How the West Misimagines Migrants and Migration

Many of American Vice President JD Vance's statements at the Munich Security Conference in Germany have been scrutinized and criticized. They were called ‘incorrect’ and ‘unacceptable’. However, one of his comments, regarding mass migration, where he accused European governments of ignoring voter concerns on migration, went largely unquestioned. Rather, it was echoed by others. One such echo was the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, who supported Vance’s stance.

U.S-Mexico Border Wall. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In an interview with Politico, Frederiksen said that ‘the Trump administration’s Vice President JD Vance was right’ regarding migration—the ‘mass arrival of foreigners’ should be limited. This ‘mass migration into Europe’, she said, threatens daily life on the continent. 

This fear, captured by the word “threat”, is not newfound in the Western political sphere. It has been there since the 1960s, says Hein de Haas in The Myth of Invasion: The Inconvenient Realities of African Migration to Europe and is a significant theme in migration discourse in the West (statements, related policies, even academic inquiry). Haas says migration to Europe by non-Western migrants is not new nor inherently violent.

But this fear has little to do with the facts around migration itself and more so, with the imagination of the Western migration discourse. Western migration discourse misimagines migration not only as a crisis, but as a deviation from the state order, rooted in colonial and epistemic violence that continues to govern both policies and perceptions. 

Alexandria Innes, a lecturer of International Relations at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, in Ethical Aspects of Migration Flows writes that the theorization of ethics of migration continues to grapple within the state framework despite its limits. The state and its borders do not reflect the movement of the people. Transnational political identities are neither exceptional nor is the act of migration itself. Despite that, there is an insistence on viewing migration as such and consequently the migrant as a threat.

The statements of the Western politician can be understood as natural, given Innes' input, who critiques the state as an inadequate container for migrant realities. Yet, it dominates migration ethics. But why? Because the state is seen as a protective barrier. It shields Western citizens from the perceived threat of non-Western migrants. 

This raises a crucial question: What are the roots of this perception, and how was it constructed? Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak refers to this as epistemic violence—a form of violence not enacted through physical force, but through the erasure of knowledge systems. It occurs when certain histories, particularly non-Western ways of knowing and living, are excluded or distorted, either by failing to inquire into them altogether or by engaging with them through a narrow, often Eurocentric lens that lacks subjectivity and obscures alternative realities.

In the Western migration discourse, state logic, power, and domination take precedence over migrants as the subject of inquiry, committing epistemic violence.

Epistemic Violence   

When we try to ‘know’ or understand a phenomenon, we first treat it as a subject—something not fully understood or agreed upon. As more people come to recognize and accept it, it becomes an object—something fixed, known, and widely acknowledged. The philosophical journey a phenomenon takes from being a subject to becoming an object is what we call an episteme—a way of knowing that shapes how we understand the world.

Spivak’s concept of epistemic violence in Can the Subaltern Speak? refers to the erasure or distortion of knowledge systems, especially those of marginalized people, by dominant ways of knowing. Thus, it is not just what we know but how we know, which is governed by dominant analytical lenses. 

Migration in this light is not studied for what it is, but through a Western, state-centric lens that treats it as a deviation or crisis, says Innes, while noting these gaps in migration literature. 

Due to these gaps in the literature, the lives of the marginalized are not truly spoken for or truly known because they are never the center of inquiry. Which leads to migration not being seen as a historical constant, but as an interruption to an otherwise stable nation-state system, interrupted by migrants, not just at the borders but inside the country. This knowledge production, as theorized by Spivak, is also manifested in state policies such as Denmark’s Ghetto Law of 2018, which is based on epistemic limits of understanding the migrants. 

When Does ‘Migration’ End—A Case Study of Denmark

Living in a Contested Territory—Ghettos

Anika Seemann, a Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, in The Danish ‘ghetto initiatives’ and the changing nature of social citizenship, 2004–2018, traces the ghetto policy of Denmark. A report on Demographic Trends in Nøjsomhed-Sydvej, published by Aarhus University, Denmark, also concludes that the Danish government published its first strategy against so-called “ghettoization” in 2004, a policy aimed at non-Western migrants.

The "Ghetto Package" refers to a set of legislative proposals impacting housing, education, and criminal justice policies in predominantly ethnic-minority, non-Western communities, as identified by the Open Society Justice Initiative. 

According to the Danish government, these policies that were passed as Law in 2018, sought to prevent areas from separating from the rest of the Danish society “physically, culturally and economically”. These policies were scrutinized and criticized by the United Nations Human Rights Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as they limited the economic, social and cultural rights of the migrants. Thus, there is not only a struggle migrants face to enter the state, but also the society.

Entering the society does not guarantee being accepted by the society. These ghettos are referred to as ‘parallel societies’ by the Danish authorities, says Feargus O'Sullivan, a London-based journalist, in The Guardian. The Danish government insists on giving the residents of these ghettos, the migrants, the same life, however, this similarity of life is not the similarity of rights. 

Borders of Ghettos—Limits of Rights

In the Sixth Periodic Report submitted by Denmark under articles 16 and 17 of the Covenant, due in 2018 to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, published by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, explicit concern for the ghettos was reported.

The Committee was concerned about the ghettos, where two-thirds of the population was of “non-Western” background. These ghettos are those that the government aimed to integrate, but its practices suggest otherwise.

O'Sullivan highlights 'integrative practices' that include measures such as revoking migrant family benefits if pre-school children fail to spend at least 25 hours a week in state-run kindergartens, which impose a maximum migrant intake of 30%, as well as require language testing. However, such practices are more coercive than truly integrative, ultimately disadvantaging not only migrants but also their children.  

The disadvantaged position of migrant children in public schools was also acknowledged by the Committee, which described these practices as a ‘continuous reduction in the social benefits to migrants.’ However, this was not the only hardship migrants faced. Beyond restricted rights, they were also confronted with the constant threat of eviction. Forced evictions and other forms of displacement leave migrants stranded in unfamiliar territories with severely limited rights.  

Another Migration—Evictions  

An eviction plagued 96 households in Nøjsomhed-Sydvej, under the Ghetto Law. The Ghetto Law, Miranda Bryant, Nordic correspondent to The Guardian, notes, is a law which allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas where at least half of the residents have a “non-Western” background.

Although demolition is not reported, the 96 households that were faced with eviction comprised 66 per cent “non-Western” migrants, while “non-Western” individuals only comprised 54.6 per cent of the residents of Nøjsomhed-Sydvej. This was termed as disproportionate by the Demographic report on 96 terminated households in Nøjsomhed-Sydvej, published by Aarhus University.

This led to the actions of the government being legally challenged and on February 13th, 2025, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) said that Denmark’s “Ghetto Law” of 2018 is a form of direct discrimination based on ethnic origin, and a breach of the EU law on ethnic discrimination.

The pursuit of justice was long, but after 21 years of discriminatory policy, the “Ghetto List” initiative was finally registered as such. Then challenged and now reviewed, the initiative was recognized as exclusionary rather than integrative.

However, the CJEU and its statement on Denmark’s “Ghetto Law” of 2018 are only a legal analysis of the discriminatory law. These 21-year-old policy practices and assaults on the rights of migrants cannot be reduced to a telltale of discrimination. It underscores broader questions—how justice was served in 21 years, yet two generations of residents were not sufficient for the ‘non-Western’ migrants to receive an identity beyond their single act of migration.

Denmark and its treatment of migrants reveal a larger continuum of migration. Migration is not merely a literal movement of people, but a symbolic condition, where migrants are kept in constant motion since they ‘do not belong’ to the country and its culture, they cannot be offered a place within the society.

These migrants are expected to undergo a symbolic transformation from non-Western to Western in order to find a place in Western society, to be fully accepted. This expectation is rooted in the defensive logic of preventing the imagined threat of non-Western dominance over the Western way of living. This fear is legitimized through centring historical narratives of migration over the particular geographical area—the West. 

Innes’ observation on the centrality of the West in migration literature has already been pointed out. Bringing forward the ideas of migration flows only through Western eyes, and especially around the migration of European colonial powers. These accounts are then treated as the sole account of international migration, due to the gap in the literature, says Innes. Thus, leading to a limited imagination of migration.

Antiquity of Migration or Antiquity of Colonial Practices?

Migration theorists have sought to normalize migration by emphasizing that it is not a recent phenomenon, but rather a long-standing human practice accelerated by globalization.  It is a phenomenon with antiquity, preceding even Homo Sapiens. The Age of Migration by Stephen Castles, Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller, often heralded as a foundational text in critical migration literature, falls under this category. 

The authors historicize migration as an ancient and inherently human process, tracing its roots from the movements of Homo erectus and earlier hominids, through the migrations of the Middle Ages, and in the expansive global movements driven by European colonial powers.

Applying Spivak’s concept of epistemic violence to critical migration studies reveals that the issue lies not only in what is said about migration, but also in how it is said—often in ways that obscure alternative realities. This makes it crucial to examine the underlying themes and language used when discussing migration.  

First, by centering violent and colonial histories as the default narrative of migration, the work unintentionally steers the idea that migration is inherently violent. Schematically, one interprets that those who migrate bring with them a sort of violence.

Second, citing the migration of homo erectus, Castles, Haas, and Miller write that this species “displaced all other hominids.” The dominant language of conquest sneaks in even when theorists do not notice it. Spivak calls this “an unrecognized contradiction”. While intending to normalize migration, the theorists unintentionally fall into describing migration as a tale of evolutionary victory, normalizing a worldview where movement is synonymous with colonization or displacement, since they do not consider histories of migration outside that of European Colonialism. The theorists do not endorse colonialism, but they do not present a past beyond it, de-centring it and moving towards more peaceful instances of international migration.

Thus, we lose peaceful histories of international migration due to the limits of methods or the epistemic limits of knowing. These histories become marginal and silenced—unintentionally, through unrecognition. Consequently, the lives of those who embody peaceful migrations in the modern world also fall silent and are instead scrutinized, managed, governed with the speculation remnant from histories of conquest and displacement, not recognising how human it is to explore. This desire needs to be kept at the forefront in migration discourse to move forward from the limits of the state framework. 

Beyond Rights: Migration as Human Desire

Within the state-centric framework, there is a persistent tendency to portray migration as an ancient phenomenon to justify the right to migrate, while simultaneously circumscribing the conditions under which migrants are granted rights. Critical questions emerge: What rights do migrants truly possess once they reach a host country? And are there only narrow, predetermined ways of framing the migration question?  

Such an approach reduces migrants to mere subjects of judicial and legislative scrutiny. While there is a formal insistence on treating migrants as equals, the socio-political environment often resists fully accepting them as such. It is therefore unsurprising that migration flows are frequently described through metaphors of disaster—"floods," "waves," "plagues." These are not neutral terms, constructing migrants as forces of nature run amok, framing them as intruders rather than individuals.

To move beyond this restrictive framework, we must radically reimagine both what migration is and who migrants are. We must attend to how migrants experience their lives, how they build communities beyond the single act of movement, and how they contribute to the cultural fabric of a country. We must cultivate a genuine curiosity about the humanness of migrants.  

As Edward Said argues in The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations, culture is never monolithic; its vitality resides in its margins and unofficial histories. It is through these counter-histories that we can begin to view migration not as a crisis, but as an ancient, ongoing dialogue between peoples.  

Toward a Decolonial Ethics of Migration

We can start by asking how we usually tell the histories of the diffusion of ideas—like the diffusion of Hindu-Arabic numerals into Europe.

Raffaele Danna of the University of Cambridge, in Figuring Out: The Spread of Hindu-Arabic Numerals in the European Tradition of Practical Mathematics (13th–16th Centuries), observes that most of the work on this topic simply takes this diffusion as a natural or universal process.

Rarely is it treated as a case study in international migration. The key questions—how these ideas spread and who was responsible for their movement—are often overlooked. While a complete history cannot be reconstructed here, asking these questions provides an important example of how migration and migrants can be understood beyond narrow Western perspectives.

In order to finally comprehend migration, we need to place marginalized epistemologies and histories at its center—not as footnotes or exceptions, but as valid grounding for theory. This means breaking from the dream that European colonialism is the only ethical or significant framework upon which to think about migration.

Rather, we need to take seriously the writings of medieval Islamic geographers and cartographers, Ancient Chinese geographical literature and travel accounts, and other such traditions. Their travel and movement accounts need to be accepted as genuine accounts of global migration, not dismissed or marginalized.

In following the lead of scholars such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, academic study has to prioritize migrants themselves as objects of knowledge, not just simply seeing them from the perspective of the state. Their testimonies need to be documented, given voice, and saved—through interviews, oral histories, and first-person accounts.

Migrants should not be reduced to passive recipients of state largesse, but are instead acknowledged as agents of dense, active histories of movement and encounter. Hearing their stories is not merely an ethical imperative; it is an epistemological imperative. By hearing them out, alone, can we know migration as a human activity, and not as a mere policy or political issue.

Criticizing the biases in migration writing is only the beginning. We need to move toward the recovery of migrant subjectivity—how migrants experience the world, move, and live, apart from state or political discourses. True acknowledgment of migrants as human beings in equal and full senses cannot rely on their integration into the host countries. Instead, it should be based on appreciation of them as they are—people whose mobility is merely a part of very old, vibrant histories of world interconnectedness.

This requires a fundamental rethink of migration—one attuned to not just histories of conflict and displacement, but histories of peaceful and purposeful movement. So long as we persist in defending the "borders" of thought, we are unable to effectively challenge physical borders as well.

Edited by Eshal Zahur

Zahra Khalid (she/her) is a columnist at Political Pandora and a student of International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is interested in power dynamics, violence, and the resilience of those resisting both. Zahra’s research focuses on genocide analysis and its aftermath, particularly the challenges faced by divided societies and the complex, often non-linear impacts of migration.

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References:

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Keywords: Migration Policy, Epistemic Violence, JD Vance Munich Speech, Western Migration Discourse, Danish Ghetto Law, Mette Frederiksen Migration Stance, Postcolonial Migration Theory, Critical Migration Studies, Non-Western Migrants in Europe, EU Court on Denmark Migration Law, Spivak Can The Subaltern Speak, Alexandria Innes Migration Ethics, Colonial Legacy and Migration, Human Rights and Migration, Decolonial Migration Framework.