To live in Europe in the early twenty-first century is to daily witness governments and the police forces that act at their behest violating the rights of men, women, and children hailing from the “South.” In large part, this violence is perpetrated in the name of a “migratory crisis.” Politicians and large swaths of the media insist that the “old continent” is bursting at the seams with “illegal” or “irregular” migrants whose presence threatens its economic and demographic equilibrium (Beauchemin and Ichou 2016: 15). These claims are belied by reality. From Denmark to Germany, Spain, and beyond, immigration numbers have decreased in recent years (IOM 2020: 38) and, with them, as in the United States, prospects for economic growth (Goolsbee 2019). Most European countries are in need of foreign influx to fill jobs, counteract falling birth rates, increase tax bases required to shore up...

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