world, it is far more complex. Almost 41.6 million refugees are living under this fragile label, driven out from their own residences and soil.
As per reports, the war in Sudan generated 2.8 million refugees and 10.5 million internally displaced persons, and cases in Ukraine, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Palestine do not numerically differ from it, piling up the overall stakes.
A structural apprehension of real-world events directs us to its triggering drivers; the World Bank attributes these to devastating conflicts, widening income disparities, demographic pressures, and shifting weather patterns. Under those circumstances, the growth rate of migration has already escalated briskly, and over time, the numbers will only upsurge to their pinnacle. Correspondingly, a closer gaze into these issues persuades us that most causes are driven by human deeds themselves, particularly the stringent political deterioration that exacerbates the problem.
The Humanitarian Toll of Forced Migration
Since 2014, the International Organisation for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project has recorded 81,912 migrant deaths worldwide. 46,775 of these were caused by drowning, and the Central Mediterranean route alone accounted for 26,474 deaths, illustrating the miserable conditions that immigrants endure.
At the same time, the fact that 38% of displaced people are children (45 million) sheds light on the overt failure of major developments that international organisations boast of. Likewise, 305,000 children are born as refugees around the world each year. Unsurprisingly, 7 in 10 refugees live in protracted or permanent displacement due to generational conditions, highlighting the severity of the human predicament.
The Political Weaponisation of Migration
Moving to the systematic weaponisation of immigration utterly swerves our reckoning from the prevailing framework. As per statistics, 68% of refugees are hosted by low- and middle-income countries, not by wealthy nations. Herein lies the irony: if poorer countries endure the burden, why does immigration remain a major flashpoint of politics in wealthy countries?
For past years, migration issues have provided an ardent political agenda in election campaigns, with politicians emboldened to stick them on the crest of their manifestos. Consequently, it has endowed paramount political developments in their favour. Still, the question of how they weaponise it requires a crystal-clear understanding.
The incident of former American President Bill Clinton’s unbrazen mention of migrants as “illegal aliens”, irrespective of their intentions, exposed the penchant of leaders for this tactic. In fact, political candidates usually tend to run on making immigration reforms, but when elections settle down, they fail to accomplish them — merely approaching it as a political issue rather than a policy issue and patently neglecting a pragmatic approach.
By keeping immigration high on the political agenda, it becomes something that can be exploited in all different ways. The sweeping campaign of Donald J. Trump in past presidential elections reflected his unwavering push for immigration policies by demonising immigrants from Mexico and Global South countries.
In 2021, around 6,000 migrants from Morocco, with their administration’s acknowledgement, entered Ceuta, a Spanish enclave city. In response, an extensive uproar broke out in the streets of Spain. Morocco was aware that immigration was a pivotal political issue there. In this case, buffer states across the world see immigration as a threat, but larger countries exploit the same threat. In 2010, Muammar Gaddafi put forward a warning that he would allow large-scale migration from sub-Saharan countries to Europe through Libya unless Europe paid five billion euros per year.
Borders, Security, and the New Politics of Migration
Apart from being a geopolitical threat, migration has been orchestrated as rhetoric in certain terrains. Particularly in the pursuit of building strong border enforcement, governments spend billions. For instance, in 2021 alone, the USA spent 1.9 billion dollars on US Border Patrol along the Mexican border; likewise, the coast guard agency Frontex spent 922 million euros on the EU border.
In tandem with that, when the Cold War ended, there were just 15 nation-state border walls, but three decades later, that number has exponentially increased to over 70. This market is worth tens of billions worldwide, growing rapidly in the West, even though the West is not at the top of most sheltering regions for forcibly displaced populations.
According to statistics, Iran and Turkey reside at the top of the list of countries hosting the most forcibly displaced folks. This brings the political maneuvering of Europe into the light. Immigration became a major political concern in Europe following the 1990s. With the outpouring of migration, mainstream media were bound to cover conflict-based and negative tidings, which spiked public questioning.
Subsequently, it turned out to be politically significant, as politicians prompted voters to support anti-immigration parties. In response, mainstream parties adopted stricter immigration policies to compete. That is why anti-immigration parties influence policies beyond immigration vulnerabilities in the public sphere — possessing the potential to alter public attitudes, election outcomes, and government policies to a greater extent.
From the unraveling realities around us — from ranting political campaigns to lethal refugee transportation — the obscure and devastating facets of modern immigration policies stand clearly exposed.