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Once a minor concern, migration now ranks as one of Europe’s top political issues among voters. As fertility rates decline and strategic independence becomes a priority, calls for both low- and high-skilled immigration are growing among Europe’s leaders. We sketch out four scenarios for the future of European migration.

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Amid the Trump Administration’s dissolution of federal institutions and crackdown on academic institutions, several EU member states have wasted no time in trying to charm talented workers and academics from the US.

Examples abound: France has recently expanded funding programs through its national research agencies and elite institutions to attract American researchers disillusioned with political instability and budget cuts at home. Germany aims to invest millions from its climate and infrastructure package in doing the same. Universities in the Netherlands and government leaders in Scandinavia announced plans to ramp up international hiring, explicitly citing concerns over academic freedom in the US.

These moves signal more than opportunism; they reflect a growing recognition that Europe must compete to remain relevant in the race for innovation and knowledge leadership.

Yet this intellectual courtship is not occurring in a vacuum. Europe, which faces population decline and significant population ageing, has seen migration of highly skilled workers as a core part of a winning strategy. However, the eagerness of European leaders to support an academic renaissance on the continent highlights at the same time many of the contradictions, complexities, and critical risks in European migration policy.

At a crossroads, Europe is faced with an array of migration policy options for managing its population challenge. Policymakers on the national and European levels are increasingly signalling that they are willing to take considerable action in this area. But instead of thinking about the next political cycle or two, when the consequences of migration policy decisions will hardly have had time to materialise at all, we may be well served to look at least 20 to 30 years into the future and dare to explore how these developments could play out over the long term.

The population time bomb

To understand why long-term thinking is not just prudent but necessary, it is crucial to begin with the demographic realities that underpin the migration debate. To be sure, in a policy area that is as negatively charged as migration it can be nearly impossible to achieve broad agreement on just about anything, but the demographic facts underlying the issue are undisputable.

For one, Europe’s population is on the cusp of decline. The bloc’s population is projected to peak in 2026 and then begin a steady decline, eventually losing around 6% of the population size by 2100.

Europe is also ageing, with life expectancies that are already among the highest in the world. Fertility rates in the EU have been well below the replacement rate (2.1 children per woman) for decades and are expected to further decline. Together, these trends present Europe with several challenges: a shrinking workforce, an increased reliance on social security nets and public finances, rising healthcare demands, increased urban-rural polarisation, and stagnation or possibly even decline of GDP to name just a few.

With all the solutions to drive population growth and labour force participation organically proving either too ineffective (increased childcare benefits and tax credits), too slow (mass training/upskilling), too impractical (rapid automation), too politically unpopular (cutting transfer payments and extensively increasing the retirement age) or too legally or ethically dubious (disincentives for adult couples who choose to not have multiple children), there is only one approach left to stave off population decline: migration from outside the EU.

Migration turns from dire need to a political flashpoint

This solution is of course not at all new. Already in the 1950s, predominantly western and northern European countries welcomed workers from as close as Italy and Yugoslavia and as far-flung as Turkey and France’s former African colonies to cover labour shortages. Labour migration under so-called “guest worker” schemes persisted for decades, attracting millions of workers. However, the term “guest worker” turned out to be somewhat of a misnomer, with between 20-30% of those that came to work temporarily eventually settling permanently along with their families in host countries. Over several decades, these workers and their families became part-and-parcel of the European demographic landscape.

Despite rumblings from the extreme right, this process was not a major issue for most voters and their representatives until later waves of migration made their way past the EU frontier. Starting in the 1990s, immigration became and remains a political flashpoint and an opportunity for some politicians across the political spectrum to capitalise on growing public anxiety around unprecedented demographic change, interrogate the longer history of European migration and identity, and challenge fundamental principles of the EU such as free movement of people and labour.

Migration is no longer seen as just a solution, it is also a risk and a core concern of voters: in 2024, an Ipsos survey found that 43% of French voters polled saw migration as a major issue influencing their vote, while in the 2025 German federal election, 81% of voters surveyed by YouGov said that migration over the past ten years had been excessive and mismanaged.

It is crucial to note, however, that this development is as much a battle over public perception and narrative building as it is about actual policy and the realities of migration. For example, an EU-wide survey from 2021 found that 68% of respondents believed that immigration to their country was significantly higher than it actually was. The same study also revealed that only 38% of Europeans consider themselves to be well informed about immigration and integration policy.

In a climate where migration is both increasingly needed and increasingly contested by policymakers and electorates alike, what could migration policy in Europe look like, and what implications could policymakers’ choices have over the long term? Multiple competing and plausible scenarios must be considered, since today’s actions trigger second- and third-order effects that extend far beyond immediate outcomes. Below, we explore four possible and divergent paths.

scenario one: Europe leans into migrant labour

Faced with the hard truth of demographic decline, European policymakers may decide to embrace what has long been an uncomfortable solution: large-scale, sustained labour migration from beyond the EU. With social protections under strain, rural depopulation accelerating, and GDP growth flatlining, the shift can be cast as a pragmatic response to structural necessity.

It begins with targeted labour migration agreements with selected countries, likely those geographically close to the EU frontiers and those with reputations for highly skilled workers in specific sectors. Governments ramp up investment in bilateral mobility partnerships, vocational credential recognition systems, and fast-track visa schemes. Employers, especially in healthcare, agriculture, construction, and logistics, are given the tools to fill persistent vacancies with reduced bureaucracy. The initial signs are likely to be promising: public budgets stabilise, core services are maintained, and urban economic centres grow more dynamic.

But early optimism masks deeper tensions. As the number of migrants grows, so does political polarisation. In regions already hollowed out by industrial decline and where voters feel culturally alienated, “great replacement” narratives find fertile ground. Anti-immigration sentiments take root not only on the far right but also among disaffected centrist voters. Election cycles become more volatile, with mainstream parties increasingly torn between appeasing nativist sentiment and sustaining economic imperatives.

Meanwhile, an intensive focus on recruitment comes to the detriment of integration policies, which prove inconsistent in scope and variable in impact. Without robust investments in language training, affordable housing, and civic participation, social cohesion frays further. Migrants, particularly in low-wage sectors, form or join existing parallel societies at the fringes of urban centres, creating a visual and social landscape ripe for political scapegoating.

The response is a mixture of reaction and improvisation. Some governments introduce extensive and restrictive means testing for public benefits, while others double down on redistribution to pacify restive native populations. But none of these solutions address a core paradox: that the very populations whose labour sustains Europe’s welfare model are increasingly excluded from its social contract.

Ethically, the approach also raises uncomfortable questions. By incentivising the departure of skilled and ambitious individuals from poorer developing countries, Europe risks worsening inequality at a global scale. The migration of nurses from the Philippines to Germany, or engineers from Nigeria to Sweden, leave gaping holes in their home societies. What responsibility does Europe bear for the long-term consequences of this talent extraction?

Looking further ahead, automation looms as a highly disruptive force. As AI and robotics solutions become more affordable, widespread, and socially accepted, they will transform sectors like eldercare, retail, and transportation and could eventually eliminate the demand for low-wage migrant labour. What happens to millions of migrants who were welcomed in times of need but now find themselves surplus to economic requirements?

Finally, there’s the question of appeal. Will Europe remain attractive to migrants in a world where African and Asian economies are rapidly ascendant? If highgrowth regions begin offering competitive wages and political stability, will Europe need to compete harder, or reinvent its model altogether?

This approach may be the most straightforward path to staving off demographic collapse and maintaining economic growth, but it is also a high-wire act requiring decades of careful political and social balancing, continuous policy learning, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable trade-offs head-on.

Scenario Two: Ivory Tower Europe

Following the recent fervour to reverse the transatlantic brain drain, Europe could instead tighten the focus of its migration agenda to exclusively favour the globally mobile elite: scientists, engineers, doctors, and academics. Under this model, the EU becomes a sanctuary for research, innovation, and knowledge creation, somewhat of a counterweight to America’s political unpredictability.

Initially, the effort is hailed as a strategic victory. European universities recruit top-tier researchers who bring both prestige and research funding. Tech clusters blossom in central and eastern European capitals eager to host new incubators and biotech parks. Policymakers market the bloc as a zone of intellectual freedom, human rights, and enlightened governance.

Yet for all its short-term rewards, the model rests on a narrow base. Highly skilled migrants may boost patents and academic citations, but they do not stock grocery shelves, build houses, or staff elderly care homes. Europe’s economy, like any other, runs not only on high-skilled innovation but also on low- and mid-skilled labour. Without mechanisms to attract and integrate these workers, the foundations of prosperity begin to show strain.

Furthermore, the social optics of this approach are fraught. By elevating “desirable” migrants while leaving others to languish under restrictive asylum and visa regimes, Europe cultivates an image of exclusivity that undermines its professed commitment to human rights and multilateralism. Within this bifurcated system, an uncomfortable analogy emerges: a more academically inclined, 21st-century version of the Gastarbeiter, highly skilled labour migrants allowed to contribute at the highest levels of knowledge work, but often without meaningful pathways to full inclusion in the social and civic fabric.

Another danger lurks beneath the surface. If the United States experiences political normalisation over the medium term and recommits to scientific excellence, or offers more generous research incentives, the talent pipeline may begin to dry up. Europe could then be left with the shell of an intellectual migration strategy dependent on circumstances beyond its control and with little to offer the broader economy.

And what of those who remain in the EU under this model? In a fragmented regulatory landscape, researchers are likely to struggle with cross-border collaboration, inconsistent tax regimes, and limited scalability for scientific startups. Some may begin to question whether the EU, for all its aspirations, can truly replicate the unified research ecosystem they once enjoyed in the US.

In the long term, this model risks deepening societal bifurcation, leaving Europe with a gleaming technocratic elite and a frustrated, disconnected majority. Can a continent thrive when only the best and brightest are welcomed, while the rest – both native and those that have immigrated – feel increasingly excluded from the promises of progress?

Scenario Three: An Uneasy Patchwork

Alternatively, Europe may acknowledge its demographic and labour dilemmas but remain unable or unwilling to develop a coordinated migration-supported response. The EU’s role may continue to be limited to offering financial incentives, coordinating cross-border pilot projects, and convening member states in endless rounds of consultations. In this case, the most impactful decision-making authority remains with national governments, each of which charts its own course according to domestic political winds.

What emerges is a mosaic of competing migration policies across the continent. Some member states pursue an aggressive talent acquisition strategy, fast-tracking visas and opening public sector jobs to non-EU migrants. Others, acting on years of experience with political unrest related to migration, clamp down even further on new arrivals, while quietly accepting circular labour agreements to staff critical roles.

This decentralised approach offers some flexibility but also breeds inconsistency and inefficiency. Migrants struggle to navigate a confusing array of national rules and social norms. Employers are hesitant to invest in long-term workforce planning amid legal uncertainty. Political capital is squandered on jurisdictional disputes rather than proactive problem-solving.

Second- and third-order effects may begin to compound over the medium to long term. Member states with more generous regimes become magnets for new arrivals, sparking domestic backlash and calls for stricter border controls. As public confidence wanes, even progressive countries begin to retreat into more insular positions.

The fragmentation also undermines the Schengen Area’s foundations. With the potential emergence of more differentiated admission criteria and enforcement practices, internal border checks reappear more frequently, slowing commerce and eroding one of the EU’s signature achievements. Meanwhile, third countries struggle to understand what “European migration policy” actually means, complicating diplomatic and development negotiations.

Perhaps most concerningly, the lack of unity corrodes solidarity at a deeper level. Citizens begin to question the legitimacy of an EU that cannot coordinate on existential challenges. Migration policy becomes yet another battleground for identity politics, national exceptionalism, and intergovernmental distrust.

Moreover, as climate-driven displacement accelerates, this disjointed approach leaves Europe ill-prepared. Without common frameworks, the continent assumes a reactive rather than strategic posture, pulled from one crisis to the next with little foresight or resilience.

The patchwork may work for a while. It allows for experimentation and may produce valuable local innovations. But absent a common vision, Europe’s response to migration risks being less than the sum of its parts: an increasingly brittle facade masking the lack of a durable, collective strategy.

Scenario Four: EU Expansionism

In an effort to sidestep the political difficulties of traditional migration, Europe could instead opt for a radically different strategy: enlargement. Over the next few decades, the EU could extend membership to Balkan states, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and perhaps even Ukraine. The goal is dual: to increase the size of the internal labour pool and to reinforce geopolitical stability on the continent’s periphery.

The demographic benefits are immediate. Barring any highly restrictive temporary accession measures, new citizens from Skopje to Kyiv quickly gain the right to live and work anywhere in the Union, alleviating labour shortages in other member states. Population growth in cities may begin to pick up again, and even rural districts, once emptying out, experience a cautious revival. The strategy also reenergises the European project, which had long suffered from a narrative of decline and stagnation.

Yet the expansion brings its own challenges. The newly acceded countries often experience massive outflows of skilled workers, leaving their public services strained and their economies increasingly dependent on remittances. Meanwhile, preexisting EU members express growing discomfort at the prospect of further fiscal redistribution and political integration with states they perceive as less committed to liberal democratic norms.

Political frictions mount. Questions of rule of law, judicial independence, and media freedom (already contentious with current member states such as Hungary and Poland) are amplified in the larger bloc. Governance becomes unwieldy and decision-making grinds slower. The Union becomes more vulnerable to veto politics and internal sabotage.

Cultural integration also proves difficult. The vision of a cohesive European identity, which is already strained, becomes more elusive. Citizens ask: what does it mean to be European in a Union of 30 or 35 members with deep historical, linguistic, and religious differences? Can shared institutions keep pace with such rapid geographic and cultural enlargement?

The broader world watches with interest, and some concern. Russia interprets EU expansion as a provocation, while China sees new economic opportunities. The United States, which may yet be preoccupied with internal upheaval, could offer any combination of disinterest, tepid support, or scepticism. Europe’s neighbourhood becomes a more contested space, demanding diplomatic finesse and security coordination on an unprecedented scale.

In theory, expansion solves several problems at once: economic, demographic, and strategic. But in practice, it risks transforming the Union into something it may not yet be prepared to manage: a vast and heterogeneous zone of half-integrated states with diverging priorities and fragile commitments to shared values. Is the EU ready to absorb not only new workers, but new narratives, histories, and political cultures? And if it is not, can it afford to let its geopolitical periphery drift?

At the crossroads of migration

Europe stands at a historic juncture, with the clock on its demographic timebomb ticking, its labour systems under growing strain, and its identity as a cohesive union increasingly questioned. Migration, once an auxiliary topic of policy and politics, has now become a main stage upon which the continent’s economic viability, political stability, and moral identity will be tested. Whether through proactive labour recruitment, elite intellectual courtship, patchwork national policies, or bold geopolitical expansion, Europe’s choices over the next decade will echo for generations.

Yet the debate cannot remain stuck in cycles of short-term electoral anxiety or reactive crisis management. Migration policy must be treated as a cornerstone of long-term strategy, not just a function of labour markets but a reflection of the Europe we aim to build. Without vision and coordination, Europe risks undermining the very fabric of its Union, amplifying inequality, and losing ground in an increasingly multipolar world.

Ultimately, the question is not whether Europe will need migrants (it already does, and will continue to). The true question is whether it can build the political courage, institutional clarity, and social consensus to do so in a way that is humane, sustainable, and future-oriented. In migration, as in other grand transitions, the path to long-term gain may indeed require short-term discomfort. But the cost of strategic paralysis may be far greater. Europe must choose not just who it welcomes, but what kind of society it wishes to become.

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