Introduction: Beyond Victims and Villains

In Sfax, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa wait in informal settlements for a journey that may never happen. Some have tried to cross the Mediterranean and failed. Others were intercepted before departure. They remain suspended between Europe, which they are trying to reach, and Tunisia, which increasingly finds itself responsible for people who were never meant to settle there.

The dominant narratives frame this scene in two ways. The far right presents migrants as a threat: a security risk, a cultural danger, an economic burden. Liberals and human-rights organisations present them as victims: passive, vulnerable, deserving of protection.

Both miss the deeper reality. Migration is neither a threat nor a tragedy. It is a system of management. States, regimes, and non-state actors use human mobility to advance their own interests. Europe manages migration to select, externalise costs, and profit. North Africa manages migration to extract rents, export its youth bulge, and gain legitimacy. The far right and the United States are not outside this system; they are active participants in it. And the migrant is not merely a victim; he or she is also a currency.

This article argues that the migration debate is not a morality play. It is a market—and everyone is a manager. To understand this, we must begin where the management begins: with Europe's own calculus.

Part One: Europe's Calculus—Selection, Not Exclusion

Europe does not want to stop migration. It wants to manage it.

The European Commission itself states that addressing labour shortages has become one of the primary drivers of legal migration policy in 2024, with reforms to attract workers from outside the EU in sectors such as health, IT, agriculture, and transport. In a news release published on 15 June 2026, the Commission stated clearly that Europe faces labour shortages due to demographic change, and that the European economy increasingly depends on workers from outside the Union. It outlined measures to attract global talent, facilitate legal migration, and launch an EU Talent Pool to recruit workers from third countries in occupations suffering shortages.

In 2024, Schengen states received more than 11.7 million visa applications and issued over 9.7 million visas, with a global refusal rate of 14.8%.

What Europe wants is not exclusion. It is selection.

The clearest evidence is financial. Since 11 June 2024, the visa fee is €90 for adults. This fee is non-refundable, even when an application is rejected. In 2024 alone, rejected visa applications generated approximately €145.1 million in fees, according to European Commission data analysed by LAGO Collective. In 2025, this figure rose to €157.1 million.

Europe has also built an administrative economy around migration selection: millions apply, many are admitted, others are refused, while visa fees are non-refundable and generate revenue that the Commission itself states is "reinvested into making available more resources" for visa processing. This does not prove that revenue is the political goal—but it shows that the selection system is financially self-sustaining.

Europe does not simply close its doors. It regulates who enters, through which channel, for what purpose, and at what cost.

But management requires a partner.

Part Two: Externalising the Cost—The EU-Tunisia Bargain

Once the principle of management is accepted, the next question is: who performs the management, and at what cost?

The answer, increasingly, is North Africa. The European Union is delegating the control of its borders to third countries through political, financial, and security agreements. The memorandum of understanding signed with Tunisia in July 2023 is one of the most emblematic examples of this strategy.

The European Commission itself documents that support for Tunisia included:

  • Strengthening border management
  • Coast guard support
  • Equipment and vessels
  • Thermal cameras
  • Anti-smuggling measures
  • Training
  • Preventing irregular departures
  • Return and reintegration

In September 2023, the Commission announced almost €127 million in support of the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisia: €60 million in budget support and around €67 million in migration assistance, part of the €105 million migration package linked to the MoU.

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) goes further, describing European policy explicitly as "externalising European borders to southern Mediterranean states." It analyses the Tunisian case as part of a long process of transferring migration management to Tunisia, including funding the coast guard and improving interception capacity. ECFR also notes that years of externalisation have created what it calls "a lucrative externalisation market"—a profitable market for managing migration outside Europe, which has moved to North Africa, where Tunisia and Libya deal with migrants within a security and economic framework. The same source uses the concept of a "booming migration economy" in Tunisia, referring to industries and services linked to migrant movement.

A 2026 academic study by Iole Fontana (University of Catania), published in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies, titled "Tunisia's multiple roles as a gatekeeper of (Im)mobility: the case of the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding," identifies five roles Tunisia performs: containment, filtering, broker, (in)humanitarian, and ambivalently reluctant. Based on 40 interviews conducted in Tunisia, the study argues that Tunisia acts as a broker gatekeeper, using its control over migration to obtain financial resources and political concessions from the European Union. It also states that European cooperation has given partner states bargaining leverage they can use to recalibrate their level of cooperation and pressure the EU.

UN human rights experts state explicitly, in a joint communication to the EU, that "externalisation of borders and migration controls has become a central part of the EU's response to migration management," and speaks of the "outsourcing of migration governance policies" and the political and financial incentives associated with the agreement. The joint communication also warned that the future implementation of the partnership "could give rise to possible violation of the principle of non-refoulement and the human rights of migrants, including children."

Organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) have argued that this cooperation amounts to transferring responsibility for migration control to a state that has neither a genuine national asylum system nor sufficient safeguards for the protection of fundamental rights. Tunisia is thus gradually being turned into a buffer zone, tasked with holding migrants back before they reach European territory.

When Europe prevents a migrant boat from leaving Tunisia, Europe records a prevented crossing. Tunisia receives a person who remains.

The cost is not simply financial. A financial-risk expert, Mourad Hattab, cited by Tunisia's official news agency, TAP (27–28 March 2025), estimated that the presence of sub-Saharan migrants mainly concentrated in Sfax costs Tunisia approximately 400 million dinars per year. This is a huge sum for a country already suffering from a severe economic crisis. There are also social, demographic, and security costs: informal camps, strained public services, and tensions over jobs and resources.

But Tunisia is not a passive victim of this arrangement. It is also a manager.

Part Three: Tunisia's Counter-Leverage—Managing for Survival

North African states are not passive recipients of European pressure. They are active participants in a system that serves their own interests—even when those interests come at a cost to their own societies.

1. Getting rid of the critical youth bulge

The Arab Barometer found in its 2023–2024 wave (Wave VIII) that 46% of Tunisians generally think about emigrating. In earlier data (Wave VII, 2021–22), the proportion among Tunisian youth aged 18–29 was around 65%, compared to 37% among older cohorts. For the regime, the departure of young people reduces the critical youth bulge—the demographic pressure that has historically fuelled protests and revolutions. In effect, the regime views emigration as a safety valve.

2. Hard currency and the economics of departure

Migration is also an economic strategy. The World Bank states that remittances from Tunisians abroad have been the largest external financial flow to Tunisia over recent decades, reaching approximately 6.6% of GDP in 2021–2022, several times larger than foreign direct investment and official development assistance. Current World Bank data puts remittances at 6.3% of GDP in 2024.

Carnegie Endowment analysis by Hamza Meddeb (20 March 2023) notes that Tunisia benefited from the Serbian migration route because it provided an outlet for thousands of dissatisfied youth at a time when sea routes became more difficult, and because these migrants send remittances that are a vital source of hard currency. The analysis states that Tunisia "saw no advantages in limiting" this travel and "paid no price" for doing so. The regime does not want to stop the flow of people. It wants to manage the flow of money.

3. Leveraging Europe for support and legitimacy

By positioning itself as Europe's indispensable partner in migration control, the Tunisian regime gains external legitimacy and financial support at a time when its domestic legitimacy is contested.

Carnegie Endowment has written that Tunisia has used its position as a transit country as a geopolitical tool to pressure Europe. The analysis explains that President Saied used the migration crisis to pressure Europeans, and that his refusal of certain funds led Europeans back to the negotiating table. The objective was to use European anxiety about migration to obtain resources and political legitimacy.

Carnegie has further argued that irregular migration has become an unconventional political tool that states can use to build political leverage, extract resources, and gain influence. As Meddeb writes: "States to the EU's south and east are aware of the extent to which mass illegal immigration can cause tensions and polarization within the union, and have at times used this to push the EU to make concessions."

ECFR analysis shows that the EU-Tunisia agreement also gave Tunisia broader financial and political support, and granted President Kais Saied a form of international legitimacy through the reception of high-level European leaders in Tunis. A study by Vasja Badalič, published in the Journal of International Migration and Integration (2019), confirms that the EU linked migration management to substantial financial aid to Tunisia. Badalič argues that the EU "used its financial support for the democratic transition as leverage" to convince Tunisia to sign the Mobility Partnership Agreement, and that Tunisia's "fragile post-revolutionary political elite needed the backing of the EU and thus had little choice but to accept the EU strategy on preventing irregular migration."

Tunisia does not stop migration. It manages it. And in doing so, it extracts benefits from Europe. But this is not a one-way street: both sides possess leverage over the other.

Carnegie describes the emergence of "a migration economy in Tunisia," linking Tunisia's leveraging of migration to pressure the EU with the EU's securitisation and externalisation of migration.

But this mutual management does not go unnoticed. It creates political reactions.

Part Four: The Far-Right Reaction and the American Dimension

The management of migration creates political reactions. The far right is not outside the system; it is a reactive component of it.

From France to the Netherlands, and from Germany to Italy, the sovereignist Right continues to gain ground, influencing governments and placing migration at the centre of public debate. The fear of political erosion and social pressure push Brussels to externalise asylum and accelerate returns.

But externalisation does not solve the political problem. It transforms it. In every cycle of migratory pressure, the far right demands visible proof of control. Deportation is expensive and politically difficult. So Europe turns to another tool: forced integration.

This is the paradoxical reaction. Instead of deporting, Europe imposes conditions for staying.

Several national governments have adopted such measures:

  • Italy: Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced on 20 September that Italy will ban face coverings—burqa and niqab—in schools. The cabinet adopted a decree-law on 24–25 September. According to ANSA (22–24 September 2026) and The Independent (24 September 2026), the decree places a 30% cap, in first-year classes, on non-Italian-citizen pupils with insufficient Italian-language skills. The threshold is based on Italian-language proficiency and applies to non-citizens, including other EU nationals. Pupils who attended Italian pre-school or have spent at least three years in Italian schools are excluded. The decree imposes fines of €200–1,000 for face-covering violations, with parents liable for minors. Parents of children with insufficient Italian may also be required to attend free language courses, with the same fines for non-compliance. Parliament must ratify the decree within 60 days.
  • Austria: A law passed on 11 December 2025 bans head coverings worn "in accordance with Islamic traditions," including the hijab, in all schools for girls under 14 (not "14 and under"). An explanatory phase began in February 2026, with full enforcement from September 2026, and fines of €150–800.
  • France: Has some of the most restrictive legislation in Europe. The 2010 law (Law 2010-1192, in force April 2011) banned face-covering in public. For schools, the 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols, including the headscarf, in state schools is more directly relevant to the argument here.

These laws are presented as measures to promote neutrality and social cohesion. But they send a clear message: you may remain, but only if you abandon visible markers of your identity. The message, in effect, is: "Remove your niqab, remove your hijab, and you may stay."

This is not integration. It is assimilation imposed under the guise of tolerance.

And this reaction is reinforced by an external actor: the United States.

The Trump administration's National Security Strategy, marked November 2025 and released on 5 December 2025, warned of what it considers "civilizational erasure" in Europe in the next two decades as a result of high immigration, lower birth rates, and the loss of national identities. The document states: "But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure... Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less." It specifically identifies "migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife" as a central threat. Reuters documented that the document "echoed some talking points of European far-right political parties," and critics quoted by Reuters said it amounted to supporting far-right nationalists.

The strategy explicitly frames Europe's migration and identity politics as an American strategic concern and signals support for political forces aligned with its vision.

This is a direct intervention in European domestic politics. As Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at Bruegel think tank, put it: "It is an attempt to intervene in the domestic politics of Europe, to undermine democratic processes and boost far-right parties."

This alignment is not limited to rhetoric. In September 2025, Reuters reported that Trump administration officials hosted an event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, titled "The Fight for Free Speech: Resisting Global Censorship." Internal State Department emails showed that officials had planned to invite representatives of right-wing parties including Germany's AfD, France's National Rally, the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, and Britain's Reform. The article described the event as "the latest stage in a push against what Washington calls censorship in Europe that has seen the U.S. align itself with far-right European politicians."

A June 2025 ECFR report by Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, titled "Trump's European Revolution," argues that Trump's second presidency is "recasting the European far-right as the continental vanguard of a transnational revolutionary project," while mainstream parties are becoming "the new European sovereigntists." Analysts quoted by DW say the strategy is much more than an admission of overlapping views on immigration. It alludes to a bigger game plan: to divide the 27 member EU along ideological lines and weaken the bloc to dominate it. "A divided Europe would also be weaker and easier to dominate on trade issues," said Zsuzsanna Vegh, associate researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The result is a feedback loop. The far right gains electoral strength. Europe externalises border control to appease it. That externalisation creates new pressures. The far right demands more. And the cycle continues.

This political dynamic is not theoretical. Reuters reported in September 2026 that the EU migration commissioner himself linked the recent Ceuta crisis—despite an overall decline in arrivals to Europe—to the fuelling of far-right support through images and scenes associated with migration.

But this political theatre is not the end of the story. The management of migration also operates through open geopolitical bargaining, where each side uses the other's vulnerabilities. This is the logic of mutual leverage.

Part Five: Mutual Leverage—The Geopolitical Bargaining Game

The management of migration is not one-directional. It is a game of mutual leverage, in which each side uses the other's vulnerabilities. Three cases illustrate this logic: France and Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey, and Morocco and Spain.

France and Algeria: two levers, one logic

France has long positioned itself as a defender of Amazigh cultural rights in North Africa. It hosts a large Amazigh diaspora, supports cultural associations, and presents itself as a protector of linguistic and cultural diversity. On the surface, this appears to be a policy of pluralism. But in geopolitical terms, it also functions as a lever. By supporting Amazigh claims, France can exert pressure on Algeria—a state already grappling with questions of identity, centralisation, and regional marginalisation.

The Kabyle question has also become a French political lever in its relationship with Algeria. By providing a political space for the MAK and allowing the Kabyle issue to internationalise, France has acquired another pressure point in its increasingly confrontational relationship with Algiers. This reading is not merely speculative. In February 2025, geopolitical analyst Adlene Mohammedi told the French Senate that the place accorded to the MAK in France is "largely artificial" and that the movement has sought to associate itself with French and European political currents to absorb the idea of opposition to the Algerian regime. Le Monde reported in December 2025 that the MAK's political demand remains "ultra-minoritarian in Kabylie"—yet the movement proclaimed, in Paris, the "independence" of Kabylie, its external projection far outweighing its domestic base.

But the Amazigh card is not France's only lever. In February 2025, as Le Monde reported, the French government was actively seeking levers of pressure on Algeria. The newspaper detailed several tools under consideration: reducing the granting of visas, reviewing the exemption for holders of diplomatic passports, and reopening negotiations on the 1968 agreement. This pressure campaign was directly linked to Algeria's refusal to readmit its nationals subject to deportation from France.

This logic is not merely analytical. In an interview on 3 April 2026, published by the French government's official information service, Vie publique, Benjamin Haddad, the French Minister Delegate for European Affairs, said France is pushing at European level to use tools such as visas, trade agreements, and development aid "as means of pressure on third countries that do not take back their nationals." The statement confirms, in the words of a serving French minister, that migration and mobility are instruments of leverage in relations with partner countries—precisely the dynamic this article describes.

In February 2025, France threatened to revise the 1968 agreement granting Algerians special residency and migration privileges—explicitly linking this threat to Algeria's refusal to accept its nationals. In May 2025, as Reuters reported, France also expelled Algerian officials in a tit-for-tat measure. The message was clear: migration and mobility were being used as bargaining chips in a broader diplomatic confrontation.

These levers—support for an ethnic minority movement, administrative pressure over visas and aid, and threats over migration agreements—serve the same strategic purpose. The Kabyle question provides symbolic and political leverage; the migration file provides material and administrative leverage. France is not merely a manager of migration; it is also a manager of identity. And Algeria, like Tunisia and Morocco, is not merely a recipient of pressure; it is a participant in a system of mutual leverage.

Tunisia, Turkey, and the migration lever

Tunisia and Turkey have both learned that migration is a bargaining chip. By controlling—or appearing to control—the flow of migrants toward Europe, they can extract money, legitimacy, and political concessions from Brussels. The EU-Tunisia memorandum of July 2023, with its €105 million package, is one example. The 2016 EU-Turkey deal is another: the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey reached €6 billion, linking migration management to financial resources and diplomatic bargaining.

Morocco, Spain, and the Ceuta lever

In May 2021, after a diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain over the presence of the Polisario leader, Morocco appeared to relax its border controls in an unprecedented way. Thousands of migrants—Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans—crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Spain's defence minister accused Morocco of "blackmail" and "aggression," while a Moroccan minister suggested the move was a response to Spain's action. Morocco later rejected a European Parliament resolution accusing it of using migrants for political pressure. This incident became a textbook example of migration being used as a diplomatic lever.

But the Ceuta incident is only the visible tip. As Gazzotti (2022) shows in her study of EU-Morocco border diplomacy, aid should not be seen merely as a "bargaining chip" that Europe uses to buy cooperation. Rather, it functions as a "terrain of contestation" where countries of origin and transit strategically facilitate, negotiate, or obstruct aid-funded projects depending on how they fit into their broader geopolitical priorities. Faustini Torres (2025) goes further, demonstrating that Morocco exploits Europe's dependency on its role as a migration gatekeeper to negotiate financial and political concessions while suppressing domestic dissent—dynamics that, in her words, "bolster autocratic structures and hinder democratic reform."

This pattern is not confined to North Africa. Meddeb (2023) argues that the Serbian route showed that illegal migration has become "an unconventional weapon used to build political leverage, extract resources, and gain influence over stronger and wealthier countries." The broader lesson, as Carnegie has argued, is that irregular migration has become an unconventional political tool that states can use to build leverage, extract resources, and gain influence.

Tunisia, Morocco, Serbia, and Turkey are not identical cases—but they operate within a shared logic: migration is managed, and management is a form of power.

The result: everyone leverages everyone. Migration becomes a currency. And the currency circulates in both directions.

But what does this system produce? And who pays the price?

Part Six: The Southern Side—Exporting the Crisis, Importing the Cost

The system of migration management is not imposed by Europe alone. It is co-produced.

North African states are not passive recipients of European pressure. They are active participants in a system that serves their own interests—even when those interests come at a cost to their own societies. As established in Part Three, Tunisia uses migration to manage its youth bulge, secure remittances, and extract concessions from Europe. However, this strategy comes at a heavy domestic cost.

A financial-risk expert, Mourad Hattab, cited by Tunisia's official news agency TAP (27–28 March 2025), estimated that the presence of sub-Saharan migrants mainly concentrated in Sfax costs Tunisia approximately 400 million dinars per year—a huge sum for a country already suffering from a severe economic crisis.

The impact is felt on both shores. In Europe, migration remains politically explosive, even as arrivals decline. In Tunisia, the regime gains short-term support and legitimacy, while the population bears the long-term cost: strained public services, social tensions, and a diluted sense of sovereignty.

And this leads us to the final question: if everyone is managing, who is responsible?

Conclusion: No Victims, Only Managers

The migration debate is dominated by two narratives.

The first, promoted by the far right, presents migrants as a threat: a security risk, a cultural danger, an economic burden.

The second, promoted by liberals and human-rights organisations, presents migrants as victims: passive, vulnerable, deserving of protection.

Both miss the deeper reality.

Migration is neither a threat nor a tragedy. It is a system of total management. States, regimes, and non-state actors use human mobility to advance their own interests.

  • France uses three levers against Algeria: support for the MAK, administrative pressure over visas and aid, and threats over migration agreements.
  • Tunisia and Turkey use migration as a bargaining chip to extract money and legitimacy from Europe.
  • Morocco uses the Ceuta lever to pressure Spain.
  • African states quietly accept the departure of their youth—not because they cannot stop it, but because it reduces the risk of revolt.
  • Europe wants migrants—for visa revenue, for labour, for care work, and for the demographic replenishment it cannot achieve on its own.
  • The US uses the far right to weaken the EU.
  • And Tunisia becomes Europe's waiting room—not because it is a willing partner, but because it is the cheapest option.

No one is purely a victim. Everyone is an architect.

Europe is not merely a victim of migration; it is its architect. Africa is not merely a source; it is a willing exporter. And the migrant is not merely a body; he or she is also a currency.

Europe manages migration. But in doing so, it manages society. And the society it manages is not only its own. It is also ours.

That is the real story. Not a clash of civilizations. A web of interests, woven across the Mediterranean, in which everyone manages, and everyone is managed.