The final session of the 2026 AILA/GMS Global Migration Forum asked why migration systems are drifting away from harmonisation and toward re-nationalisation. That question captures one of the central tensions of contemporary migration policy. Migration is not disappearing as a global phenomenon. It is being reclassified by states as a national risk to control, and as an economic resource to select.
Emmanuel Ruchat at AILA AC26 in San Diego, CA, on 16 June 2026
Three forces help explain this movement: the contraction of development and humanitarian aid, the rise of popular votes and electoral mandates on immigration, and the growing preference for selected migration through talent, skills and shortage-occupation routes. France, the European Union, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States all illustrate different versions of the same broader transformation.
Development aid is shrinking, and migration pressure is moving downstream
Migration policy cannot be separated from Official Development Assistance, or ODA. When development and humanitarian budgets are reduced, the effects are not confined to aid programmes. They are displaced onto borders, asylum systems, informal routes, reception systems and courts.
Recent OECD data show a historic contraction in development aid. ODA by DAC members and associates fell to around USD 174.3 billion in 2025, representing 0.26% of combined GNI, a real-terms decline of about 23% from 2024. The cuts hit precisely the regions most connected to forced or constrained mobility: Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and least-developed countries. Humanitarian aid also fell sharply.
France is part of that trend. It remains a major donor, but its ODA has declined. This matters politically because European states are increasing pressure on migration control while reducing some of the instruments that stabilise countries of origin, transit and first reception.
The contradiction is simple. Europe wants fewer irregular arrivals, but it is cutting part of the financial architecture that helps reduce forced movement before it reaches Europe.
Popular votes are turning immigration into a sovereignty test
The second driver is democratic pressure. Immigration is increasingly submitted to direct or quasi-direct popular judgement: referendums, popular initiatives, European elections and national elections that operate as de facto referendums on immigration. These votes do not merely reflect anxiety; they produce policy.
Brexit remains the clearest European precedent. In 2016, Leave won with 51.9% against 48.1%, on turnout of 72.2%. The referendum transformed free movement from a technical feature of EU membership into a test of sovereignty. “Take back control” became the political grammar of migration re-nationalisation.
Switzerland is the laboratory of this dynamic. In 2014, the popular initiative “against mass immigration” passed by 50.3% to 49.7%, forcing Switzerland to reconcile a domestic democratic mandate with its relationship to EU free movement. More recently, in June 2026, Swiss voters rejected the SVP’s “No to a Switzerland with 10 million” initiative by roughly 55% to 45%. The initiative failed, but its political significance remains substantial. It would have capped the population at 10 million and, if the threshold were exceeded, could have forced Switzerland to terminate agreements including the EU free-movement agreement.
France shows the same mechanism through elections rather than referendums. Immigration, security and national control have become central themes of electoral mobilisation. European and legislative elections increasingly operate as indirect votes on whether the state is seen as controlling entry, residence, integration and removal. That dynamic pushes even centrist governments toward visible measures of control.
There is also a paradox that is often overlooked: immigrant-origin communities are not automatically pro-immigration constituencies. British ethnic-minority Leave voters, for example, often distinguished their own family histories from those of newer migrants and could support restriction while seeing themselves as successful examples of integration.
That paradox matters because it weakens a common assumption in migration politics: demographic diversity does not automatically generate a stable pro-immigration majority. Once established, naturalised or socially integrated, some groups may support restrictive policies if they perceive new migration as a threat to employment, housing, public services, identity or social recognition.
The political answer is not zero immigration; it is selected immigration
The third driver is economic. States are not simply closing migration channels. They are redesigning them. The emerging compromise is to restrict asylum, family migration, regularisation and irregular routes, while facilitating entry for workers, researchers, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, investors and shortage occupations.
France’s law of 26 January 2024 “to control immigration and improve integration” is a good illustration. It facilitates removal in cases involving serious offences, strengthens integration and language requirements, creates a temporary regularisation pathway for undocumented workers in shortage occupations, and reforms the Talent residence permit. The political message is not “no immigration”. It is controlled immigration, conditional integration and selected labour migration.
The French Talent card is central to this evolution. It can be issued for up to four years and targets categories such as qualified employees, researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, corporate officers, artists, internationally recognised profiles and medical or pharmaceutical professionals. It is presented as an instrument of economic attractiveness.
The numbers show the direction of travel. In 2024, France issued more than 340,000 first residence permits to third-country nationals, including more than 58,000 for economic reasons. That is more than triple the number of economic permits issued in 2011. The share remains smaller than family, student or humanitarian migration, but it is politically central because it fits the new language of usefulness, contribution and selection.
At EU level, the same trend appears through the EU Blue Card and the EU Talent Pool. In 2023, around 89,000 EU Blue Cards were issued to highly qualified non-EU workers. But the distribution shows how fragmented the supposedly European instrument remains: Germany issued about 69,000, around 78% of the total, while France issued about 4,000.
The EU Talent Pool confirms the same logic. It is designed as an EU-wide platform to facilitate international recruitment of jobseekers from outside Europe, especially for shortage occupations. But this is not harmonisation in the old sense. It is European coordination around national selection. The EU builds tools, but Member States retain decisive control over admission, labour-market needs and political acceptability.
Belgium: stricter asylum and family rules, but labour needs remain
Belgium is now a particularly relevant case. The 2025–2029 federal coalition agreement set a more restrictive direction on migration, with an emphasis on reducing asylum pressure, strengthening returns and tightening family reunification and integration rules.
Recent Belgian reforms and proposals include tougher family reunification conditions, stronger integration and self-sufficiency requirements, a higher citizenship fee and more emphasis on deportations and reception limits. The political message is clear: Belgium wants to reduce what is perceived as uncontrolled or insufficiently integrated migration.
But Belgium also illustrates the economic contradiction. It faces persistent labour shortages, and regional shortage-occupation lists are used to facilitate access to the labour market for foreign workers. Brussels and Wallonia both rely on shortage-occupation mechanisms to ease recruitment where domestic labour is insufficient.
Belgium therefore embodies the new European compromise: a harder line on asylum, family migration and integration, combined with pragmatic openness to workers in sectors where the economy lacks domestic supply.
Switzerland: direct democracy, EU free movement and skilled-labour dependence
Switzerland adds a distinct institutional dimension: direct democracy. The June 2026 rejection of the “No to 10 million” initiative avoided an immediate institutional clash with the EU, but the fact that roughly 45% of voters supported the proposal remains politically significant.
The initiative would have required action as population thresholds were reached and could ultimately have forced termination of the free-movement agreement with the EU, undermining the broader package of Swiss-EU bilateral agreements. In other words, a domestic popular vote could have destabilised an entire international mobility framework.
At the same time, Switzerland depends heavily on foreign labour. Its economy needs skilled workers, and the Federal Council’s quota policy reflects this. Switzerland continues to authorise thousands of qualified workers and specialists from third countries each year through B and L permit quotas.
Switzerland therefore captures the core dilemma of re-nationalisation: the electorate repeatedly demands control over population growth, infrastructure, housing and sovereignty, while the economy continues to require foreign labour and stable relations with the EU.
The US–EU exchange: different legal systems, same political direction
The transatlantic comparison adds an important layer. Europe and the United States face different migration geographies. The US is shaped by the southern border and hemisphere-wide displacement. Europe is shaped by the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But their political trajectories increasingly mirror each other.
In the United States, immigration policy is more executive-driven, polarised and litigation-heavy. Presidential authority, federal courts and state-level resistance all play a central role. Recent litigation around Temporary Protected Status, asylum access, removals and birthright citizenship shows that American migration policy is often shaped through confrontation between the executive branch and the judiciary.
Europe is moving through a different legal architecture. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum became applicable in 2026. It creates a more structured framework for screening, border procedures, responsibility-sharing, solidarity and returns. The European model is regulatory, negotiated and fragmented among Member States.
The contrast is therefore not US restriction versus EU openness. It is more precise to say that the US model is executive, judicial and polarised, while the EU model is regulatory, negotiated and fragmented. But both are moving toward more screening, more returns, more deterrence and more selection.
The exchange is also rhetorical. European parties increasingly borrow US-style language about borders, abuse of asylum and national identity. US actors, meanwhile, look to Europe as both a warning and a model: a warning against overloaded asylum systems, and a model for externalisation, safe-country concepts, visa controls and return partnerships.
The shared paradox is that both systems are politically competing to appear tougher on unwanted migration, while economically competing to attract selected migrants. The US relies on skilled-migration channels such as H-1B, O-1, L-1 and employment-based green card categories. The EU relies increasingly on the Blue Card, the Single Permit framework, national talent routes and the Talent Pool. Neither side is ending migration. Both are segmenting it.
France and the United States: two universal nations under pressure
France and the United States occupy a special place in this debate because they are arguably the two major Western nations whose national identities still most explicitly claim universal reach. Their founding languages are not purely ethnic, territorial or historical; they are normative.
The United States defines itself through the language of the Declaration of Independence, with its claim that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. France defines itself through the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and through the republican promise that citizenship is based on universal principles rather than ancestry.
This makes migration politically and philosophically harder for both countries. For states whose identity is mainly cultural, ethnic or historical, restrictive migration policy can be presented as preservation. For universal nations, restriction must be reconciled with a message that claims to speak beyond borders: liberty, equality, rights, citizenship and human dignity.
That tension explains why immigration debates in France and the US are so intense. They are not only debates about labour markets, borders or demography. They are debates about whether universalism still has operational meaning under conditions of mass displacement, political polarisation and state capacity limits.
France and the United States therefore face a deeper contradiction than many other countries. They want to preserve a universal message while implementing increasingly selective and restrictive migration policies. The risk is not simply legal inconsistency; it is symbolic exhaustion. If universalism becomes purely rhetorical while access to rights is increasingly filtered by utility, income, skill, origin, security profile or administrative category, the universal message itself becomes fragile.
Conclusion: re-nationalisation does not mean isolation
The common trend across France, the EU, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States is not pure closure. It is a new hierarchy of mobility.
Humanitarian and family routes face more scrutiny. Asylum is increasingly discussed through the language of pressure, abuse, security and returns. Integration becomes more conditional. But economic migration is being rebranded as necessary, legitimate and selective.
The result is a two-track model: restriction for categories framed as politically costly, facilitation for categories framed as economically useful. This is re-nationalisation in practice. Even where common frameworks exist, states increasingly define desirable migration according to national labour markets, electoral pressures and sovereignty narratives.
The central point is therefore not that migration is ending. It is being sorted. The future of migration policy will likely be less about open versus closed borders, and more about who is selected, who is deterred, who is protected, and who is left outside the legal architecture altogether.