Solar geoengineering is no silver bullet against the climate crisis, but rejecting it categorically in the name of preserving the planet overlooks our entanglement with the atmosphere. Drawing on feminist neo-materialism, Anni Pokela proposes a different approach: purposeful, accountable participation in atmospheric becoming from within the relationship.

“It surrounds us, penetrates us, and we are barely aware of it.” As philosopher Emanuele Coccia writes in The Life of Plants (2018), the atmosphere is our first world – “the sphere of breath, the medium in which everything that lives is wholly immersed.” And it is changing at an accelerating pace.

The latest assessment by climate scientist James Hansen and colleagues shows that the pace of global warming has accelerated from 0.18 to 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade – over 50 per cent faster than the average between 1970 and 2010. The researchers estimate that we will cross the 2-degree threshold by 2045.

In this context, it makes sense that a growing number of actors have begun considering emergency measures such as solar radiation geoengineering: the idea of deliberately injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere to cool the planet by deflecting some of the Sun’s radiation back into space.

For many environmentalists and ecofeminists, the very concept is an affront: a masculinist, technocratic fantasy that treats the Earth as a machine to be tuned rather than a living system to be respected. The instinct is often to reject it categorically.

I understand that instinct, because I have felt it myself. But I have come to believe that categorical rejection is neither the most responsible nor the most fruitful position available to us.

The debate as it stands

Solar radiation modification (SRM), most commonly discussed in the form of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), has been modelled and theorised for over 50 years. The idea is inspired by what volcanoes do naturally: when Mount Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, erupted in 1815, the massive cloud of particles it released cooled the global climate by roughly one degree Celsius for years. SAI would attempt something similar by design – aircraft or high-altitude balloons releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere to create a partial sunshade – only with less sulfur, or even potentially a less toxic, more bio-based particle.

SRM does not remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and it does not address the root cause of climate change. It is, at best, a temporary response that could buy time while the deeper, structural work of decarbonisation continues. Yet, the attention it receives is growing, driven by an uncomfortable reality: we are running out of that very time.

In ecofeminist circles, geoengineering has been met with powerful and, in many ways, justified resistance.

Despite this growing interest, there is currently no international framework governing SRM research or deployment. No large-scale field experiments are underway, and the research remains dominated by climate modelling in Global North institutions. Additionally, private actors such as the startup Stardust Solutions are taking the lead, raising questions about public oversight and accountability. And this is precisely the problem: the conversation about whether and how to investigate these technologies is happening without most of the world at the table. As the UN Environment Programme’s Expert Panel has stressed, there needs to be significantly more research into the potential impacts of SRM on communities already on the frontlines of climate change.

The feminist refusal

Within environmental thought, and particularly in ecofeminist circles, geoengineering has been met with powerful and, in many ways, justified resistance. Although SRM would be, at best, a complementary solution to decarbonisation, environmentalists have raised significant concerns about it being used as an argument to delay the more systemic transition away from fossil fuels and overconsumption.

Meanwhile, feminist scholars have exposed the masculinist, techno-scientific culture that permeates the field: the dominance of male-led research teams from the Global North, the privileging of quantitative methods over qualitative or community-based knowledge, and the deployment of fatalistic narratives that frame SRM as an inevitable necessity or a “neutral” silver bullet.

The Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance, a coalition of civil society groups and feminist advocates, has articulated perhaps the most forceful collective opposition to geoengineering, calling it a perpetuation of the unjust industrial model that caused the climate crisis in the first place. Ecofeminist voices often invoke the Mother Earth metaphor to insist on the planet’s intrinsic worth and resist its instrumentalisation. These critiques rightly expose that geoengineering is not a neutral technical question but is fundamentally about values, power, and whose knowledge counts.

Yet, these critiques have three recurring limitations.

First, they tend to conflate the problematic ideologies behind geoengineering discourse with the technological mechanics themselves. The fact that current research culture is steeped in masculinist assumptions does not mean that the physics of SAI’s aerosol-radiation interactions are inherently patriarchal. The essentialist language that portrays SRM mechanics themselves as a hubristic, sometimes even phallistic, penetration into the natural system misses this important distinction. If the background assumptions were different – if the researchers, the questions, the governance, the values were different – would the critique remain the same?

Second, some critiques contain an inconsistency. They call for recognising our deep interconnection with the natural world while simultaneously treating atmospheric technology as something categorically external to it – as if restoring a local wetland were a relational act but reflecting sunlight were an alien violation. Some of the imagery used in anti-geoengineering advocacy conveys the idea that these technologies are comparable to a planet-sized wrench threatening to tinker with nature. This implicitly reinstates the nature-culture binary that feminist theory has spent decades trying to dismantle. If we truly are interconnectedly one with Mother Earth, how can we sustainably position technology as an inherent outsider to this configuration?

Third, there is a problem of scale. Feminist environmental thought has long prioritised local, situated, community-based knowledge and action – and rightly so. But when it comes to planetary atmospheric physics, localism alone cannot resolve the challenge. The atmosphere does not respect these boundaries. A farmer’s methane emissions in Finland and a monsoon system in South Asia are entangled in the same global climate. The exclusive emphasis on small-scale solutions, while morally appealing, risks proving inadequate at the planetary scale, where some of the most urgent decisions must be made.

A different way in

This is where feminist new materialism opens a different door – not to uncritical endorsement of geoengineering, but to a more honest and fruitful engagement with it.

The work of physicist and philosopher Karen River Barad, whose theory of agential realism is foundational to new materialist thought, offers tools for rethinking the relationship between humans, technology, and the atmosphere. Barad’s central concept is intra-action: the idea that distinct entities do not exist prior to their relations but emerge through them. Where conventional thinking assumes that separate entities – a particle, an atmosphere, and a research team, for example – come together and interact, Barad argues that they only come into being through their entanglement.

The question is not whether we participate in shaping the atmosphere but how.

Applied to SAI, this reframing is profound. The atmosphere is not a passive container waiting to receive aerosol particles or not, nor are those particles inert tools wielded by human controllers. What SAI would constitute, from a Baradian perspective, is a phenomenon – an ongoing material-discursive entanglement in which human decision-making, particle chemistry, stratospheric wind patterns, solar radiation, and surface ecosystems all participate agentially. The cooling effect does not simply happen to the atmosphere; it emerges through the specific configuration of all these entangled agencies.

This reframing does two critical things. First, it dissolves the comfortable binary between a “natural” atmosphere and an “engineered” one. Second, it dismantles the hubristic mindset that we could ever have complete control over the atmosphere. Both stances – protecting a pure system and seizing control of it – are revealed to be ontologically unsustainable.

Industrial emissions, shipping pollution and agricultural practices, to name a few, have been modifying the atmosphere for centuries. Climate scientist James Hansen himself has noted that the reduction of sulphur in shipping fuel – a clean air policy – inadvertently removed a cooling effect equivalent to what SAI proposes to create. In a real, material sense, we are not standing outside the atmosphere wondering whether to intervene. We are already geoengineering the planet. The question, therefore, is not whether we participate in shaping the atmosphere but how.

From intervention to intra-vention

Based on these considerations, I propose to replace the concept of “climate intervention”, which is conventionally used to describe geoengineering techniques, with the idea of climate intra-vention. Where intervention signals a procedure performed from the outside (an actor imposing change on a passive system) intra-vention designates something different: purposeful, accountable participation in atmospheric becoming from within the relationship.

This is not a semantic trick. The shift in framing would carry real consequences for how research is designed and governed. If SAI is understood as intra-action rather than intervention, then the models, metrics, and governance structures used in research are not neutral instruments of observation, but actively shape what the atmosphere becomes and what counts as relevant knowledge about it. Current SAI modelling, for instance, tends to prioritise global mean temperature as its primary metric. This makes temperature change visible and determinate while rendering other effects – regional precipitation shifts, monsoon stability, agricultural impacts – less prominent.

Different research practices would literally produce different phenomena. A modelling apparatus that centred, say, monsoon system stability or the lived experiences of communities in the Sahel, would not simply see SAI differently; it would literally bring a different version of SAI into being, with different boundaries, different risks, and different possibilities. This is what Barad means when they say that apparatuses are not static setups but are perpetually open to rearrangement. A patriarchal, technocratic configuration of SAI research is not the only possible one.

This is where feminist engagement with geoengineering becomes not just possible but urgently necessary. If how we set up SAI research actively produces what SAI is, then the values, perspectives, and power relations embedded in that setup matter enormously. Feminist principles of justice, care, transparency, and participatory knowledge production are not peripheral add-ons to the “real science”. They are constitutive of the science itself.

Care, not control

As climate impacts accelerate, interest in SRM technologies will only grow – whether feminists are at the table or not. If the field is abandoned to technocratic elites and private actors, the very outcomes that feminist critics most fear become more likely: unilateral deployment driven by profit, governance captured by powerful states, communities – particularly in the Global South – excluded from decisions that will reshape their climate.

The concerned scientists who launched the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement in 2022 called for immediate political action to prevent the “normalisation” of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option, arguing that it is neither necessary, desirable, nor governable in the current context. But as others have pointed out, if publicly funded, transparent research is banned, the field does not disappear. It simply moves into clandestine, unmonitored, private hands.

Feminist engagement with SAI can be understood as an act of care rather than an endorsement of control. Care, in the sense that feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa articulates it, is not about fixing or mastering but about attending to neglected realities, staying with troubling situations, and taking responsibility for the entanglements we are already part of. This means approaching SRM deliberation as a form of responsibility toward the communities already experiencing unbearable heat, failing harvests, and collapsing ecosystems; insisting that research is designed with justice at its centre, and that Indigenous communities, researchers in the Global South, and grassroots actors are not consulted after the fact but participate in shaping what research is prioritised, what SRM is understood to be and how that research looks like in practice.

Staying with the trouble

This framework does not solve all tensions. Most SRM research is still funded and governed by powerful institutions in the Global North, and profit motives, geopolitical competition, and blind techno-optimism are real forces in this space. There is a risk that the language of “intra-vention” and “care” could be co-opted to entrench business as usual.

Categorical rejection is not abstention. It is an act that excludes certain possibilities while enabling others.

There is also a temporal dilemma. Climate urgency is used to justify accelerating SRM research now, within existing structures, before the systemic transformation that justice demands has been achieved. But if we rush ahead, we risk consolidating the very systems that caused the crisis. On the other hand, if we wait for post-growth institutions and decolonial governance to emerge fully before investigating SRM, we may face tipping points that foreclose the possibility of such transformations.

There is no neat resolution to these contradictions. But holding these perspectives simultaneously is more honest and more productive than pretending they do not exist. Donna Haraway calls this “staying with the trouble”: refusing both the seductions of despair and the false comforts of easy answers.

What Barad’s philosophy adds is the insight that inaction is not a neutral zero position. In a world where the atmosphere is already being reshaped by human activity, choosing not to investigate how it might be reshaped more deliberately is itself a form of participation in atmospheric becoming, with its own consequences and its own accountabilities. Categorical rejection is not abstention. It is an act that excludes certain possibilities while enabling others – and we are responsible for those exclusions.

Historically, feminist thought has been at its most powerful when it has refused purity. When it has held contradictions, and when it has insisted on staying engaged with messy, compromised realities rather than retreating to the moral high ground. The atmosphere – this all-encompassing fluid that we breathe, that we are reshaping, that is reshaping us – demands nothing less.

The Nitzanei Shalom industrial settlement in the occupied West Bank has long caused health and environmental harm to Palestinians in Tulkarm. A new investigation reveals that Europe maintains commercial ties with factories operating in the area and their parent companies, despite the settlement’s illegality under international law.

Rima Ali and her husband, Yusuf, have been living in their house, in the south-western part of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, for over 20 years. Some 100 metres away sits Nitzanei Shalom (“Buds of Peace”), an illegal Israeli industrial settlement. Rima says the factories with their foul odours, dust, and pollution have caused her health problems, such as coughs and headaches.

“We don’t feel comfortable sitting in the courtyard because of the smells and noises coming from the factories, so I prefer to stay indoors,” she explained. “If I hadn’t built my house before they built the factories, I wouldn’t have stayed here,” Yusuf added.

The couple’s daily struggle is part of a wider environmental and public health crisis affecting the citizens of Tulkarm, particularly in the southwestern and western neighbourhoods. Aside from the pollution, residents have also witnessed major fires in the industrial zone that caused heavy clouds of smoke, forcing some families to temporarily evacuate their homes.

Adeeb Awad, 63, a resident of Irtah, south of Tulkarm, lives just 20 metres away from the industrial zone. “Whenever a fire breaks out, I have to evacuate the house with my family. It’s suffocating and almost life-threatening,” he said.

Industrial relocation

The Nitzanei Shalom industrial zone was established in the 1980s, when Israeli companies specialising in waste and plastic recycling, cement, and chemical production were gradually relocated from Israel to the Tulkarm area, forming a cluster of 13 factories.

A prominent entity in this industrial hub was Geshuri Industries, a large agrochemical company manufacturing pesticides and fertilisers. The company moved to its current site in 1982, relocating from Tel Mond.

The relocation followed intense legal disputes and community protests in Israel over environmental violations and public health risks, as reported in a 1999 document of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The factory owners contend the move was motivated by a need for additional space and “various security problems” regarding the workers. However, former member of the Knesset Issam Makhoul claimed that legal action against the factory for its negative impact on public health effectively halted its operations at the original site, prompting its owners to relocate to a zone where safety and environmental standards could be bypassed.

Nitzanei Shalom is located in Area C. With the 1995 Oslo II Accord, the West Bank was divided into Area A, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) had full control, Area B, which fell under Palestinian civil administration and Israeli security control, and Area C, comprising about 61 per cent of the land, which was placed under full Israeli control. The division was supposed to be temporary, with full control of all three areas “gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction”. However, the transfer has never occurred.

Israel’s abusive policies and practices against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have intensified since 7 October 2023, with government officials openly encouraging and supporting settler attacks, as reported by Amnesty International.

Sacrifice zone

According to testimonies we gathered from residents, workers, and farmers in the Tulkarm area, the presence of the industrial complex has affected every aspect of their lives. Fayez Taneeb, a 66-year-old farmer from Irtah, owns agricultural land surrounded by factories on two sides and the separation wall built by Israel on another.

Taneeb says the wastewater from the factories flowing onto his land forced him to dig a canal to mitigate the damage. “Our intervention was intended to reduce, though not entirely eliminate, these harms by directing the water through a controlled channel,” he said.

He claims that dust emitted by the factories has also damaged his crops, both outside and inside greenhouses. “When the dust from the factory settles on my greenhouses, it sticks like cement to the plastic, blocking the sunlight,” Taneeb said. “The plants inside cannot grow or survive without sunlight.”

Moreover, the civil defence service in Tulkarm documented five major fire incidents in the industrial zone between 2009 and 2022. Eyewitness accounts and civil defence described heavy black smoke forming in the area, with fumes and toxic gases lasting for days.

As Walid al-Zabda, director of civil defence operations in the Tulkarm Governorate, explained, it is difficult to determine the causes of the fires without permission to enter the zone. “Our role was limited to securing the sites near the industrial area to prevent the fires from spreading to the Palestinian lands located outside the factory’s boundaries.”

Al-Zabda also notes that the Palestinian side had submitted requests to enter the industrial zone and provide assistance during the fires, but those requests were rejected by the Israeli authorities. He added, “The problem was not the fire itself but the black smoke. Even the civil defence crews who went out to secure the site could not bear the smells.”

In a roundtable interview we conducted with former Palestinian workers at the Yamit factory, which specialised in water treatment and the production of water filters until its closure in 2023, they confirmed that factories in the industrial zone, including Yamit, regularly burned waste materials. Ahmed Al Masri, who worked in the factory for 29 years, said that at Yamit, defective paint products were often burnt in an open yard within the factory borders. He added, “The burning occurred about two to three times per week.”

Satellite images document the expansion of the industrial zone and a decline in green spaces over the years. Agricultural activity, once fundamental to the city’s livelihood, is now limited. This decline accelerated in the 1980s with the creation of the industrial zone, and again after 2003, following the construction of the separation wall. Taneeb claims that Israeli forces confiscated almost 16 dunums (3.6 acres) of his land for the construction of the wall and the industrial zone. Between 2013 and 2021, much of the remaining green space in the area was sacrificed to accommodate new production facilities.

Environmental contamination caused by the factory’s liquid waste is also visible from satellites. Images from 2023 and 2024 show residues and whitish sludge, likely originating from the industrial area, along the drains that cross the crops.

Environmental oppression

In recent years, the industrial zone has been dominated by three main operators: Prima Ciment (now owned by Cement IS, previously by Geshuri); Tal El, which focuses on waste treatment; and Margal (formerly Pelegas), a manufacturer of gas tanks for vehicles.

In 2013, the Civil Administration – the Israeli military body governing the occupied West Bank – approved a plan to expand the industrial zone despite formal objections submitted by the Israeli human rights organisation Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights on behalf of the Tulkarm Municipality and local residents. Diana Mardi, a field researcher at Bimkom, says the plan “significantly expanded what could be built, allowing structures to increase from two storeys to six”.

Mardi also explains that the plan has clear gaps in the environmental assessment file. “It’s not just an expansion of the industrial zone, it’s a way of legitimising dangerous and illegal structures.” She adds that the plan doesn’t take into account the industrial zone’s close proximity to residential areas in Tulkarm, as well as unresolved jurisdictional concerns.

Murad al-Madani, legal advisor at the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority (EQA), explained that Israeli factory owners find the West Bank a much easier place for establishing industrial facilities compared to Israel. This is largely because they are not subject to the same legal restrictions, particularly in terms of environmental standards, licensing, and taxation. “To this day, Israel does not recognise the Palestinian Environmental Law issued in 1999; instead, Israeli authorities apply the regulations they deem applicable in the West Bank,” Al Madani said.

The law Al Madani refers to defines “environmental nuisance” as “the harm or material damage caused by the generation of noise, vibration, radiation, or irritations; the release of smells which result from any activity of humans, facilities, transportation facilities or any other agent in a manner that affects properties or the human life.”

Article 25 of the law states that “the Ministry [of Environmental Affairs] shall, in cooperation with the specialised agencies, work on establishing standards, instructions and conditions to reduce environmental nuisance generated by different activities; in addition, every facility owner, entity or individual shall be forbidden to cause any nuisance to the others.”

Because Israel does not recognise this law, Rima Ali and other residents of Tulkarm are denied the opportunity to exercise their environmental rights. Rima says that the nuisance she and her family face is not limited to odours and dust, but also includes the noise of industrial machinery. “The factory hardly ever stops working; it operates in two shifts, day and night,” Rima said. She noted that “the noise of the machinery is more disturbing at night, especially as the neighbourhood is quiet.”

The relevant Palestinian authorities haven’t done much to stop environmental oppression caused by the industrial settlement, for example by exercising their power to monitor or investigate environmental incidents caused by it.

On this matter, the governor of Tulkarm, Abdullah Kamil, said: “The Governorate has repeatedly called on the Israeli side to relocate these factories, given the risks they pose to the lives of Palestinians. It has also called for the establishment of an impartial international committee to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the area, covering the soil, water and air.”

He added, “The Governorate would abide by the findings of any report issued by this committee.” However, he explained that even if such a committee concluded that there were no adverse effects resulting from the industrial zone, “this would not deny the fact that these lands belong to the Palestinians.”

Documenting pollution

Palestinian researchers have struggled to document the environmental and health impacts resulting from the industrial zone, particularly with regard to collecting samples from the surrounding areas, due to the access restrictions imposed by Israel.

To understand these impacts, we interviewed experts specialised in this field, including Basel Natsheh, associate professor in the Environmental and Sustainable Agriculture Department at Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie, who published a study in 2016 on the impact of Gishuri factories on soil pollution in Tulkarm, and Safaa Hamdan, agricultural engineer and researcher at the same university.

Natsheh and Hamdan explained that studies provide evidence that environmental degradation affects soil, groundwater, air quality, and plant diversity, and poses potential health risks for nearby residents. However, they noted that many of these studies focus on individual environmental components rather than integrated environmental assessments. A notable exception is a 2015 study by the EQA, which used “an integrated approach, combining environmental sampling, laboratory analysis, biological monitoring, and social surveys, allowing evaluation of pollution pathways from the environment to human exposure.”

Nicola D’Alessandro, an associate professor at the University “G. D’Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara in Italy and an expert in green chemistry and environmental catalysis, observed that “the number of detailed and accurate scientific reports on the West Bank area is scarce, and the few studies that are available were produced a long time ago.”

D’Alessandro also highlighted the presence of persistent pollutants like dioxins, which are industrial by-products known to “cause serious health effects, including cancer, endocrine disruption, immune system damage, and developmental problems”. He emphasised that investigating reports of toxic substance discharges from the factories in Nitzanei Shalom “requires careful data collection that takes into account the most common environmental indicators: from basic air and water tests to more detailed measurements regarding the presence of parasites, metals, and dioxins.”

Looking ahead, Natsheh and Hamdan warned that “the environmental situation in Tulkarm may worsen if current pollution sources continue without effective mitigation.”

Is Europe complicit?

Nitzanei Shalom has maintained commercial ties with companies across Europe, raising questions about the extent to which Europeans are complicit, directly or indirectly, in perpetuating forms of social and environmental injustice against the Palestinians.

The companies owned by the Geshuri family are one example. Products from Prima Ciment – which the family later sold to Cement IS, while continuing to manage it – were distributed in Spain, as reported in 2017 by the Observatory on Human Rights and Business in the Mediterranean.

These relations also involved Pelegas, now Margal, which sold its gas tanks for military land and naval vehicles to countries including Brazil, Georgia, Turkey, and Romania. It should be noted that, until 2020, Pelegas was included on the United Nations’ list of companies operating in the occupied territories.

Moreover, Prima Ciment produces blended gypsum for Orbond and Tambour, which together account for 80 per cent of Israel’s domestic gypsum market. Orbond was founded in Israel in 1993 and, five years later, became part of Knauf, a German multinational manufacturing building materials. Knauf is active within Eurogypsum – a European federation of national associations representing the gypsum production and processing sector in Brussels. Between April 2024 and April 2026, Knauf’s Christoph Dorn held the presidency of the federation.

In June 2026, in response to a request for comment from The New Arab, Knauf did not deny its relationship with Orbond, but pointed out that Orbond’s products are not exported to Europe.

A Knauf spokesperson wrote to The New Arab: “We are committed to ethical, legally correct and socially responsible business management. We expect our suppliers to share this commitment and to make reasonable efforts to promote the compliance of their own suppliers and subcontractors with the principles laid down in our Code of Conduct for Suppliers.”

Cement and gypsum (which is used in the production of cement to retard its setting time) are imported to Nitzanei Shalom from abroad, specifically from Greece – through the Greek subsidiary of the Holcim Group – and Turkey. In 2022, Israel Shipyards and Cement IS acquired the Turkish company Onat Pan, which specialises in the export of gypsum, according to media sources. However, the deterioration in trade relations between Israel and Turkey forced Cement IS to start importing from Egypt as well.

Tambour, the other company supplied by Prima Ciment, is a paint producer registered in Israel and owned by the Singaporean holding Kusto Group. In 2019, Tambour acquired the Italian paint company Colorificio Zetagi, which in turn bought 80 per cent of Verinlegno in 2024.

These developments suggest that European companies continue to maintain commercial ties with factories in Nitzanei Shalom and their parent companies, despite the settlement’s illegality under international law and its negative social and environmental impacts.

Benedetta Scuderi, a Green member of the European Parliament from Italy, observed that the International Court of Justice has made clear in 2024 that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, and therefore all UN Member States should abstain from any aid or assistance that helps maintain Israel’s presence in the territory. “That clearly includes trading with companies based in the settlements, which exploit and pollute stolen Palestinian land,” the MEP explained.

Scuderi, who was detained by Israel in 2025 while participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, explained that although national trade bans are possible, they are “ineffective” because goods can circulate freely in the EU customs union. “We are now urging the European Commission to put forward a legislative proposal that could finally implement a ban on all trade relations with illegal Israeli settlements,” she said.

In March 2026, responding to our request for comment, a European Commission spokesperson explained that “The European Union adopts a firm position of not recognising Israeli sovereignty over the territories it has occupied since June 1967, in line with international law.”

The editorial team at The New Arab contributed to this investigation. Altreconomia, Irpi Media, New Lines Magazine, and The New Arab co-published with the Green European Journal edited versions of this investigation. This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

In its ambition to make world football truly global, FIFA is increasingly cosying up to and openly endorsing autocrats. However, it’s not just regimes that are reshaping football. Neoliberalism is also transforming the game and the relationship between fans and their clubs. We spoke to political scientist and self-confessed football – or soccer – nostalgist Cas Mudde. 

Alessio Giussani: In 2025, FIFA awarded Trump its peace prize, shortly before he started bombing Iran. FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino also showed up to the so-called “board of peace” in a Trump hat. Meanwhile, ordinary fans are being priced out. Is this still the people’s game? 

Cas Mudde: World soccer is increasingly captured by money and dubious people and regimes. FIFA is not an outlier, but an extreme case.  

The 2018 World Cup in Russia was a problematic tournament, but it didn’t get much negative publicity. In 2022, Qatar made the connection between soccer and politics impossible to ignore. Still, the Qatari regime eventually got good PR: people forgot about the human rights violations and the insane amount of money spent on useless stadiums, and thought it was a very good tournament. And this has been the case for pretty much any regime, democratic or not, that organised a World Cup. This year, I suspect, will be the first time the hosting countries receive mostly negative publicity.  

This doesn’t matter much for a country as big and powerful as the US, and it matters even less for Trump, whose base is not even interested in soccer. He will stop caring about the tournament as soon as it no longer holds value for him. But it will negatively affect how people view world soccer. 

At least on paper, this is not the “MAGA World Cup”. It is hosted by three nations – the US, Canada, and Mexico – that represent three different camps of world politics: far-right fossil fuel champions, arch-centrist liberalism, and Global South socialism. What meaning do you attribute to that? 

Mark Carney is also a defender of fossil fuels. What is interesting is that this World Cup was actually branded as “the united bid”, but within months, it effectively became the MAGA World Cup: it is all about the US and about Trump. This was a challenge but also a huge opportunity for Canada and Mexico. Canada could have shown that they’re the good kind of North America; Mexico could have shown that they are the real soccer country. The bar is so low that just doing what everyone usually does already makes you look good.  

FIFA is in many ways an incredibly colonial project, banking on all of the bad things that colonialism has left behind, including corruption and personalistic leadership.

Instead, Canada and Mexico have been silent about the peace prize, the treatment of the Iranian team, and Omar Artan, the Somali referee whose visa was denied. All they are doing is facilitating Trump and trying to smooth things out when he does something bad, so I think they will also face negative publicity. In general, I don’t get the feeling that any of the host countries is particularly enthusiastic about this World Cup. Claudia Sheinbaum has promoted some really good initiatives in Mexico, like building hundreds of community pitches, but I don’t see real momentum. 

The 2022 edition of the World Cup was one of the most global so far, with Qatar hosting and Morocco reaching the semifinals. This year’s edition has expanded to include 48 teams instead of 32. Is there any decolonial merit to Infantino’s ambition to make world football truly global?  

Infantino’s project is to get himself reelected. The more national soccer associations are represented at the World Cup, the happier they are with his leadership. If he wanted to truly decolonise soccer, he could have changed the proportional representation across continents. Instead, he just expanded the number of participants without changing the underlying criteria. This means having even more countries from Europe, because they’re rich, and that’s what the sponsors want.  

FIFA is in many ways an incredibly colonial project, banking on all of the bad things that colonialism has left behind, including corruption and personalistic leadership. Essentially, FIFA gives national soccer associations money to spend however they think is best for the advancement of soccer in their countries. Of course, many regimes simply take that money and pocket it, leaving soccer undeveloped. But FIFA doesn’t really care about that.  

FIFA’s politics are also getting worse. In 2018, they didn’t really speak up against Russia’s anti-LGBTQIA+ rights policies, but they didn’t support them either. In Qatar, team captains were banned from wearing rainbow-coloured armbands. Now, FIFA actively defends and even celebrates Trump.  

Only a fraction of nations taking part in the World Cup are democracies – let alone liberal ones – and the same applies to FIFA members at large. Are there ways to defend liberal values without civilisational posturing?  

If you want to be consistent, you should leave politics out as much as you can, because if you make FIFA and the World Cup a liberal-democratic project, then you cater to a minority of the states, and you are never going to be truly global. You could argue that being political, even if you are sometimes hypocritical or inconsistent, is better than staying out of politics. But I’m not sure that’s the case anymore because FIFA’s inclusion campaigns have become so meaningless, so vague and full of pinkwashing that the only message that comes through is that everything they say about politics is bullshit.  

At the same time, of course, politics is always there. Organising a World Cup is a huge opportunity for any regime, and neutrality doesn’t make the event non-political. But I do have a problem with setting high expectations and never living up to them – which is precisely what FIFA has done with its human rights agenda and grand commitments to sustainability. But there can be no such thing as a sustainable World Cup, and there are always going to be participants who don’t respect human rights. So why doesn’t FIFA introduce a less ambitious agenda but actually live up to that? 

We are living through a moment of resurgent nativism and nationalism, with the far right on the rise globally. Does a politically loaded World Cup feed those dynamics, or can football channel nationalism into something more benign, even unifying? 

British sociologist Michael Billig coined the term “banal nationalism” to describe everyday representations of a nation, which build a sense of shared national identity. It’s about, for example, national flags hanging outside public buildings. Sports nationalism falls into that category, and there are negative elements to it. In my country, the Netherlands, part of our anti-German sentiment came not from World War II but from soccer. At the same time, soccer teams in many countries are more multicultural than societies, and players of different ethnicities become heroes and role models for many – at least as long as they are winning. 

What’s peculiar about soccer is the emotion and intensity it adds to banal nationalism, making the nationalism somewhat secondary. Winning means winning a game, not your nation dominating another. As much as I dislike the flags, I think there’s a moral panic about the nationalism and the hooliganism in soccer. There are both inclusive and exclusive elements to it – it can be both good and bad.  

You teach a course on soccer and politics. How do you interpret that relationship, and how do you see it evolving? 

A lot of the attention focuses on high politics – institutions, governments, parties, and so on. I’m more interested in the “low” politics of sports, music, culture, and so on. I use soccer to teach about politics, because soccer reflects society in so many ways. Funny enough, this is one of the most radical courses that I have taught. We read about Judith Butler and performing gender, and we talk a lot about identity and globalisation.  

Think of the growing relevance of “diaspora teams”, those national teams that consist increasingly of players who are national “by blood” even if they are not born and raised in the country they represent. Senegal is a prime example of this, with almost half of the players having been born or raised outside the country – mainly in France, its former colonial ruler. Diaspora teams are somewhat the opposite of “civic teams”, which consist of minority players who are born and raised in a country, like Germans of Turkish origin. This shows that even states that are very restrictive on immigration can be very flexible when it comes to top athletes, and people who are very much anti-immigration have no problem with that.  

The EU has played a major role in shaping modern soccer, too. The Bosman ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 1995 shook up the European soccer transfer system to align it with the single market rules. And because Europe is so dominant in global soccer, the ruling changed the global system.  

You interpret soccer as part of civil society. What’s the rationale behind that association? 

I used to work on civil society in post-communist Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and there was this positive association in the literature between a strong civil society and a healthy democracy. But the discourse had a very narrow focus on pro-Western groups, feminist groups, and so on. I was interested in so-called “uncivil” society groups that were not necessarily pro-democracy, but were very much bringing people together and being politically active. Hooligans and ultras often have two sides: they have a bad reputation, particularly in Europe, but are also active in good causes, such as helping poor people or local communities after earthquakes or other natural disasters. I like this complexity.  

How has neoliberalism changed soccer?  

I often use the club I support, PSV Eindhoven, to answer this question. PSV was founded by workers at Philips. It was, in many ways, a representation of the industrial economy, of a form of grounded capitalism. Philips had a connection with Eindhoven because it had factories in the city, and you can’t simply take factories and move them elsewhere. Now you have clubs, like Manchester City, that are a perfect reflection of global neoliberalism. A foreign regime decides to invest in a club not because it has a connection with a local community, but because that club is a global brand and it gives you access to a global audience. The connection between capitalism and soccer has always been there, but capitalism has changed, and soccer is changing with it.   

Most soccer fans do not want to sit in a sanitised and surveilled stadium. They want to sit in a place that still has the atmosphere and the authenticity without the racism and the sexism. And that is possible. 

Being a nostalgic, I have to remind myself that the good old days were not always so pure. Before investment funds, you had [Russian oligarch] Roman Abramovich buying Chelsea. In smaller contexts, you had the second-hand car dealer running the local club. The scale was smaller and more local, but that dude was also dubious and used soccer to elevate his own image.  

What worries me from a civil society point of view is that even though there was always exploitation and hierarchy, there was also a connection with the community. Philips depended on Eindhoven. Today’s capitalists don’t have that connection, and the local community has almost no say anymore. Major clubs no longer depend on ticket sales for a big chunk of their income. Now the money comes from broadcasting rights and sponsors.  

Can fans still save the game from what it has become?  

Fans are a bit like addicts: they have the power to destroy the system tomorrow if they stop feeding the machine. No one will put money into soccer if no one watches it. But if they do that, they lose out, too. So they have few options to push back. They can resist commodification from within the system. In Germany, for example, they successfully pushed back against Monday night games. Or they can leave the system altogether and create alternative fan-owned clubs, but these clubs can’t compete at a high level.  

I’m not particularly optimistic because I see modern football destroying itself in the same way that capitalism is. It is expanding at unsustainable levels, like a pyramid scheme where the value gets thinner and thinner. Private equity firms and regimes are pumping money into the system because they expect something in return, whether it is profit or diplomatic wins. But they can pull out just as quickly as they came in if they realise they have nothing left to gain. And when the bubble bursts, we don’t go back to where we were before, because the loyalties are gone. The generation of English who have been priced out of Premier League stadiums won’t just come back.  

Many soccer clubs are among the oldest institutions around. They have existed for more than a century, and they have given meaning to being somewhere. When a former mining town loses a soccer team, it is a major loss for the community.  

Despite everything, soccer is still capable of creating community and connection. Is there anything political parties or civil society organisations can learn from it? 

The kind of relationship you have with a club you support is deeply irrational. You can’t just recreate that relationship artificially.  

One thing you can learn is the importance of groundedness. If people keep supporting a club even when it loses or gets relegated, it is because they feel connected to it. Many local clubs run thanks to volunteers and people who don’t make money out of them. Growing professionalisation and a lack of groundedness are increasingly weaknesses of progressive movements, and I see something similar happening in modern soccer.  

If you are not recognised as part of the community, people feel like you have lost touch. Most NGOs nowadays don’t have supporters; they have professionals. And for professionals, the institution matters more than the cause. If you are primarily about a cause, you find ways to do the work even when money runs out. But if you are primarily about the institution, you’ll move on and find something else to do. Major NGOs have become businesses with very well-paid jobs held by people who move on from one organisation to another. The same is happening to soccer.  

On the bright side, hasn’t soccer also become more inclusive?  

Absolutely. In the 1980s and 1990s, women or queer people wouldn’t feel safe in a Premier League stadium, and now they do. In a way, gentrification has made soccer more accessible for some groups. Sure, it has excluded part of the white working class, but part of the white working class used to exclude other groups. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because like any nostalgic, I had a blind spot. As a straight white dude, I am a part of the group that used to own the stadium, and so I never experienced the exclusion. 

But securitisation and pricing people out are not the only options for fighting discrimination, and wealthier fans are not necessarily less racist. A lot of the sexism, homophobia, and racism you see in stadiums is performative. So the way to go is to redefine the role of a fan. Germany shows that you can have affordable stadiums that are also more inclusive. It works better when it’s the fans themselves who control and moderate each other. Borussia Dortmund, for example, used to have a major problem with neo-Nazis in the 1980s, and by and large, managed to push them out.  

Most soccer fans do not want to sit in a sanitised and surveilled stadium. They want to sit in a place that still has the atmosphere and the authenticity without the racism and the sexism. And that is possible. 

The popularity of women’s football is exploding. Can it be a healthier alternative to the dynamics you have been describing? 

We often turn to women to solve the problems that men created. We say, men are like that, so we need more women, because women are different. But women are not necessarily better than men. If the structure pushes you in a certain direction, it doesn’t matter who you are. In the current structure, for women’s soccer to remain “pure” would also mean women continue to be paid much less than men in the name of some ideal, and I don’t think that’s fair.  

Anyways, it seems that women’s soccer is rapidly becoming more like modern soccer and heading in the same direction as men’s soccer – potentially even faster. Multi-club ownership is already a reality. In the US, a club from Columbus, Ohio, has recently paid the National Women’s Soccer League 200 million dollars to join the league in 2028. This is far more money than what is being spent on players.  

Still, many women’s soccer clubs are more politically active than men’s clubs, because the players are more outspoken. Being a female soccer player is still seen as transgressive, so you tend to be more engaged politically. But the less transgressive and more commodified women’s soccer becomes, the less political it will be. For now, it remains an escape for many fans because it is more affordable and more fun – certainly for minority groups, and particularly queer people.  

Where does women’s football stand in terms of its community and civil society dimension?  

Almost all women’s clubs have been founded by men’s clubs, so very few of them are actually an expression of a community. There are exceptions, like Turbine Potsdam in Germany, which is one of the most successful women’s teams in the country. But they have now been largely overtaken by clubs like Bayern Munich and Wolfsburg, because you can’t compete with the giants.  

However, most fans of women’s soccer have a political purpose, and in this sense, they are the expression of a community. Many fans emphasise that they’re there to support women’s sports, not a specific club. No one goes to a men’s soccer game to support the movement. So there is an element of community. 

The rise of the far right in Europe has been accompanied by a narrative promoting a return to the traditional family unit. While this concept has never been universal, it now seems more outdated than ever. Can looking to LGBTQIA+ people, who have always had to forge their own path, help rethink our relationship with family, parenthood, and care?

Ilaria and Elisabetta form a happy couple. They live with their 19-month-old daughter, Lea, in the socially liberal city of Bologna in Italy.

However, their path to becoming same-sex parents hasn’t been easy. Lea was conceived through IVF, for which, because of Italy’s prohibition on the procedure for same-sex couples, they were forced to travel to Barcelona, thereby incurring logistical and financial strain. Ilaria and Elisabetta also struggled to obtain the ovarian stimulation medication necessary for a good IVF outcome. The medication itself isn’t illegal in Italy, but, as Ilaria puts it, “some people are simply opposed to it, and they can shatter people’s dreams”.

“A couple of pharmacies actually refused to give us the necessary drugs, and our family doctor refused to help us too. We managed only because we had a friend who owns a pharmacy.”

In recent years, the rise of the far right in Europe has been accompanied by a backlash against the advancement of LGBTQIA+ rights and the promotion of a return to “traditional family values”. This conservative discourse is characterised by an emphasis on fertility and productivity, a distrust of non-traditional family structures, and a desire to control bodies, particularly those of women, all fuelled by a global decline in birth rates and an ageing population.

Since far-right Giorgia Meloni’s rise to power in 2023, Italy has taken several steps to roll back freedoms, such as criminalising surrogacy abroad and restricting LGBTQIA+ topics in schools. The country currently ranks 35 out of 49 on ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map, which measures countries based on their legal and policy practices for LGBTQIA+ people. Family rights are one of the areas in which Italy lags behind the most.

However, Italy is not an anomaly within the European Union. Equal marriage is recognised in only 16 member states, joint adoption in 17, and assisted reproduction for non-heterosexual couples in 13.

“Another problem arose when our daughter was born,” Ilaria recounts. “For the first year, she was formally only Elisabetta’s daughter, since Elisabetta gave birth to her and I had no legal way to recognise her as my child.”

The situation was finally resolved when the Constitutional Court overturned restrictions introduced by the government in 2023. It ruled that non-biological mothers in same-sex couples are entitled to automatic legal recognition if the child was conceived abroad. In July 2025, 11 months after her daughter was born, Ilaria was finally able to legally recognise her as her own. “We are still in the process of adding my surname to her last name.”

In recent years, the family rights of LGBTQIA+ people have received growing recognition from supranational bodies. In 2023, the European Parliament voted in favour of recognising parenthood across the EU “irrespective of how a child was conceived, born or the type of family they have.”

However, the difficulties persist. In its Strategy for LGBTIQ+ Equality 2026-2030, adopted in October 2025, the European Commission notes that “due to differences in family law between Member States, family ties may no longer be recognised in cross-border situations.”

According to the FRA’s third LGBTIQ survey, “14% of respondents in LGBTIQ-parented families faced problems in having their parenthood legally recognised.”

Queerness and happiness

The norm of a nuclear family made up of a mother, a father, and their children does not reflect even the reality of many heterosexual cisgender adults – think of single-parent families (which, according to Eurostat data, account for 14 per cent of households with children), or children raised in foster homes. But while these types of “non-traditional” family arrangements have been largely normalised, queer people and “rainbow families” continue to face the deep-rooted misconception that their relationships are inherently dysfunctional and therefore unsuited to building a family.

This is particularly the case for transgender people, who are also most often overlooked in family law. Of the 49 countries covered by ILGA-Europe’s analysis, only eight – Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Malta, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden – recognise trans parenthood.

Yet for many LGBTQIA+ individuals, family is a lifeline. Chloé, a 41-year-old transgender woman from Belgium, is a prime example. Having begun her gender transition five years ago, she recalls receiving generally positive reactions from everyone, including her family, her then partner, and her three daughters, who are aged between five and eight.

“I had to explain [to my eldest], in a few simple words, why her dad had become a mum,” she recalls. In this transformed family, Chloé did not wish to “take the place of either dad or mum,” and had to carve out a new role tailored to her. From family conversations, a term emerged: “Mawé” – “a sort of poetic contraction of Mum-Chloé,” she smiles. “Mawé”, she says, is a unique name to describe “a role I can invent”.

Chloé and her ex-wife have now divorced and share custody of their three daughters. But her coming out had a positive impact on her family life. “In fact, my transition probably allowed our relationship to last a little longer,” she says, with common ground opening up between her and her then wife, who has been her support and confidante from the very beginning. Embracing her gender identity has enabled Chloé to “[become] a better version of myself,” something that has been beneficial for her relationships, her daughters, and her family ties.

With an increasing focus on alternative family arrangements comes recognition that heterosexual family structures can be a place of violence and oppression rather than love.

Ilaria, in spite of the difficulties of becoming a parent in Italy due to the hostile legal framework, has also found happiness in motherhood. She and Elisabetta share responsibilities equally and the support of family and friends has made everything easier. “I felt like a parent every step of the way. I feel like a mother in my own right.”

According to sociologist Gabrielle Richard, author of the essay “Faire famille autrement” (“Doing family differently”), drawing on queer experiences can help societies rethink family structure. Faced with the view that their sexual orientation or gender identity is incompatible with building a family, many queer people are characterised by what Richard calls the “lateral thinking of parenthood,” whereby parents “often do not see parenthood as just another milestone to reach … but rather as an opportunity, a desire, a privilege.”

Richard told me in an interview that nothing is predetermined when it comes to relationships and parenthood for queer people, whose lives are often deemed undesirable, and are therefore not “provided for” socially or legally.

“Without ignoring the violence inherent in this state of affairs, we must recognise that it simultaneously grants them a unique freedom of action in these areas.”

The impossible family

With an increasing focus on alternative family arrangements comes recognition that heterosexual family structures can be a place of violence and oppression rather than love.

In her essay “Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communising of Care” (Pluto Press, 2023), American teacher and author M. E. O’Brien critiques the bourgeois ideal of the family in the west – typically white, heterosexual, property-owning, stable, and Puritanical. While families may represent a place of love and unconditional care, O’Brien argues that they can also become primary agents of inequality, normativity and violence.

In her view, the conception of the family that emerged from the Industrial Revolution is now reaching its limits. “The family of the present is impossible,” she concludes. “It is torn between the violence and precarity of racial capitalism, the excessive demands of daily labor, and collective yearnings for freedom.”

This matches Chloé’s experience: it was the pressure and expectations linked to raising a family – not her coming out – that strained the relationship with her ex-wife. “If I sacrifice myself for my daughters, I’ve got no energy left for them afterwards.”

For O’Brien, chronic unemployment, austerity policies, stagnant wages, and the difficulty of accessing private property – an essential part of the myth of family stability – are making more and more people question the importance of the traditional family unit. “Many already experience the family as a trap of hopelessness: homeless queer youth, people fleeing abusive partners, others stuck in dissatisfying and lifeless relationships, or millions of the people choosing to live alone.” A precariousness set to increase with the ongoing economic, political, ecological and social crises. “The family, as a norm, as an institution, as an aspiration, has already catastrophically failed numerous people.”

O’Brien acknowledges that some of the same issues can affect LGBTQIA+ families, too. “Chosen families [the name given to non-biological kinship bonds, and especially LGBTQIA+ families], too, encounter significant limits. They can quickly run into many of the oppressive logics of the family.”

“Other critics, including Sophie Lewis and Ariel Ajeno, have pointed to the exclusive character of the chosen family”, O’Brien tells me. “Conventional families have the pretence of unconditionality – you are welcome because you are family: no one has to choose you. But needing to be chosen requires the active sympathy of others. This allows for considerable coercion, evaluation, and status competition.”

Pro-birth contradictions

As several critics, including O’Brien, have pointed out, the modern conception of the family unit is still, at least in part, beholden to notions of productivity and growth. At a time of geopolitical competition and declining birth rates, these norms tend to take on military overtones – for example, in 2024, France’s president Emmanuel Macron announced a major plan to tackle infertility in order to enable “demographic rearmament”. The French government’s pro-birth ambitions sparked controversy again in 2026 when it sent a letter to all French citizens aged 29 to raise awareness of infertility and boost the birth rate.

Contrary to what Macron’s rhetoric may suggest, France’s fertility rate has remained higher than that of most other EU countries.

France offers greater protection for the family rights of LGBTIQ individuals than other European countries, according to ILGA-Europe. It recognises marriage, joint adoption and medically assisted insemination. However, ILGA-Europe highlights several issues that remain: the failure to recognise registered partnerships as equivalent to marriage, the lack of automatic recognition of parenthood, and the recognition of parents.

“Advocating for pro-birth policies starts with recognising the existence and rights of families that already exist,” says Richard. She sees Macron’s rhetoric as a “real middle finger” to non-heterosexual families that are “confined to the margins of the system.”

“Restricting demographic incentives to certain types of family demonstrates a wilful blindness to the realities of those families that do not conform to the norm,” she says, “and suggests that what is at stake is not so much the preservation of the family and the population, but rather an increase in the number of good white, traditionally Catholic and heterosexual families.”

Contrary to what Macron’s rhetoric may suggest, France’s fertility rate has remained higher than that of most other EU countries: it stood at 1.61 live births per woman in 2024, below the replacement level of 2.01 but well above the EU average of 1.34.

Meanwhile, Italy’s birth rate has remained consistently below the EU average (1.18 children per woman as of 2024). In an attempt to counter demographic decline, Meloni’s government has pledged more funds to support families, and encouraged the arrival of foreign workers. At the same time, the government still fails to grant LGBTQIA+ families equal rights, and continues its rhetorical crusade against immigration.

In Hungary, too, former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made demographic revival one of his main objectives. While economic necessity was one of the main arguments, the ideology of ethnic preservation was also important. The far-right populist portrayed immigrants, especially Muslims, as a threat to the Hungarian nation.

Reshaping our ties

In her essay, O’Brien details the survival strategies adopted by marginalised communities, such as colonised, enslaved and queer people, in the face of oppressive power and discrimination. Calling for nuance, she does not advocate a total individualisation of society, nor a complete replacement of the individual family with a socialist, state-sponsored “universal family”, nor the disappearance of spaces for care and affection. “Instead of destroying the family, we must abolish it by preserving what is crucial to it – human love, connection, care, community, romance – without binding these qualities to the particular form of the household within capitalism.”

For O’Brien, “Abolition means radically transforming these qualities, freeing them from relationships of coercion, abuse, isolation, and property … to abolish the family means to free our capacity to care for each other.”

“I don’t think the concept of family is outdated,” says Ilaria. “I think the concept of the traditional, patriarchal family is outdated. I think that today, when starting a family is increasingly difficult for economic, professional and social reasons, building extended families is more necessary than ever. What’s more, the ‘traditional family’ is clearly a political construct – because families have always extended to the broader community, throughout all of human history.

“Extended family, to me, means many things, but above all, it means relying on friends and strong personal bonds to create a chosen family. We see it every day: we build new traditions and new foundations together.”

For Richard, broadening our conceptions of the family could help alleviate the pressure on heterosexual couples, who often struggle with the social expectations to start a family at any cost. This pressure may also force adults into undesirable or unfulfillable roles – a situation that lies at the root of much domestic violence.

“We need to rethink parenthood,” says Richard, “not as a right, not as an obligation, but as a possibility, as a responsibility.”

The link between planetary limits and demography, portrayed in numerous works of fiction, has haunted modern ecological thinking since its origins. While ecologism has freed itself from its Malthusian heritage, focusing instead on our ways of inhabiting the world, it has done so by relegating reproduction to the private sphere, treating it as a political taboo. Between these two extremes lies a conceptual void that is yet to be explored.

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realised that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.”

This scornful observation, addressed by Agent Smith to his prisoner Morpheus in the first film of the Matrix trilogy, serves to legitimise the “technological rationality” of the machine civilisation and its dominion over a humanity reduced to energy slavery. Such arguments are often among the grievances voiced by fictional characters. The most powerful of these is Thanos, the mythical supervillain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Traumatised by the collapse of his homeworld’s ecosystem due to demographic pressures, the Mad Titan sets off in search of the “infinity stones” that will enable him to save the universe from human proliferation – and safeguard the balance of nature – by wiping out half of the living population with a click of his fingers.

Certain misanthropic figures and schools of ecological thought share this conviction that, in order to save the planet, we must rid it of its most burdensome inhabitant. But since none of them are willing to sacrifice themselves to make more room, it is always other people – especially the poorest among us – who are surplus. Jean-Christophe Rufin’s 2007 novel Le parfum d’Adam¹ provides a telling illustration. The book features a radical environmentalist organisation that devises bioterrorist plots – one involving a strain of cholera – to tackle the global threat of overpopulation, beginning with regions such as the favelas of Brazil. These are worthy disciples of English economist Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834), who thought it fit to “court the return of the plague” to naturally control the poorest populations.²

The children of Malthus

Ironically, it seems that progress – technological or otherwise – has begun to answer the Malthusians’ morbid prayers, albeit more indiscriminately than they might have hoped. Besides 4 million deaths globally each year due to air pollution,³ including 180,000 in the EU,⁴ we are collectively subjected to “universal poisoning” that directly attacks our reproductive systems.⁵ Endocrine disruptors including phthalates and BPA – found in food packaging, cosmetics, and children’s toys – reduce sperm quality, bring about early infertility, and cause genital malformations in newborns. Heavy metals such as lead and mercury from our diet and environment accumulate in human tissues, disturbing ovulation and impairing spermatogenesis. Microplastics, ingested through food and water, infiltrate ovaries and testicles, while PFAS – baptised “forever chemicals” – may well shrink the ovarian reserve and increase the rate of miscarriages. To this apocalyptic list we can add highly toxic dioxins, persistent environmental pollutants that, in addition to damaging the immune system and causing cancer, lower the overall fertility rate and increase the risk of complications in pregnancy, thus endangering future generations.

These concrete effects on our biological functions – and therefore also our lives – reveal an ecology of the body itself, in which the environmental crisis becomes a reproductive crisis, intimately connecting demographics and environmental health. It is this conjunction, exploited by a cunning and violent fundamentalist revolutionary movement, that Margaret Atwood presents as a key catalyst for the Republic of Gilead’s patriarchal totalitarian theocracy in her bestselling book The Handmaid’s Tale.⁶ Pollution and plummeting fertility lead to the replacement of democracy with a regime of total population control, in which the bodies of women are literally nationalised in the name of perpetuating society and fulfilling the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply.

The political link between ecologism and demography tragically portrayed here has haunted ecological thinking since its origins – not only as a matter of numbers but as the intimate nexus between body and world. Born in the 1970s from the dual realisation of the limits and contradictions inherent in the industrial-consumerist mode of development, early ecological movements were imbued with the tension between resources and populations.

In the “Meadows report” published by the Club of Rome in 1972,⁷ the fragility of the ecological balance was brought into sharp relief by scientific proof that pollution and resource depletion were inevitable consequences of this model. With the illusion of an infinite planet dispelled, the capitalist promise of universal abundance began to look increasingly shaky. Material growth was more finite than we thought, while the number of people it must be shared between was only going to increase.

It was out of this double crisis of finitude that the modern ecological worldview took shape. When René Dumont ran for the French presidency in 1974, it was the first time an environmentalist had entered politics. During his campaign, he denounced not only the waste inherent in consumerism but also demographic pressures. “It would be possible,” he wrote, “to only authorise a birth rate that precisely offsets the mortality rate, bringing us quickly to zero growth if we used authoritarian methods – which the global threat would justify.”⁸

Early ecological movements were imbued with the tension between resources and populations.

A powerful imaginary was unleashed. Demographics had become the revelatory symbol of a metaphysical threat. The rising number of humans on Earth stood as a metaphor for all the anxieties of the era – hunger, depletion, resource wars, pollution, congestion, urban sprawl, and the disappearance of the countryside – and the collapse of the Promethean certainties at the base of the modern psyche. Conscious of its mortality in the aftermath of Hiroshima, humanity now felt endangered by its own vitality: first the A-bomb, then the H-bomb, and now the “P-bomb”,⁹ a term coined by neo-Malthusian Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and co-founder of the Zero Population Growth movement – a man with close ties to the beginnings of the environmentalist movement and organisations such as Friends of the Earth.

This obsession with overpopulation left a deep impression on early ecological movements and yielded an abundant crop of catastrophist literature and cinema. John Brunner’s 1972 dystopian novel The Sheep Look Up¹⁰ depicts a world saturated with toxins, trash, and systemic violence, where collapse is no longer an unfortunate accident but a way of life. Not only is the population too large; its members are trapped in a hostile, poisoned environment – as if the species itself is imprisoned in its own externalities. Ursula K. Le Guin’s more subtle 1974 novel The Dispossessed offers a confrontation between proprietarian material abundance and a frugal, egalitarian, and compassionate anarchist society.¹¹ Le Guin’s novel can be read as a response to the question that lies at the heart of ecologism: In a world of finite resources, how should life be organised?

A sense of scarcity

Very quickly, these apocalyptic prophecies were confronted by the need for an ethical and political rethinking of economic development. Greens were all too aware that the economic system would not “collapse under the weight of its own contradictions”. Instead, it would reinvent itself by exploiting scarcity itself. It is this logic that Brunner explicitly anticipates by depicting a society trapped in a self-perpetuating scarcity loop. Here, exhaustibility does not put a stop to accumulation but transforms it into ever more voracious and dystopian forms. Ultimately, the challenge first arises in relation to individual behaviour – and thus the representation of the world, humanity, and its place in the universe.

However, reading the 2019 short essay Limits by economist and degrowth theorist Giorgos Kallis,¹² we discover that, contrary to what his heirs may have thought, Malthus was not in fact hostile to population growth. Like Adam Smith and liberals throughout history, he even saw it as the true wealth of nations. But given specific problems of supply, he was plagued by an overwhelming doubt: while our appetites (sexual and alimentary) are unlimited, our material resources are subject to limits. The answer to this contradiction lies in growth. As such, rather than an apostle of degrowth as certain greens and many racist pronatalists obsessed by the “Great Replacement” would have you believe, Malthus was in fact one of the founding fathers of the Church of Growth.

The cornerstone of this Church is a sense of scarcity. The dynamic of economic growth is rooted in the same sentiment, yet this is nothing more than a projection, a preconception of the world. As Kallis underlines, it is a performative vision. In other words, when we hitch our economic growth to future scarcity, whether real or imagined, we end up organising it around the management of that scarcity. That which is scarce is expensive, therefore it pays to organise scarcity. Then there is nothing left to do but stimulate desires and provide the products that can (temporarily) satisfy these cravings. The circle is complete; the economy of limitless desire has found its formula.

Ecotopias

Awareness of limits is at the heart of ecological thinking. And while one of the first limits it imposes is on material desires – a central point in the work of Austrian-French social philosopher André Gorz, for example – there are also limits to those that are immaterial. Published in 1975, American author Ernest Callenbach’s novel Ecotopia is a classic of utopian ecological fiction that offers a mellow counterpoint to totalitarian or catastrophist interpretations of the P-Bomb. The society of the Republic of Ecotopia has stabilised its population, mastered fertility, and organised a form of demographic restraint compatible with its ecological balance – all without trampling on individual freedoms. Unlike the puritan United States from which it has seceded, Ecotopia has also managed to avoid the pitfalls of a deceptive sexual liberation/liberalisation that only perpetuates existing relations of sexual domination – an ambivalence that is central to the work of writer and poet Michel Houellebecq.¹³

When the book’s narrator and protagonist defects to the West, his new ecological homeland, he does so out of love. He is not drawn to Ecotopia by its successful agroecological sustainability, impressive circular economy, or soothing lack of advertising – or even by the beauty of its natural landscapes. Instead, it is the wealth and depth of human relationships, specifically romantic relationships, that can be found there that underpin his decision.

The distinction between love and sexuality and reproduction is one of the anthropological foundations of ecologically restrained societies. Yet this is not always self-evident, for it touches on one of the most intimate aspects of the human condition. French author Camille Leboulanger’s novel Eutopia sheds an original light on this political dimension of family and human reproduction.¹⁴ Eschewing the conflict-driven narrative devices often seen in the “utopias exposed” genre, the novel depicts a world that, in many regards, broadly corresponds to the ideal forms of human relationships and relations of production dreamed of by degrowth theorists.

Eutopia (the “good place” rather than a “non-place”, as the author explains)¹⁵ is first and foremost a work of speculative fiction about a fundamentally egalitarian society that is freed from both labour commodification – in line with sociologist and economist Bernard Friot’s “salary for life” concept¹⁶ – and the dictates of productivity. Yet even under these comfortable and ideal conditions, certain characters remain troubled by existential doubt, suggesting that it is possible to be unhappy in an ideal society. This unease centres around family ties and attachment to one’s lineage, calling into question a key pillar of this degrowth society – namely the reduction of its “human impact index” by, among other things, limiting births to “half a child” per person.

While the point is never Malthusian and the demographic question is not even central, the story raises something deeper. Within the intimacy of human selfhood, this “eutopian” society emancipated from the dictates of productivity comes face to face with an anxiety that transcends the material condition of the species while placing it within its own limits: time.

Reproduction as “the unthought”

Demography is an inscription in time itself. It is that we can trace the source of the moral panics currently engulfing the Western public sphere, fuelling martial language and reactionary politics.¹⁷ Fear of civilisational erasure, loss of territory, loss of relevance, the fading away of the marks we leave behind: demographic anxiety calls into question our relationship with time as much as space.

While such demographic concerns were once a defining feature of ecologism, “green” and “Malthusian” are no longer synonymous. There are three main reasons for this. The first relates to Greens’ definitive entry into the political arena. Since becoming a potential force of governance, Green parties have been unable to reasonably advocate for policies that limit births without coming up against a major objection: bodily and reproductive autonomy (especially for women) and respect for family life and structure are fundamental rights.

A society without children has no way to project itself into its future with hope and imagination.

The second reason is deeper still. As ecologism becomes more refined in its outlook, the focus has shifted from the number of the world’s inhabitants to our ways of inhabiting that world. Resource pressures do not arise from population growth alone. First and foremost, they stem from the ways societies produce, consume, transport, heat, build, eat, and dispose. Evidently, more frugal countries and lifestyles will have a lesser environmental impact than hyper-consumerist ones. Added to this is the fact that social inequalities are also ecological inequalities. Very rapidly, the focus has shifted to reducing material flows, transforming infrastructure, and creating less wasteful systems rather than targeting demography as such.

The final reason is the political and moral corollary of the previous reasons. The debate over birth rates is a minefield where misogynistic, classist, racist, colonial, and anti-Global South tropes can easily surface. Instead, contemporary ecological discourse focuses on transforming the societal model. It speaks as if social life were solely conceived in terms of its visible cycles – extracting, producing, distributing, consuming – but ignores the most fundamental way in which humanity renews itself. Reproduction has become the unthought, a non-object – relegated to the private sphere, the intimate, and quite the political taboo. This is clearly one of the paradoxes of contemporary ecologism: we aim at rebuilding our relationship with the world while setting aside the question of biological and generational transmission.

A future without children?

This is a problem. While demography is no longer front and centre of ecological concerns, it is no less real. With some rare exceptions, societies around the world are getting older, fertility is falling, the desire to raise children is dampened by material constraints, and horizons are shrinking. Added to this are the consequences of eco-anxiety, especially in the younger generations,¹⁸ who experience the future as an emotional weight that is almost impossible to bear.

For some, the decision not to have children has even become an intimate protest against the very idea of reproduction in a world in crisis. In certain green circles, especially in the UK, the US, Australia, and Canada, people are no longer simply decrying overpopulation or pleading for demographic restraint. They are personally refusing to have children in a world deemed too degraded, too uncertain, and too unjust to bring a new generation into it.¹⁹ The fear of being too many has been superseded by one of birthing more children into a world where the future already seems compromised.

This political gesture of a militant minority has legitimate motives, moral force, and power as a form of protest. But the “birth strike” movement also has its limits. Caught in an awkward tension between critique of and retreat from the world, it shifts the responsibility for collective transformation to the level of personal choice, putting little pressure on the structural causes of the crisis.

Ecologism has managed to find solutions to the problem of finite resources by considering emissions, flows, infrastructure, and systems but has paid less attention to what the environmental crisis does to the desire for parenthood, to life choices, and to the ability to see oneself in terms of generational continuity. Between the fear of being too many and the dread of being too few, between the anxiety of overburdening the planet and that of populating it with children doomed to uncertainty, there is a conceptual void that is yet to be explored.

This question must be revisited. Not to rehabilitate a regressive Malthusianism, but rather to cultivate a more comprehensive approach that is able to address the conditions of both social and human reproduction and the affections involved. One that does not stop at transforming the world, but which also considers the ways in which this world is passed on, populated, and renewed – the story it tells itself. Because ultimately, the link between demography and ecologism is a question of the future: Who will come after us, in what kind of world, and with what hopes of making a home in it?

A society without children has no way to project itself into its future with hope and imagination. It renounces the very essence of life, and without the possibility to transcend itself, it risks succumbing to entropy or getting lost in an eternal present devoid of all meaning. It is the entire significance of the human adventure that is brought into question here – in a deeply metaphysical way. What meaning might life on Earth have without human consciousness to bear witness to it?

Translated by Ciarán Lawless | Voxeurop

1.  Jean-Christophe Rufin (2007). Le parfum d’Adam. Paris: Flammarion. ︎
2. “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.” Thomas Robert Malthus (1826). An Essay on the Principle of Population. [6th edition]. London: John Murray. ︎
3. World Health Organization (2024). “Ambient (outdoor) air pollution”. 24 October 2024. Available at <https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health>. ︎
4. European Environment Agency (2025). “Premature deaths due to exposure to fine particulate matter in Europe”. 30 November 2025. Available at <https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/health-impacts-of-exposure-to>. ︎
5. Fabrice Nicolino (2014). Un empoisonnement universel. Uzès: Les liens qui libèrent. ︎
6. Margaret Atwood (1985). The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClellan & Stewart. Also a TV series created by Bruce Miller (2017 – present). ︎
7. Donella Meadows et al. (1972). The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books. ︎
8. Alexandre Moatti (2014). “René Dumont : les quarante ans d’une Utopie”. La Vie des idées. 11 July 2014. Available at <https://laviedesidees.fr/Rene-Dumont-les-quarante-ans-d-une>. ︎
9. Paul R. Ehrlich & Anne H. Ehrlich (1968). The Population Bomb. San Francisco: Sierra Club & New York: Ballantine Books. ︎
10.  John Brunner (1972). The Sheep Look Up. New York: Harper & Row. ︎
11. Ursula K. Le Guin (1974). The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. New York: Harper & Row. ︎
12. Giorgos Kallis (2019). Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care. [Stanford Briefs]. Redwood City, California: Stanford University Press. ︎
13. Especially Extension du domaine de la lutte (published in English as Whatever) (Maurice Nadeau, 1994) and Les Particules élémentaires (Atomised) (Flammarion, 1998). ︎
14. Camille Leboulanger (2022). Eutopia. Rennes: Argyll. ︎
15. Camille Leboulanger (2023). “À propos d’Eutopia”. 7 November 2023. Available at <https://camilleleboulanger.fr/a-propos-deutopia/>. ︎
16. Bernard Friot (2014). Émanciper le travail. Paris: La Dispute ︎
17. Such as the French president’s call for “demographic rearmament” on 16 January 2024. See Solène Cordier (2024). “Emmanuel Macron annonce un congé de naissance et un plan contre l’infertilité en vue du « réarmement démographique » du pays”. Le Monde. 17 January 2024. Available at <https://bit.ly/49nfzev>. ︎
18. Louis Jehel & Mathieu Guidère (2024). “Les jeunes générations atteintes d’éco-anxiété : que faire ? Addressing eco-anxiety in young generations: What can be done?”. Médecine de Catastrophe–Urgences Collectives, Vol. 8(2), pp. 149 – 156. Available at <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1279847924000314>.
    ︎
19. Mark B. Brown (2024). “Birth Strikes, Climate Responsibility, and Hannah Arendt”. The Review of Politics, Vol. 86(4), pp. 438 – 461. Available at <https://doi.org/10.1017/S003467052400024X>. ︎

Migration features prominently in Europe’s demographic debates, whether as a looming threat or as a silver bullet against ageing societies. With the EU’s normalisation of border externalisation and the far right’s growing emphasis on “remigration”, progressives have tried to reframe the debate around economic benefits, class, and inequality. But flawed narratives and a crisis of trust have blocked productive conversation. Former Green member of the European Parliament Judith Sargentini explains how we got to the current impasse – and how we might overcome it. 

This interview is part of the Green European Journal’s upcoming print edition on demographic futures, out in early June. Subscribe now and get it delivered straight to your door.

Green European Journal: Like other demographic debates, discussions about the future of migration tend to evoke extreme scenarios: mass climate-driven displacement on one side, intensifying competition for migrants on the other. Are these framings helpful? 

Judith Sargentini: Both contain a grain of truth. Climate change will drive mass movement; the Syrian civil war was deeply intertwined with the climate crisis, as is the civil war in Sudan. At the same time, ageing societies across Europe will increasingly need labour migrants, whatever the anti-immigration rhetoric says. But rather than dwelling on extreme scenarios that breed fear and anxiety, we should focus on the kind of societies we want to build. Yes, there is a housing shortage, but what caused it, and what policies can fix it? The same goes for climate change: if we fail to stop it, people will have to move because of it. But what we should be focusing on is how to hold to account those who fail to act on the climate emergency.

How did the discourse on migration shift over the years you worked on it in the European Parliament? 

As the only member of the European Parliament sitting on both the civil liberties (LIBE) committee – where migration files were handled – and the development (DEVE) committee, I witnessed an enormous shift in the narrative. 

Development funding had always been under pressure from the Right but was kept at an acceptable level on the basis that it would discourage migration. This was simply not true: when people are extremely poor, they lack the means to migrate. Successful development cooperation gives more people the opportunity to move. That is not an argument against it, but it shows a flaw in the debate. When that approach failed to deliver, the response was to cut development funds and build fences instead. We deluded ourselves into thinking that training and funding coast guards and police forces in Africa would stem migration flows to Europe. That, too, was flawed. 

There has been enormous misunderstanding about what drives migration and what can actually address it. Frontex had a budget of six million euros in 2005; by 2021, it was around one billion.

We remain trapped in the idea that better border control will stop people from moving. All it achieves is more irregular Migration. 

As the EU seeks to diversify its partnerships in response to the collapse of the “West” as a normative power, what part can migration policy play? 

I would question whether Europe has ever upheld the values it professes. Returning people to countries that are not even their own has always been a deeply unilateral approach – and one that has left Europe vulnerable to blackmail by autocrats who weaponise the threat of mass immigration. Deals like the one Italy struck with Albania function as propaganda tools until a judge rightly rules them illegal. 

Our entire approach to migration has been about sweeping dust under the carpet. We need to learn to listen instead. And this goes beyond migration: How do we engage with Global South countries? Are we treating them as equal partners? Are our trade agreements mutually beneficial? The Global South is not Europe’s wasteland. 

There has been enormous misunderstanding about what drives migration and what can actually address it.

How did we get to today’s debate, with its growing focus on externalising border management and the far right openly calling for “remigration”? 

In 2019, my final year as an MEP, I was rapporteur on the Returns Directive. Even then, there were debates about “return hubs” outside the EU, readmission agreements with countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia based on supposedly voluntary returns, and discussions with Tunisia about externalising asylum procedures. These weren’t new discussions: the EU had already signed a readmission agreement with Ukraine in 2007 and one with Pakistan in 2010. Underlying all of it was the idea that beyond EU borders lies a kind of terra incognita – unused space where we can place the migrants we don’t want. 

What is happening now is the logical continuation of that trajectory. The kind of agreement Giorgia Meloni is pursuing with Albania has been normalised by what happened years ago with other countries. The direction of travel has been consistent. 

As a member of the LIBE committee, you were also rapporteur on the erosion of the rule of law in Hungary under Viktor Orbán. What was the role of migration in his illiberal project? 

Orbán used migration – the Syrian crisis and the refugees coming through the Balkans – as a way to convince his fellow European People’s Party members that he was on the right track.¹ For many years, he succeeded in making others believe he had found a way to keep his country free of migrants. And he did – by locking people up at the border in deeply inhumane conditions or pushing them through to Austria, making Hungary unattractive to migrants and leaving neighbouring countries to deal with the consequences. It also helped convince his own citizens – you may recall the photos of Budapest’s central station filled with migrants waiting to move on – that he was keeping Hungary safe from people it couldn’t shelter. 

This narrative proved remarkably effective elsewhere, too – including in my country, the Netherlands. Many social democrats were comfortable with the 2016 EU-Turkey deal. Part of the deal was a “one-to-one” mechanism: Europe would return all new irregular migrants to Turkey, including Syrians, arriving on the Greek islands. For every Syrian returned, the EU committed to resettling one Syrian refugee from Turkey. It was a way to “educate” people not to come to Europe uninvited. Even within the Greens, it took a long time to grasp what was clear to some of us from the start: that the deal would lead to pushbacks and serious human rights abuses. 

In the Netherlands, two coalition governments have collapsed in recent years over asylum and migration policy, and these issues continue to be highly divisive. How do you make sense of this obsession? 

In April, the Dutch Senate voted on asylum legislation proposed by the previous government, in which the far right was the dominant coalition partner. One proposal would have effectively criminalised undocumented migrants – making it a criminal offence simply to be in the Netherlands without papers. It was struck down at the last minute because the far right withdrew its support, deeming it was not harsh enough. 

This shows how dramatically the terms of the debate have shifted. Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to be where we are now. This applies at the local level, too: there is legislation requiring that asylum seekers awaiting their procedures be housed and distributed across municipalities, but some city councils are refusing to comply with the law. Also in April, riots broke out in a town ordered to receive 110 asylum seekers. Demonstrations turned violent, and the building designated to house these people was trashed, forcing the police to intervene. 

The old narrative – that migrants steal our jobs – has largely faded. Nowadays, much of the discontent is about housing. The housing shortage is real, but it is the product of decades of neoliberal policy and chronic underbuilding – not immigration. Yet this narrative has been deliberately cultivated and amplified. It is a form of disinformation that centre-right parties have helped spread. 

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality is not uniquely Dutch. For example, Italy’s population remained stable in 2025 for the first time in 12 years thanks to net immigration, even as Giorgia Meloni’s government remains committed to keeping migrants out. If facts and figures have no hold, is the migration debate one that can only be won through narratives and emotions? 

I’ve wrestled with this question for a long time. We are not lying; we know the other side is. But a lie is extraordinarily difficult to dispel, whether with facts or counter-narratives. You are permanently on the defensive, because if you dedicate your time and energy to dismantling a lie, you are not telling your own story. Every left-wing politician struggles with this, even though we have become skilled storytellers. I’ve taken courses on crafting better narratives, but I’m not convinced there is a winning formula – certainly not in a TV debate, where the incentive is often spectacle rather than truth. 

After five years away from politics, I’m now an alderwoman in the city of Gouda. I have found that there is a profound crisis of trust – not only between citizens and politicians but also among politicians themselves. When I was group leader of [the Dutch Green-Left party] GroenLinks in the Amsterdam city council years ago, we disagreed fiercely with our opponents, but we shared procedures and maintained a working relationship. The same was largely true in Brussels: those of us who took the European Parliament seriously respected each other and shared common rules. Once that is gone, there is no basis for common ground and compromise. 

Back in 2015, I kept insisting there was no migration crisis – only a governance crisis. Now there is a trust crisis, and it runs through politics itself. That is the hardest thing to overcome. 

The growing salience of immigration in public debate has clearly favoured the Right. Does that mean progressives would be better served by taking migration off the agenda altogether rather than trying to win the argument? 

I think so, and the numbers support it, since asylum migration in particular is falling. In recent Dutch elections, we tried not to put emphasis on these topics, but they keep resurfacing because others drag them back in, and then everyone piles on. 

In fact, the absence of migration from the political debate used to be the norm. When I started working on migration in 2009, nobody paid much attention to the issue, and nobody in my party wanted to touch it, because there was nothing to gain. Do it well and no one notices; make a mistake and you lose votes. It was only with the Syrian crisis that I suddenly had competition from within my own party, because the issue had become exciting. You could shine and make your name through it. 

Every time migration returns to the spotlight, progressives drift rightward with it. 

Progressives in Europe are trying to win the migration argument in different ways, from the Danish Social Democrats shifting to the right, to Pedro Sánchez in Spain making an economic case for regularising migrants and UK Green leader Zack Polanski trying to reframe the debate around class and inequality. If you were a progressive leader today, which approach would you take? 

It is easier to say this from outside government, but I think Polanski is right: “the boats” are not the problem. The real issues are affordability and housing and their root causes. But for that narrative to take hold, others need to follow, and what we see instead is the opposite.  

Every time migration returns to the spotlight, progressives drift rightward with it. Which, in turn, shifts the debate further to the right. It is a vicious circle. I witnessed this in my own party. I recall colleagues arguing that we should only accept skilled asylum seekers. But that is not how asylum works. 

The ongoing merger between GroenLinks and [the social-democratic] Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) worries me on this front. As a Green, I believe in system change – in addressing root causes. But this is not the case for social democrats. If you are in a party that does not believe in system change, you take the current situation as a given, and all you can do is sand down the rough edges. 

What would you identify as the key elements of a green approach to migration? 

Today, labour is a stronger driver of migration than asylum. A guaranteed minimum income and strong social security benefit both migrant and local workers: giving people the power to refuse jobs with poor conditions, while giving newcomers a real chance at integration. Less neoliberalism, in short. 

The second element is flexibility. Right now, we are effectively locking people in. You arrive in Europe, you get your papers if you are lucky, but if you leave, you lose everything. We should turn migrants into expats. Expats can move, go home, and resettle elsewhere without bureaucratic walls blocking their way. 

Third, we need to look at migration in context and not as an isolated issue. Global redistribution of wealth, fair trade and investment, and decolonisation – these are not necessarily going to reduce migration numbers, but the point is giving people a choice to stay where they are if they so wish. 

1. Viktor Orbán’s far-right Fidesz party left the European People’s Party (EPP) in March 2021 to avoid being expelled.  ︎

In September 2025, Nepal experienced mass youth protests triggered by a social media ban. Facing brutal repression, young Nepalis set the country ablaze and toppled the government. Part of a broader wave of digitally organised Gen Z uprisings, the movement took lessons from other successful and failed revolutions. What comes next is an open question. 

A slightly shorter version of this article will feature in the Green European Journal’s upcoming print edition Life Lines: Navigating Demographic Shifts, out on 10 June. Subscribe now and get it delivered straight to your door. 

The first message arrived at 9.35 pm on the night of 7 September 2025. It said, “Test”. 

No name. Just a handle – “Pseudonym” – and a single word sent into the void of a Discord server, Youths Against Corruption, that had been live for less than a minute. A handful of people were there to receive it. They responded, as people do when they discover they are not alone in a new space, with the giddy formlessness of a conversation that has not yet found its subject: introductions, gibberish, tentative jokes. Someone posted an AI-generated image of Nepal’s national flag fused with the Jolly Roger flag of the manga One Piece, which had become, somewhat inexplicably, a symbol for Gen Z protest movements around the world. “Not everybody watches anime and can relate,” one user replied. “For peace,” a third said. 

At that moment, Nepal was in a state of confusion and distress. Four days earlier, the government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had followed the playbook of other governments in the region and switched off social media. The ostensible reason was regulatory: 26 platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube, had failed to comply with new localisation laws requiring them to register, pay taxes and set up offices in Nepal. TikTok had complied and was spared. The rest went dark. 

The government failed to anticipate, however, that banning these tools of communication would ignite rather than extinguish the desire to communicate. By the time Pseudonym typed “Test” into the Youths Against Corruption server that night, the desire had been building for 96 hours.  

Learning from others 

Eighteen-year-old Shaswot Lamichhane, a self-described shy computer geek, was not the type to approach strangers or show up at public events. But he had been keenly watching footage of protests in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and more. He was absorbed by the questions of how a leaderless movement sustains itself, communicates under pressure, and keeps going when the state pushes back. Like him, Nepali youth had also watched those protests unfold.  

In neighbouring Bangladesh, Gen Z had mobilised in 2024 to demand a reduction in government job quotas and a shift toward merit-based recruitment. But the movement had channelled something much larger – the accumulated rage of a generation that had watched Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government grow more authoritarian and more corrupt with each passing year. In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya movement had brought together in 2022 an extraordinary coalition of citizens across class, ethnicity, and religion, all suffering from an economic collapse that had made basic goods unavailable and exposed the dynastic Rajapaksas’ misrule. In Indonesia and the Philippines, young people were also taking to the streets and social media platforms simultaneously, building transnational networks of protest aesthetics and tactics in real time. 

Nepal shares with these and other countries recently convulsed by mass protests a demographic characteristic that governments have consistently underestimated: a very young population, with enormous cohorts of people in their teens and twenties who are more educated and more globally connected than any previous generation. Twenty per cent of Nepalis are between 16 and 25 years old, and 40 per cent are between 16 and 40. They grew up watching the same political parties cycle through power for three decades, trading the same patronage networks and perpetuating the same impunity.  

When the government in Kathmandu switched off social media on 4 September, Shaswot felt something he had been waiting for without quite knowing it. “I had not had that kind of trigger in a long time,” he said. “I instantly thought, this is going to lead to something huge.” The social media ban did not silence Nepali youth. It radicalised them. Within hours, Proton VPN recorded an 8000 per cent increase in new users in Nepal. People who had never heard of a VPN were installing one on the advice of strangers in online comment sections. The platforms that remained accessible – TikTok above all – became overloaded with a fury that had been building long before the ban provided it with a focal point. 

The hashtags that crystallised everything were #nepokids and #nepobabies. The concept was straightforward: Nepal’s political class had spent decades enriching itself while presiding over one of South Asia’s poorest states; now their children were on social media, posing in front of luxury cars, European boutique stores, and infinity pools. TikTok’s algorithm, indifferent to political sensitivity and optimised purely for engagement, was serving those videos to millions of Nepalis struggling to earn a basic living. Angry young Nepalis used that footage to create videos that quickly went viral, with ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” and “Money Money” from the movie Cabaret playing in the background.  

Preparing for action 

On the morning of 7 September, Shaswot sent an Instagram message to Hami Nepal, a small nonprofit that had volunteered to provide logistics for a protest planned the following morning at Maitighar Mandala, the roundabout in central Kathmandu that serves as the city’s traditional gathering point for demonstrations. The organisation’s chief, Sudan Gurung, replied quickly. There was energy in the streets, rage on social media, thousands of people saying they planned to turn up, but no central coordination channel. No way to communicate in real time. 

They decided to build one on Discord. Originally designed for gaming communities, the platform was now a de facto organising tool for communities of all kinds. It was private enough to feel secure, structured enough to be navigable, and equipped with voice channels, polls, document sharing tools, and sub-channels for different functions. It was also, at that moment, one of the 26 platforms the Nepal government had banned.  

Shaswot became one of the moderators, operating under the username Shalmalo – based on his first and last names combined with his passion for marshmallows. The choice was partly for fun and partly for the same reason that every user in the server had a pseudonym: in a country where the state had just demonstrated its willingness to suppress communication, anonymity was not an affectation; it was a precaution. 

What followed is one of the most remarkable documents of spontaneous political organisation ever assembled. The Discord log of the Youths Against Corruption server – thousands of messages timestamped, anonymous, and archived – reads like a cross between a parliamentary record and a group chat, the high and the low, the tactical and the absurd all running in the same stream. 

Within minutes of opening, users were offering practical advice: 

10.39 pm – Tietole: “Also wear school or college uniform and ID if possible.” 

10.43 pm – bghwawa: “Even if you can’t join the protest, you can help. Document everything safely. Be vigilant. Share evidence with international news outlets. Early international attention puts pressure on authorities.” 

The sophistication in these messages is worth paying attention to. The instruction to wear school uniforms was tactical: uniformed students are harder to characterise as agitators, and cameras respond differently to teenagers in school ties than to adults in street clothes. None of this was taught to these users by a political party. They had assembled it from watching other people’s revolutions on their phones. 

In the event of an Internet blackout, users suggested switching to Bitchat, a mesh-network app that uses Bluetooth rather than the Internet to relay messages between devices. Nepal recorded 48,721 downloads of Bitchat on 8 September alone. Founder Jack Dorsey noticed the spike and posted on X, “There when you need it.” 

The protest needed media attention, and the users on the server knew exactly how to get it. One by the name of SushantxD posted a screenshot of British TikTok creator Dylan Page, known as “News Daddy”, and proposed flooding him with messages to draw his attention. It worked. Page posted three videos about the Nepal uprising, collectively receiving millions of views. Later, he reflected on what he was seeing across the region: “Gen Z have a powerful tool that many generations before them didn’t have. Social media. Millions can now rally around a cause faster than we have ever seen. And because of its global reach, these global movements are learning from one another.”  

Shaswot and his team, meanwhile, designed protest banners with a large QR code linking to the Discord server, knowing that when wire services photographed the crowds, the code would travel with those images. They compiled a list of 140 local social media influencers, created a WhatsApp group to bring them together, and asked each one to share the code. Two minutes before midnight, a user named Talebi posted a link to a fully functional protest website, built and deployed in under two hours on a free hosting platform. 

11.27 pm – pablodon: “We are only 217 online, what can so few people do? We need at least thousands.” 

Turing: “217 on a platform most people don’t use, the night before the protest, is decent. I expect turnout in the range of 2,000.” 

But alongside the organisational energy ran a different current. One user, 69kFeninja69, asked midway through the logistical discussion, “Guys, do we know how to make Molotovs?” Another person proposed tanking the Google ratings of the Hilton hotel – widely believed, without hard evidence, to be an investment of a former prime minister’s son – by coordinating a high volume of one-star reviews. The hotel had a different fate coming: two days later, it would be reduced to ash. 

Two separate instincts, earnest organisation and incipient violence, ran in parallel in the same channel – an accurate representation of the political emotion it contained. A generation’s worth of suppressed rage does not sort itself neatly into constructive and destructive categories before it finds an outlet. 

At 11.48 pm, the Hami Nepal account posted what could be interpreted as the movement’s statement of intent: “We are not here to take leadership. The real leaders of this movement are you, the Gen Z of Nepal, whose voices deserve to be heard. Our role is simply to help guide, unify, and keep everyone safe.” 

Ten minutes later, a document appeared on the server, a PDF titled “Anti-Corruption Protest Duties”. It was a playbook, assigning roles to different volunteers – frontline units, watchdogs, medics, documentation teams, legal and media liaisons, newcomer support, cleanup crews. Someone had, in the space of a few hours and entirely without institutional support, written a field manual for a democratic protest. Everyone was contributing. 

The sophistication in these messages is worth paying attention to. […] None of this was taught to these users by a political party. They had assembled it from watching other people’s revolutions on their phones. 

People began saying goodnight and promising to be there in the morning. The server kept running through the night, filled with banner designs, chants, and reassurances about tear gas remedies. Outside, Kathmandu settled into an uneasy sleep. 

Repression 

By 9.59 am on the morning of 8 September 2025, user Talebi was posting from the ground: “2,000+ at Maitighar”. The number kept climbing. Young people arrived in school uniforms carrying handmade signs, One Piece flags, and placards chosen for their resonance with a globally connected youth culture. For the first hour, it was peaceful. 

The march moved from Maitighar towards Baneshwor, where the parliament building sits behind barriers in a security-restricted zone. In the Discord server, moderators watched the feeds – coordinating, urging calm, watching for signs of trouble. 

At 11.52 am, the water cannons began. At 11.58 am, the use of tear gas by police was announced on the server. By noon, security barricades had been breached. Discord moderators began posting with increasing urgency that the protest had been infiltrated and that the people pushing towards Parliament were party loyalists and political operatives exploiting the chaos. The accusation is impossible to either verify or dismiss. What is certain is that the movement’s organisers had always known of their greatest vulnerability: the absence of any mechanism to verify identity or enforce discipline in a crowd of thousands. 

12.20 pm – NoirKingOfVoid: “Surround the parliament for a sit-in but let’s not go inside” 

Talebi – “We didn’t storm Parliament. They are 3rd party people. NOT GEN Z.” 

At 12.33 pm, a moderator posted an urgent field announcement asking all protesters to fall back and regroup at the starting point. “This will allow us to reclaim control and isolate disruptive anti-protest elements,” it read. But by then, the situation had already moved beyond any announcement’s reach. 

The gunshots started at around 12.41 pm, as announced on Discord by users. What followed simultaneously in the server and in the streets is relayed in fragments, raw and immediate: 

“It’s raining bullets now”  

“Floor full of blood bro, rubber bullets don’t do that”  

“REAL BULLET GUYS”  

“Who gave the orders to fire on innocent children?”  

“Head shot”  

“IT’S NOT LEGAL TO SHOOT KIDS WHO DOES THAT BRO” 

At the same time, TikTok, which had stayed online, began filtering protest content. Live feeds were cut. Videos disappeared. The platform that had amplified the #nepokids narrative and given the movement its aesthetic was now quietly cooperating with the state’s desire for silence.  

“Make sure to upload all your video proof on Facebook and Instagram so the truth doesn’t disappear”, someone posted. The irony was bitter: Facebook and Instagram were among the banned platforms that had sparked the protests in the first place. But VPNs were working flawlessly, even as the Internet speed lagged. 

Nineteen young people died on 8 September. Most were shot in the head, neck, abdomen, or chest. Hundreds more were injured. Many were wearing school uniform, the same dress code the organisers had encouraged because it would keep them safe. By late afternoon, the government announced it would reinstate social media. It was a concession that came too late. 

Nepal ablaze 

That evening, messages flooded the server asking a single question: “What do we do tomorrow?”  

The answer that emerged from the server that night shows, with uncomfortable clarity, what happens to political emotion when it passes through a platform optimised for engagement. Grief was intense. Rage was intense. The algorithmic environment and users rewarded the messages that provoked violent reactions. In the hours after the killings, the messages that spread were not the ones urging strategic patience. 

“Eight to 10 of Nepal’s police officers’ homes should be burned.”  

“Blood for blood – now everyone must carry weapons.”  

“Everyone make a spreadsheet of every minister and their home location.” 

Running alongside them, the voices trying to hold something together: 

“Everyone, be smart. People died today – out of that anger, we must protest strategically. Can’t just act on emotions.” 

“They [politicians] must flee like they fled from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.” 

“Fall back for today. Tonight we’ll plan strategies and fight again tomorrow.” 

The properties attacked had all been identified, debated and pin-dropped on Google Maps across dozens of threads, their owners linked to corruption allegations that had been circulating on social media for days

But the server had grown too large for moderation. Thousands of people had joined in the hours since the shooting, and thousands more were joining every hour. The moderators found themselves with a channel that had outgrown any possibility of responsible administration. It is one of the structural paradoxes of decentralised digital organising: the same openness that makes a movement impossible to co-opt also makes it impossible to control. 

One name appeared thousands of times: Balen Shah, the mayor of Kathmandu and also a rapper whose songs – such as “Balidan” (“Sacrifice”) and “Sadak Balak” (“Street Child”) – had become the soundtrack of the protests, playing behind nearly every protest reel. Shah had become the movement’s iconic figure, not because he led it, but because he embodied something it wanted: someone from the culture, someone young, someone who had built a following on authenticity rather than party machinery. “Dear Balen, Lead now or never,” wrote a user called Anonymous God at 7.47 pm that evening. It could have been the message of the whole uprising.  

On 9 September, the country blazed. The parliament building was set on fire at around 1:30 pm that afternoon. TikTok feeds carried the images of the blaze in real time; the black smoke rising over Kathmandu was visible across the valley. Despite an imposed curfew, the burning spread. Singha Durbar, the vast colonial-era complex serving as Nepal’s government secretariat, followed, as did the Supreme Court building, police stations, media houses, supermarkets, and the Hilton hotel. The Discord server tracked all of it, sometimes with horror and sometimes with something unsettlingly close to pride. 

“SINGHA DURBAR IS IN DANGER!”  

“Need to surround Hilton too”  

“DO NOT ATTACK SINGHA DURBAR– IT’S A DATA CENTER. It has very important documents. If you attack you will be helping corrupt politicians.”  

“Burn Kantipur media, THEY WORK AGAINST US AS CORRUPT MEDIA. THEY NEED TO GO DOWN.” 

The targeting was not random. The properties attacked had all been identified, debated and pin-dropped on Google Maps across dozens of threads, their owners linked to corruption allegations that had been circulating on social media for days. Whether this constitutes organisation or incitement is a question that legal practitioners and scholars will argue about for years. What is certain is that the line between the two had ceased to be meaningful. 

A user posted information on the US universities where the Chief District Officer’s daughters were enrolled. They said their father was the man who had ordered the shooting and suggested emailing the institutions to have the girls expelled and deported. Another posted a diagram for making Molotov cocktails and pressure cooker bombs. Someone else asked for the home address of the cabinet ministers. One shared a folder titled “Resources from Indonesian Protesters” – two Google Drive links containing guides on mobile phone security for activists, police weaponry identification, tear gas protection, and ways to escape zip ties. 

TikTok videos of protesters dancing outside the burning parliament started circulating, and were interpreted by some as evidence of a political system’s collapse, and by others as the collapse of civilised protest. Clips of people carrying guns and wearing uniforms snatched from police went viral. Some police officers were stripped and brutally beaten. Kathmandu felt like Gotham City.  

Prime Minister KP Oli resigned the same day. The army took operational control of the country to prevent further violence and imposed restrictions. Forty-eight hours, start to finish. 

From Discord to power 

What came next has no real precedent in democratic history. The army chief met with Gen Z representatives and posed a question as simple and staggering as the situation itself: Who should lead the country? The question went back to the server, which by now had 160,000 members, up from 217 on the night it was created. It had sub-channels for fact-checking, constitutional law, and candidate research. It had absorbed the same parliament it helped to burn and was now attempting, in real time, to replace it. Many called for rapper-turned-mayor Balen Shah to take over – but he was incommunicado.  

The irony accumulated: Discord, a banned platform, was hosting Nepal’s constitutional convention. Anonymous avatars – small coloured bubbles scrolling past in the sidebar – were debating the future of a nation of 30 million people. The proceedings were mirrored on YouTube and picked up by local television, so that Nepalis who had never heard of Discord could watch their new parliament conduct its business. 

After hours of deliberation, five names were shortlisted to serve as interim prime minister. Then a live vote. The winner, with more than 50 per cent (3833 of 7713 total votes), was Sushila Karki, a 73-year-old former chief justice known for her fierce independence and anti-corruption rulings. Karki became Nepal’s first female prime minister, and the first head of government anywhere on earth to be selected by a public poll on a social media platform. Shaswot thinks the Discord polls helped legitimise Karki. “After that, you could give an answer to why she was appointed and on what basis. It was absolutely improvised and needed at that time”.   

Still, there are lingering questions about representation. The vote that selected Karki was cast by a few thousand people – a tiny fraction of the nearly 19 million registered Nepali voters. Half of the population does not even have access to the Internet. The digital democracy that swept away one elite heralded another elite, not one of land and party and inheritance, but of smartphone connectivity, of the fluency that allows a teenager to navigate a Discord server and a protest simultaneously. The rural Nepali working in the field, the elderly woman in the mountains who has never owned a smartphone, the day labourer who cannot afford data: all these people were left out. While they were represented in the uprising, insofar as they shared the protesters’ grievances, they were not represented in its resolution.  

The digital democracy that swept away one elite heralded another elite, not one of land and party and inheritance, but of smartphone connectivity, of the fluency that allows a teenager to navigate a Discord server and a protest simultaneously.

Double-edged tools 

This is not a problem unique to Nepal. It is an unresolved tension in every digitally organised uprising of the past decade, from Egypt’s Tahrir Square in 2011 to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh: the tools that make mobilisation so fast and so powerful also determine who gets to participate in what comes after.  

Moreover, the relationship between digital tools and political power is not a simple story of liberation. The social media ban, intended to suppress dissent, became the source of dissent. This is the outcome governments have produced every time they have tried to silence digital communication in a country with a young, connected population. In Iran, Internet blackouts during protests drove users onto more obscure, harder-to-monitor platforms. In Myanmar, the military’s attempt to cut off the Internet after the 2021 coup accelerated the use of mesh networking and encrypted communication among resistance networks. Suppression, it turns out, is an accelerant. Governments whose instinct in a crisis is to reach for the kill switch have yet to learn this lesson. 

For movements, the lesson is more complicated. TikTok’s content filtering during the Nepal protests was quiet, algorithmic, and impossible to appeal. It represented a different and subtler intervention than a ban. The platform that had complied with the government and was spared from the ban demonstrated, in real time, what compliance looks like in practice: protest feeds disappearing without notice, live streams cutting, users blocked, videos of police shooting teenagers failing to load. Using automated systems, TikTok removed 2.82 million videos in Nepal in the third quarter of 2025, and 1.9 million in the fourth, 98 per cent of them within 24 hours. This is the more sophisticated form of digital repression that is likely to define the next decade.  

Discord’s role is equally double-edged. In the first 12 hours, it functioned as the organisers had hoped: structured, role-assigned, guided by a field manual. After the killings, when grief arrived and membership swelled beyond any possibility of moderation, it became a megaphone for the most destructive political emotions, treating the coordinates of a minister’s house with the same neutrality as advice about swimming goggles to protect against tear gas. The decentralised structure that made it resistant to state infiltration also made it resistant to the movement’s own values. No one could be removed. No content could be effectively suppressed. The same anonymity that protected organisers from surveillance protected bad actors from accountability. 

This is not an argument against Discord or against digital organising – it is an argument for clarity about what these tools can and cannot do. They are designed for speed, for reach, for the rapid construction of a shared identity and a common enemy, but not for the slow, deliberative, compromise-accepting work that governance requires.   

After a revolution  

Six months later, in March this year, Balen Shah was elected prime minister. When he disclosed his assets upon taking office, digital content revenue emerged as his primary source of income, and his massive social media following as his main asset. Sudan Gurung, who had replied to Shaswot’s message and helped set up the Discord server just before the protests began, became home minister.  He resigned after less than a month due to an investigation into his financial affairs. The Rastriya Swatantra Party – the digitally native and relatively new political formation the movement aligned with – won the majority in the elections, trouncing entrenched political patronage. 

Nepali citizens made a choice that their counterparts elsewhere did not. Bangladesh’s Gen Z briefly attempted to form their own political party, but secured just six seats in the 300-member parliament. Nepal’s youth chose instead to work with an existing party – relatively new, but with structures, candidates, and a relationship with the electoral system. Whether this is pragmatic adaptation or the beginning of co-optation is a question the next election will start to answer. When asked whether there is a template – whether young people across the region, watching what happened in Nepal, could replicate it – Shaswot is careful. “There are no hard and fast rules to making a revolution successful. Almost a hundred per cent of protests fail. Nepal was an exceptional case.” 

He pauses a moment to think. “On a serious note, if social media were not there, it would be hard to organise the kind of protest we did. It would take an indefinite time to achieve what we did in forty-eight hours.”  

In the months following the protests, Shaswot received messages from all around the world, from Iran to Madagascar, asking him for advice. “But I do not have a template to share. There is no single template to follow.”  

He is right. But in the same way that people who have lived through something are rarely able to see it from the outside, he understates what Nepal demonstrated: that a state’s attempt to control information can be the very thing that destroys it; that a generation with no party, no leader, and no organisation can dismantle a government faster than any organised opposition; that the time between a social media ban and a burning parliament can be measured in hours. 

Yet it has not demonstrated what comes after. The work of governance, negotiation, institution-building – the ordinary, unglamorous management of a country with 30 million people – cannot run on Discord. It does not have a QR code. It cannot be deployed in two hours on a free hosting platform. It requires the very things the movement was defined by its rejection of: hierarchy, compromise, patience, the willingness to work within systems that are imperfect, slow, and resistant to change. 

That is the test Nepal’s youth now faces. Not whether they could take down a government – they proved that, in 48 hours – but whether they can build something stable to replace it. 

For now, the server is still open. Anonymous discussions are still going on. The old conversations have been archived as historical documentation. Whether what was assembled in those first frantic hours contains the seeds of something durable is a question that the next few years of Nepali politics will answer – slowly, in ways that will not trend and will not go viral. 

In 2025, Gen Z – born between roughly 1997 and 2012 and often described as “generation anxiety” – emerged as a central force in street mobilisations spanning three continents. The cycle began in 2024 with the uprising in Bangladesh and then spread across the Global South, from South and Southeast Asia to North Africa and parts of Latin America, including countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Timor-Leste, Morocco, and Peru. Celia Fernández spoke with sociologist and political theorist Paolo Gerbaudo to understand the technological and demographic dynamics shaping these movements. 

Celia Fernández: We often refer to recent youth-led movements as “Generation Z protests”, even though they have spanned different countries and political systems. To what extent is this a helpful or accurate label, and what common threads, if any, run through these movements? 

Paolo Gerbaudo: We use this label because of the strong participation of Gen Z protesters. In a way, some people see them as the equivalent of what the “movements of the squares” of 2011 and after were for millennials. The names and popular fame that protest movements get are a bit of a force for simplification of their internal complexity. But indeed, there are some shared elements despite the evident differences in context and some of the issues and objectives present in Gen Z protests.  

Many of these movements were against government corruption and authoritarianism and focused on criticising governments for their wrongdoings. At the same time, they all relied on the use of digital media, and in particular on platforms popular among Gen Z, such as Discord. 

This was a very notable element in protests in Nepal and in Morocco, to the point that they were sometimes called “Discord protests”. They also shared some imaginaries, such as the One Piece manga flag. Moreover, Gen Z protests are movements that try to learn from one another and build solidarity online by referencing each other.  

Was some ideal of democracy part of the picture?  

Gen Z protests are much more about anti – authority and anti-corruption sentiments than about democracy. The 2011 movements – the Indignados in Spain, the Aganaktismeni in Greece, the Arab Spring protests in North Africa and the Middle East – and the demonstrations in Turkey in 2013 were very much pro-democracy movements. There was a sense of the need to reclaim citizens’ direct participation in decision-making and to pursue assemblies in public squares. This is mostly lacking in Gen Z movements. They are much more focused on the contestation of power and the immediate demand to address governmental corruption and intractable social issues such as unemployment, online censorship, and freedom of expression. That said, democratic practices have emerged in some of these protests. For example, in the case of Nepal, the proposed alternative prime minister was voted for on Discord. It was like a referendum to gain legitimacy for substituting the outgoing prime minister. So there is a sense that these movements also want to be democratic, but that democracy is pursued much more online. It is more of an online plebiscitary democracy than a typical democracy, and it is more short lived and perhaps less ideological.  

Gen Z movements are more about destroying the public system than projecting a utopian alternative onto it.  

In your 2017 book, The Mask and the Flag, you argued that protest movements from the 2010s (the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Indignados, among others) carry the imprint of what you call “citizenism”, as opposed to “populism”. To what extent do today’s Gen Z protests resemble that earlier wave, and in what ways do they depart from it?  

I described citizenism or anarcho-populism as an ideology of social movements and protesting, which is populist in the sense of appealing to the totality of the people against corrupt leaders and elites. But it differs from institutional or global populism in that it is not leaderistic. Citizenism is instead based on a horizontal or supposedly horizontal organisational structure where squares are thought to be enough as a reference point for people to gather. In the 2011 protests, the entire point was to create an alternative democratic process that was supposed to be very open ended and horizontal. More recent movements are still citizenist in the sense that they are very people-driven and don’t have thick ideologies – they are not Marxist or liberal, for example. They have some libertarian elements, and at the same time, they are very focused on the collective redressing of issues. However, the practice of assembly democracy in the squares is absent from most of them – even though they gather in an online space – and they are much more concentrated on pushing out contested powers. These movements are more negative in the sense that they are more about destroying the public system than projecting a utopian alternative onto it.  

American journalist Vincent Bevins has interpreted the 2010s as a decade of mass protests that largely failed to morph into revolutions and often achieved the opposite of what they initially aimed for. Have more recent protest movements learned from those missed revolutions?  

I am a bit more optimistic than Bevins about what the movements of 2011 achieved. You cannot expect too much from protest movements – they are effective at creating a political climate, a sense of possibility, and changing the conversation; in that, they were very successful. At the time, you couldn’t have imagined eight years of radical left government in Spain. Of course, they did not fulfil the high ambitions of their utopian ideals, but that kind of ideal future was never going to be fully realised in practice. Contemporary movements are perhaps more aware of the limits of utopian approaches and the need to both stamp out the problems and define what will substitute them. Especially in authoritarian contexts, what matters at the outset is bringing as many people as possible onto the squares. There should be less focus on alternative democratic procedures, which risk becoming navel-gazing, turning overly preferential, and not really speaking to broad popular concerns.  

You mentioned the One Piece flag as a symbol used across different protest movements. What role does this kind of shared language play in terms of expression and building solidarity?  

The imagery of the One Piece flag is not so different from the [V for] Vendetta mask used in the 2011 protests. This one may be more joyful and tied to today’s anime and gaming subcultures, but ideologically, it remains a populist form of symbolism: the idea that government is unfair, blocks genuine self-organisation, and must be challenged by popular energy. In both cases, the movements lack a strong internal identity, defining themselves mainly in opposition to existing power. This is a highly performative, event-based, and temporary framework.  

This anarcho-populist refusal of representation and suspicion towards institutions carries a fundamental risk. 

It is typical of many youth movements to use cultural symbols as a code. Protesters try to recognise a shared experience through symbology. Not everyone will know what a symbol means, and so it has a double effect of provoking the curiosity of people who are outside the movement but coming close to it, while internally it ties protesters together through shared reference. It becomes a marker of common social and cultural experience – a sort of badge of membership and complicity for those who get it.  

Many Gen Z movements are characterised by a deep scepticism towards formal politics and representation, yet durable transformation still depends on electoral and institutional channels. Do you see pathways for translating this wave of protest into lasting political change, or does that distrust risk limiting its impact?  

There is a paradox in these movements. On the one hand, they are very distrustful of power – often for good reasons. In many of these [Global South] countries, parties are self-serving, elites are self-referential, and control over the state is reproduced with few democratic mechanisms for change. This also applies to Western countries. The 2011 movements already signalled a crisis of democracy, and despite attempts over the last 15 years to change that through new parties, something continues to be deeply rotten in democracy these days. At the same time, this anarcho-populist refusal of representation and suspicion towards institutions carries a fundamental risk. These movements are raising strong criticism of power, but when it comes to replacing it, they are still left with basically supporting existing parties and politicians. In Nepal’s case, ultimately, the solution was to identify existing politicians who had endorsed the protest movements because there was no real alternative within the movement itself. 

There remains a tension between rightly exercising the representative democracy system and the inability to build new institutions, which often leaves Gen Z movements to support whomever seems least bad among the elite.  

In the West, parts of the younger generation seem to be disengaging from politics or, particularly in the case of young men, shifting towards more conservative and even reactionary positions. At the same time, in countries like Bangladesh or Nepal, Gen Z has taken to the streets against corruption and inequality. Do these apparently diverging developments have anything in common? 

In a way, the idea of freedom of expression – self-expression and the popular voice vis-à-vis authorities – is a common term that explains both phenomena, despite the evident divergences in the themes they mobilise on. The protests in Nepal were sparked by a threat to shut down some digital platforms, which was seen as a violation of freedom of expression. In other movements too, the use of Discord was associated with the idea of free expression. There are some similarities with what is happening in Europe and the United States. Here, there is growing suspicion – pushed hard by the Right – towards so-called “woke” politics and identity issues and a perception that they have become part of institutional culture, imposed rather than embraced. 

Young Gen Z men, in particular, believe that the feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements have left them worse off. This ties into a broader resentment towards institutional liberalism, seen as hypocritical and censorious.  

Many of the countries that have witnessed mass protest movements in recent years are characterised by a low median age. In Europe, populations are ageing. What does an ageing population mean for the future of radical politics, which has historically been led by the young?  

Young people have always been a key resource for protest and dissent for a very simple reason: they find themselves in a life trajectory where their position is not yet settled, and therefore, they are a more mobile part of society. They tend to experience social contradictions and injustices more sharply: seeing narrow entry points into society, experiencing worsening conditions compared to their parents, and facing downward rather than upward social mobility. It is therefore only natural that young people are the most likely to engage in protest.  

This presents a challenge for protest movements, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to disappear as a result of demographic reversal. We are also seeing a partial revival of protest around issues such as Palestine, war, and climate change, and older cohorts have been strong participants in these protests. 

Digital platforms have been key to the politicisation of young people and the rapid mobilisation and coordination of protests, but they have also been used for surveillance and repression. Meanwhile, in Europe, there’s increasing talk of banning social media for young people. If you were to assess the role social media has played so far for radical and revolutionary movements, would it be more positive or negative?  

Social media always plays an ambiguous role. Platforms are private spaces transformed by movements into public ones, yet still controlled by large corporations whose – especially economic – interests often run counter to those of ordinary people. In order to attract users, digital platforms need to be seen as spaces for freedom of expression. Therefore, at times, they’re also spaces that lend themselves to circulating emancipatory content aligned with social movements. For example, during the war in Gaza, TikTok became a key conduit for political videos and helped radicalise many young people on this issue. [TikTok’s importance is widely recognised,] to the extent that, in the US, a group of entrepreneurs has mobilised to gain control over the platform’s operations in the country, simply because Trump and the Right were concerned about its political influence. 

So, on the one hand, there is no doubt that in many countries, especially those with little freedom of expression, social media has provided a venue for young people to air their views, organise, and mobilise. But also, increasingly in recent years, the ultimate antidemocratic instinct of social media platforms’ owners has had the upper hand.  

We are now witnessing the strengthening of what you have called the “Big Tech deep state” – an unholy alliance between privately owned technologies and the state’s military and surveillance apparatus, which aims to reassert its control over them. Do you think there’s still a chance for technology to play an emancipatory role for radical political movements in the age of AI and great-power competition?  

There is definitely a chance as long as it is possible to break free from the pervasive control of large corporations and US-based companies over our entire digital landscape. The level of concentration has become so comprehensive that the alternatives for users are drastically reduced. This gives the alliance of platform owners enormous leverage to control the public conversation and the political climate of any given country, with very little pushback being possible from users. 

In terms of alternatives, what matters most is not achieving 100 per cent digital sovereignty – which is unrealistic – but rather providing people with some escape and autonomous options that can reset the balance of power between users and platforms and reopen democratic possibilities online. This could include a mix of open-source and alternative services – such as Menéame in Spain – and more local platforms. It may also involve developments within the fediverse,¹ with more user-friendly tools like Mastodon and similar platforms, as well as Europe-based commercial platforms with a real mass user base. Together, these trends could help puncture the enormous concentration of power, which is largely held by a few companies dominating the public space and the political conversation.

1. An open-source network of independent social media platforms, websites, and apps that cooperate instead of competing, communicating via shared protocols.  ︎

If certain forecasts are to be believed, Africa’s population growth augurs a future of war and societal collapse. But for some governments and NGOs, the “youth bulge” driving growth could, if instrumentalised through neoliberal processes, generate huge economic dividends. Missing from the conversation are the voices and aspirations of young Africans themselves. 

In June 2024, Kenya’s President William Ruto announced that he was going to withdraw a finance bill that, via tax increases, would have pushed the cost of basic commodities even further out of reach. His hand was forced by over a month of biweekly street protests, primarily led by Gen Z, across most of Kenya’s 47 counties – an event whose scale was unparalleled in the post-independence history of the country. 

While the police violence that ensued – including the extrajudicial execution of at least 65 people and the abduction of dozens of others – subsequently stymied these mobilisations, we continue to live in their wake: all of our landscapes – political, economic, ecological and social – were impacted by this watershed moment in Kenya’s history and will never be the same. 

A “premonition of the future” 

Madagascar, Morocco, Senegal, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria. All these countries, like Kenya, have recently experienced waves of protests with young people at the forefront. This, certainly, is a current of change that is unlikely to be halted; a movement that will only grow. 

If you are an adherent of the apocalyptic “youth bulge” discourse, fearing the “premonition of the future” that Robert D. Kaplan warned about in 1994 – that of “overpopulation”, war, and “anarchy” steered by ungovernable African youth – then these Gen Z movements are more fodder for your panic. 

Undoubtedly, much sleep has been lost by leaders – from Nairobi to Dakar, Antananarivo, Dar es Salaam, and Rabat – whose unwanted and thus illegitimate rule, shored up by militarised violence, is challenged by the very people who have been formally declared a “bulge”. (Note that it is unlikely that young people in Europe or America could ever be captured by this moniker.) 

Since at least the early 2000s, this narrative of an overflowing youth population has caught the attention of governments and organisations, prompting a myriad of state and not-for-profit programmes whose objective is to turn the “bulge” into a “demographic dividend” that boosts economic growth. To be sure, what is desired is the production of economic utility by youth for the state, rather than a substantive citizenship stewarded by youth themselves. 

The foundation for this proclivity to engineer young people socially, politically, and economically was mainly set in motion by dynamics that have both Malthusian and colonial origins. Yet, despite this provenance, from the African Union to the World Bank, from regional policymakers to European research institutions, this African demographic is becoming the bogeyman for all sorts of phenomena: crime and terrorism, uprisings, “illegal migration”, and war. 

On the one hand, the statistics are true. At least 70 per cent of the African population is under 30; according to the World Bank, by 2050 one in three young persons in the world will, therefore, be African. Furthermore, since Africa’s urbanisation rate is the fastest in the world, most of this population will be living in the continent’s cities and dwelling in geographies whose services are unable (and often unwilling) to keep up with this tide. 

Unfortunately, these appear to be the only two options given to African youth in these arenas: neoliberal promise or disaster.

For these reasons, recent Gen Z mobilisations primarily take on an urban valence. Not just because young people choose city streets to exercise their right to assemble, but also because these spaces represent the highest indices of generation-specific broken promises: the yet-to-materialise (if they ever will) bounties that are contained within “Africa rising” narratives. The expressions of these vanquished pledges, the “dreams deferred” of Langston Hughes’s poem, include frighteningly high levels of unemployment, food and housing insecurity, mental and physical health inequities, and much more. 

As Frank Njugi, one of the young contributors to a recent The Elephant symposium on “structural adjustment 2.0” – a current multilateral organisation-imposed austerity that recalls similar interventions in the 1980s and 1990s in Africa and the “Third World” – writes, 

It seemed possible that the country was rising in tandem with us, that our ambitions as kids were an inheritance from a newly opened era. Suddenly, we found ourselves in sun-bleached classrooms reciting in unison the futures we believed were ours for the taking. We wanted to eventually be policy thinkers who would one day stroll into ministries in crisp suits and speak the language of national renewal. Nairobi, for us growing up far away […] shimmered like a faraway republic of possibility, a place where we boys and girls from dilapidated rural schools might ascend into the ranks of the people we admired […] But as we grew, so did the contradictions. The very many leaders we once recited like catechism would later become architects, both by action, and by neglect, of a system defined by entrenched corruption. An elite, nestled close to the state, grew wealthier as the rest of us sat through our teenage years in the 2010s watching the gulf widen, our textbooks still heavy with promise that the country itself was increasingly showing it might not eventually honour. 

And these promises were never honoured. Instead, it is the deepening contradictions that lead us to this current conjuncture, where young people are unable to find futures and are forced to relive histories of extreme deprivation. 

“Demographic dividends” 

Over the years, there have been many pronouncements, by both state and multilateral organisations, about the consequences of not making African youth productive. These warnings, which have been sung from a plethora of platforms, tell of the need to turn young people into “dividends”, lest they become “time bombs” or “tsunamis”. 

Unfortunately, these appear to be the only two options given to African youth in these arenas: neoliberal promise or disaster. Correspondingly, many formal interventions have been launched to make them effective labour for a capitalist machine, often under the guise of “youth inclusion”. These initiatives include programmes to direct them towards being “agripreneurs”, “entrepreneurs”, “self-employed hustlers”, even while this demographic has no access to land or capital and less and less access to quality and affordable education. Unsurprisingly, within these schemes there is no serious discussion about the structural conditions that got us here – a place where, in the words of another young Kenyan writer in The Elephant, Natasha Muhanji, “Graduates enter an economy with no hands to hold them and are told that, soon, things will stabilize” – another promise that is never honoured. 

More recently, the iterations of such a politics, where youth are seen as instrumental in the neoliberal project, are witnessed in regional decarbonisation fora. Evidencing this, the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change, which emerged from the heads of state discussions at the 2023 African Climate Summit, emphasises that, 

Africa possesses both the potential and the ambition to be a vital component of the global solution to climate change. As home to the world’s youngest and fastest-growing workforce, coupled with massive untapped renewable energy potential, abundant natural assets and an entrepreneurial spirit, our continent has the fundamentals to spearhead a climate compatible pathway as a thriving, cost-competitive industrial hub with the capacity to support other regions in achieving their net zero ambitions. 

Similarly, in a foreword to a recent report focused on a continental just transition, Kenya’s President Ruto, who is also the Chair of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, writes, 

Africa is bursting with possibilities and a vast endowment of natural resources. The continent’s renewable energy potential is 50 times greater than the anticipated global electricity demand for the year 2040. The continent also has over 40% of the global reserves of key minerals for batteries and hydrogen technologies. Africa also has the largest tracts of arable land, and the continent is young, with 70% of the people under 30 years of age. It is time to tap these riches to achieve the aspirations of the people. Opportunity beckons for Africa to make this century the African Century, in which the continent’s economies leapfrog by harnessing the vast endowment of clean energy resources. We are ready to leap into a future powered by Africa and demonstrate the continent can industrialize in a low carbon and sustainable manner. 

In neither of these assertions are the aspirations of young people centred. Instead, the “novel” politics of the green transition continues to promote a “dividend” discourse, leveraging this “youth bulge” as just one of many African resources – its “riches” – that need to be directed anywhere but to their own becoming(s). It is in this way that the “African Century” is made for others, not for them; they are only important as its fuel, akin to the minerals and solar energy – a workforce devoid of other aspirations, thoughts, and embodiments.  

Even so, as the protests over the last few years have shown us, young people have other ideas about their location in the present, as well as what their tomorrows should look like. 

Ecological futures 

In April 2024, shortly before the mobilisations against Ruto’s Finance Bill, Kenya experienced flooding that led to the deaths of over 200 people and the displacement of close to 60,000. During this period, low-lying settlements in Nairobi – “slums” such as Mathare – saw households literally swept away: from kith and kin, school books and uniforms to shelter walls and gas stoves, the fast-moving flood currents were not selective about what they would carry. 

Instead of offering relief, the government arrived weeks later to destroy houses that residents had rebuilt after the floods. Ostensibly motivated by the need to “protect” residents from further mercurial weather patterns, the bulldozers tore down homes that sat in the path of the previous month’s flood waters. 

Many of the young Mathare residents who later participated in the 2024 protests were motivated by the converging effects of anthropogenic climate change on neglected communities and the militarised abandonment that was supposedly responding to this phenomenon. These events were, ultimately, inseparable. 

What’s more, the high food prices that added to their grievances (the result of both IMF and World Bank debts and unpredictable weather), as well as the water and electricity shortages that were key flashpoints for the 2025 Gen Z protests in Madagascar, all gesture towards the ecological potencies of what are often taken solely as political and economic questions. 

This is further evidenced by the reality that all the African countries where protests have taken place are ranked as “highly vulnerable” to climate change, even though Africa as a whole contributes less than four per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

This is not the “African Century” that instrumentalises this demographic, nor the “tsunami” or “time bomb” anticipated.

Now, oscillating between droughts and famine, flooding and high temperatures, cyclones and desertification, capricious weather patterns compound the corruption, decline in services and cost of living crises that took and keep taking young people to the streets. 

While much has been made of the digital tools that allowed for the spread of these protests – valid, but also certainly technophilic, preoccupations – their ecological dimensions are rarely foregrounded. 

Seeds for tomorrow 

As I write this in the spring of 2026, following the deepening of a fuel and cost of living crisis in Kenya, more protests are being organised. Once again, ecological questions are at the heart of these mobilisations, and they layer onto the sedimentations of a climate emergency. 

Many of the outcomes of the Gen Z uprisings from 2024 and 2025 remain inconclusive. Yet in their calls to break from business as usual, to refrain from the systemic violence that intersects with and prompts ecological pressures and creates “youth bulges”, seeds for other political, environmental, and economic tomorrows can be glimpsed. 

This is not the “African Century” that instrumentalises this demographic, nor the “tsunami” or “time bomb” anticipated. Rather, in the ways they represent and respond to the current moment through more people-centred articulations, this demographic may just be pointing us to the “republic of possibility” described by Njugi. 

This could be our only chance. 

Across the Middle East, labour migration is a defining demographic reality. An estimated 24 million migrant workers are employed across the region. The majority of them live in the Gulf states, including roughly 11 million in Saudi Arabia, 9 million in the United Arab Emirates, and 2 million in Qatar, forming the backbone of multiple economies. These workers sustain essential sectors ranging from construction and logistics to healthcare, retail, security, agriculture, and domestic work. In some of these countries, migrant workers far outnumber the local population. For instance, in the UAE, almost nine out of 10 residents are migrant workers.

Despite variations between states, the reliance on migrant labour is structural and widespread. Yet this demographic and economic centrality does not translate into social or legal inclusion. On the contrary, labour migrants remain structurally temporary, excluded from citizenship, and dependent on their employers for their legal status. The kafala sponsorship system employed mostly in the Gulf Cooperation Council nations and countries in the Levant (Jordan and Lebanon), sits at the centre of this paradox, transforming a numerical majority into a legally and politically marginalised workforce.  

How does kafala work?   

The kafala system, initially designed to attract non-permanent workers, is a temporary labour migration regime that ties a migrant worker’s residency status to an employer. 

It establishes a tripartite relationship between worker, sponsor, and state – one in which authority over migrants’ legal existence is delegated to private actors. The dependency it creates is built not just into the legal structure itself, but also into customs and practices. A worker’s right to remain in a certain country, change jobs, or leave is often contingent on the sponsor’s consent. Although some reforms have been introduced, the underlying problems persist: mobility is restricted, and the risks of contesting abusive conditions are still present.  

This unbalanced dynamic leads to systemic consequences. Since residency status is tied to employment, leaving an abusive employer could mean losing legal status. For migrant domestic workers, the situation is particularly acute. Frequently excluded from labour law protections and classified as “servants” rather than employees, they occupy a legal grey zone where minimum wage guarantees, working-hour limits, and mechanisms for redress often do not apply.  

The social order of kafala   

Migrant workers are not treated as a homogeneous group within the kafala system, which operates through hierarchies of nationality, race, class, and gender that shape access to rights, mobility, and protection.  

At the top of this hierarchy are expatriates, often originating from OECD countries and employed in sectors such as finance, education, and corporate management. Although subject to sponsorship requirements, they typically benefit from higher wages, greater mobility, and stronger institutional support. The middle tier includes professional and semi-skilled workers from countries like the Philippines and India, as well as elsewhere in the Arab world, working in sectors such as healthcare, retail, and technology.  

At the bottom are low-wage migrant workers from Asia and Africa, concentrated in the construction and domestic labour sectors, where protections are weakest and vulnerability to exploitation is highest. These divisions are also gendered: men are overrepresented in construction, while women make up the majority of domestic workers, often in highly isolated conditions.  

For domestic workers, control often extends beyond wages and hours, with live-in arrangements frequently blurring the boundary between work and private life. This can mean long hours, constant availability, limited privacy, and dependence on employers for permission to leave the house or maintain social ties. Wages and tasks are also frequently structured by racialised assumptions linked to nationality, reproducing hierarchies within the household itself.  

While the legal status of all categories remains tied to sponsorship, their ability to navigate this dependency varies significantly, reflecting wider inequalities.  

Majority without membership   

Periods of crisis expose the structural absence of comprehensive social protection for migrant workers. Existing inequalities tend to deepen with rising anti-migrant discourses, discrimination, and human rights violations, while state protections are often prioritised for citizens.  

The Israeli-American war with Iran has brought renewed attention to these vulnerabilities. Human rights organisations have raised concerns about workers whose legal status remains tied to their employers, limiting their ability to respond independently to rapidly deteriorating conditions. In Lebanon, for instance, domestic workers have been confined or abandoned by employers, at times without access to identity documents, and with limited means to secure evacuation, shelter, or assistance. In Qatar, delivery drivers were excluded from shelters. Moreover, across the Gulf, low-paid migrant workers often face additional barriers to evacuation, including financial constraints and obligations to support families abroad.  

Some employers have provided continued wages or assistance with return, but these cases remain limited. More broadly, crises reveal how quickly legal dependency can translate into precarity: under kafala, a worker’s ability to move and access protection remains contingent on a private relationship.