Last year saw a wave of protests in Germany in reaction to calls for the expulsion of people with migrant backgrounds. The demonstrations expressed justified moral outrage against a rising far right. Yet other developments in government perhaps also ought to have drawn more scrutiny.

Already under the last coalition government under Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor Olaf Scholz, ousted in the February 2025 federal elections, there was a creeping normalization of anti-immigrant policies, including a campaign to deport more asylum seekers. This is today taken further, under Christian Democratic (CDU) chancellor Friedrich Merz, with official proposals for border pushbacks and the suspension of family reunifications.

This mainstream shift to the right is today enacted in the legislative initiatives taken by Merz’s coalition — a pact between his CDU and the smaller SPD — which persistently calls into question fundamental social and political rights. In fact, a more granular transformation of German social policy has already been taking place at the municipal level for over a decade. Cities with high immigration and marked postindustrial decline have played a leading role in developing restrictive policies and associated law-and-order measures, which then become the norm nationally.