From France to England, Australia, Spain and the US, national football teams have immigrants at the centre of their game. Leaders from migrant or diasporic backgrounds in public office across various countries have similarly contributed to shifts in political imagination and democratic practices. At the same time, countries facing a rapidly aging population like Japan have turned to foreign workers to make up for severe labour shortages. India’s STEM workforce is deeply embedded in the technological and scientific infrastructure of various countries. Against this backdrop, what explains the surge in anti-immigrant policies across different countries and regions?The World Migration Report 2026, issued by the International Organisation for Migration, makes a compelling case for well-managed migration, particularly in relation to extending necessary support for the national workforce and filling critical gaps in specific domains of labour such as healthcare, technology, and manufacturing. The report underlines migrants’ crucial role in driving innovation, and maintaining economic stability across both developed and developing nations, and, by extension, in expanding possibilities for social co-existence. But the larger question is: If migration is beneficial in general, why is there a growing resentment towards migrants?Contemporary deliberations on migrationMigration is as old as human civilisation. However, contemporary deliberations on migration are eclipsed by a curated figure of the migrant: a constructed outsider draining the host country of its resources and making matters worse for its natives. The migrant is often cast as a source of disruption, deviance, and moral disharmony. Their arrival is frequently framed as a threat to the country’s national culture, moral order, and, in the long-run, an unsettling demographic shift.Nationalism of a markedly exclusivist type – one that derives its appeal from a strict insider-outsider binary – fuels the anti-migration sentiment. The peculiar obsession with who is a native and a rigid framework for recognition along those lines creates the conditions for ‘insiders’ to unite against ‘outsiders’. Populist politics, in the name of representing the ‘will of the people’, furthers the case for an anti-immigrant nativism, a politics that appears to be gaining ground across Europe. Populist leaders capitalise on native’s apprehensions and anxieties over jobs and general welfare. Their political rhetoric often calls for principled opposition to allowing those displaced or ravaged by war and conflict to find refuge in their country. Story continues below this adNotwithstanding the growing anti-migration global political culture, is there an intellectual and political merit in looking at the benefits of migration? Can one make sense of migration from the vantage point of demography and economy via prominent theoretical interventions made in the modern age? Demographic and economic imperative for migration One of the earliest modern theorisations around migration is traced to the famous European geographer Ernst Georg Ravenstein in the 1880s. While formulating his laws of migration, he identified it as fundamentally economic in nature. But one of the most well-known and cited interventions came several decades later from University of Georgia sociologist Everett S Lee. In his 1966 paper, ‘A theory of migration’, Lee explained it through negative push factors at the place of origin and positive pull factors associated with the destination. Lee extensively built on Ravenstein’s laws of migration and promisingly refined the thesis that the whole ‘migration is economic in nature’. On the other hand, structural and systems theorists attend to the bearings of the global economic order on labour flow in the international market. The eminent American economist Michael Piore, in his 1979 classic, Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies, argued that developed economies are structurally dependent on migrants to perform low-wage, bottom-tier jobs that native workers are unwilling to take up. Story continues below this adHierarchical structure of world economy The prominent American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, well-known for his world-systems theory, looked at migration as an unpleasant consequence of global capitalism. In his theory, the world economy is structured hierarchically into three main categories: core, periphery, and semiperiphery. Unlike Piore, Wallerstein highlighted the exploitative relationship between the core and peripheral economies.He asserted that the first world’s ‘core’ nations draw peripheral economies into a crippling equation of dependence that uproots their local labour force, leaving many with little choice but to take the plunge in global migration flows – an act that marginalises them further in this new global economic order.The developed world requires more labour in healthcare, sanitation, and care for the elderly, people with mental illnesses, and the terminally ill. Since life expectancy has significantly gone up in prosperous nations of the world, populations are no longer as young as they were and will age further in the coming decades. Growing need for cheap labourMoreover, there is a notable increase in the number of terminally ill and immobile people surviving through excessive medicalisation. They need prolonged care, and migrant workers usually constitute a significant proportion of the workforce in such sectors. Story continues below this adAt the same time, the expansion of transnational multinational corporations has further intensified the demand for cheap labour across global production networks. Manufacturing sites in several parts of the world rely heavily on the labourers from the Global South or the ‘periphery’ in Wallerstein’s terminology.Thus, the landscape of migration is premised on a range of economic factors. As agriculture and local markets become incapable of offering adequate and secure livelihoods, people are ‘pushed’ out of their home geographies. For a minor percentage of this lot, migration is not just a matter of economic necessity. They find the ‘pull’ of the destination – higher wages and a more comfortable living – difficult to resist.While these theories and real-life scenarios help comprehend the imperatives behind migration, it is not devoid of hierarchy and unevenly distributed degree of dignity and recognition. Nonetheless, there are numerous examples of highly accomplished professionals significantly adding to the migrated nation’s profile. Migrants’ contribution to nation-buildingProminent academics from Asia, Africa, and Latin America have enriched universities across the developed world and contributed to the global standing of their institutions. The history of the Nobel Prize offers examples of laureates who were migrants and made remarkable contributions in various fields, particularly in the US and Western Europe.Story continues below this adSports offer another case for migration vis-a-vis nation-building and recognition. Consider the national football teams of leading European nations and it is difficult to overlook the presence of migrants in them. The French national team perhaps offers the most striking example. For decades, some of its star footballers have been migrants.The presence of leaders from migrant and diasporic backgrounds in public offices has similarly contributed to crucial shifts in political imagination and practice. Whether it is Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, or Australia, the presence of leaders with different ethnic origins has directly contributed to a more plural and dialogic (characterised by dialogue) democratic practice.Many of them have spoken for an inclusive politics that looks at nation-building not from a strict and limiting insider-outsider lens but a broader universal framework premised on equal rights and dignity.India’s STEM workforceCloser to home, the presence of India’s STEM workforce across the prosperous territories of the world does not warrant a mention. Some of the most prominent persons in the IT world are Indians. Notably, the Indian diaspora is the largest in the world. States like Kerala and Gujarat have benefitted massively from remittances. Story continues below this adThe India Centre for Migration (ICM), set up by the Ministry of External Affairs in 2008, is a research think-tank committed to deliberating on various aspects of international migration and mobility, keeping in view the trends and dynamics of the international labour market. The centre is committed to training migrant workers to enhance their skill-set, alongside ensuring their safety. Despite all this, migrants are facing a backlash.Making sense of the persistent backlash against migrantsOne starting point could be pervasive misinformation. Social media’s role in misleading millions through false narratives and propaganda is no news. The existing array of economic anxieties and concerns pertaining to the loss of culture are exploited for spreading these narratives, as well as populist politics.One of the most serious consequences of this politics is the growing tendency to treat ‘all migration as illegal’. While states have the right to regulate their borders and check unauthorised migrations, conflating irregular migration with its legal variant is problematic. Political leaders of conservative bent have amplified the issue. Some of the most pressing issues of daily national life – from housing to wages to security and safety – are presented as problems that cannot be addressed if migration is not stopped.Bordering (2019), a work of extraordinary intellectual merit by Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss, and Katheryn Cassidy, argues that the controlling of borders is no longer about national frontiers. Borders are reproduced within everyday social spaces, which leads to more uncertainties.Story continues below this adWhat is therefore required is a conscious move from a hasty and reactive take on migration to a more humane and holistic approach. The idea is to push for a move from migration as a forced survival strategy to becoming an informed choice. Amartya Sen’s plea in this regard – to attend to distress drivers at source and look into possibilities of right allocation of capital and funds at the local level – can be quite effective.Post read questions1. Contemporary anti-migration politics is increasingly constructed around an insider-outsider binary. Examine how nationalism and populism have contributed to the politicisation of migration.2. The global movement of labour reflects not only individual aspirations but also the structural requirements of global capitalism. Explain.3. How does the demographic ageing of developed countries create a structural demand for migrant labour? Examine with suitable examples.Story continues below this ad4. How does misinformation and political propaganda shape public perceptions of migration? Discuss the role of social media and populist politics in this process.5. The global movement of labour reflects not only individual aspirations but also the structural requirements of global capitalism. Discuss with reference to Michael Piore and Immanuel Wallerstein.(Irfanullah Farooqi is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.) Share your thoughts and ideas on UPSC Special articles with ashiya.parveen@indianexpress.com.Click Here to read the UPSC Essentials magazine for August 2026. Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter and stay updated with the news cues from the past week.Stay updated with the latest UPSC articles by joining our Telegram channel – IndianExpress UPSC Hub, and follow us on Instagram and X.