The politics of weaponising migration in an age where viral myths fuel political chaos

This story has significance for readers across Africa and beyond.

From border pressure to viral manipulation

Ceuta occupies an unusual piece of geography. Spanish territory on the north African coast and surrounded by Morocco, it is at once a city, a border and one of the places where the inequalities between Europe and Africa become physically visible. At the end of July, Spainâs interior ministry confirmed that more than 70,000 people entered Ceuta irregularly after claims circulated online that entry had become possible. A Spanish supreme court judgment concerning the return of migrants arriving by sea was distorted into a simpler and far more consequential message: reach Ceuta and Spain will allow you to stay.

The original source of the rumour has not been established. What can be traced is its amplification: repeated claims, information about routes and videos of successful crossings that gave the falsehood greater credibility. By the time the information was disproved it had already influenced conduct on the ground.

Ceuta witnessed a more deliberate form of manipulation in May 2021, when Morocco relaxed its border controls during a diplomatic dispute with Spain over Western Sahara and more than 8,000 people entered within days. Academic research into the 2021 crisis has found that it exposed a vulnerability created by Europeâs externalisation of migration control: European states increasingly depend on neighbouring countries to stop migration before it reaches European territory, giving those states political leverage. Separate research describes the episode as âcoercive engineered migrationâ, where population movements are manipulated to obtain political concessions.

Unlike in 2021, there is no comparable evidence that Morocco engineered the July 2026 movement. Viral false information appears instead to have played a direct part in drawing people towards the border. As footage of the crossings circulated, accounts linked to the Russian information ecosystem amplified claims that Spain and Europe were facing a coordinated âassaultâ. An analysis of about 4.5 million social media posts found that the exchanges encouraging crossings appeared overwhelmingly organic and peer-to-peer, while the Russia-linked amplification emerged separately. The event was recast as evidence of invasion and European weakness.

The political consequences spread quickly across Europe. On 1 August, Italy and Denmark led a letter signed by 22 European heads of state or government calling for an urgent, coordinated EU response, stronger external-border control and closer cooperation with Morocco. By 4 August Spain reported that more than 70,000 of the 72,000 people who had entered Ceuta had already returned to Morocco, illustrating both the reach of a disruption at one external EU border and Europeâs continuing dependence on Moroccan cooperation to restore control.

From migration power to domestic politics

Foundational research on the weaponisation of migration examined how states could create or manipulate population movements to induce political, military or economic concessions. More recent work has extended that enquiry to what researchers describe as âproductive migration powerâ: power exercised through crisis narratives, securitisation and categorisation.

South Africa has seen the same capacity for viral misinformation to alter conduct. After the Constitutional Court restored citizenship to those affected by the former automatic-loss provision, viral posts warned dual citizens abroad that they risked arrest or detention if they entered South Africa on foreign passports. I wrote at the time about the resulting ârenunciation frenzyâ; the Border Management Authority later described those viral claims as false and misleading. Legal complexity had nevertheless been reduced to an alarming message capable of changing behaviour.

Immigration law depends on distinctions that public discourse increasingly ignores. Refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, permanent residents and citizens do not occupy the same legal position, yet âforeignerâ, âillegal immigrantâ and âmigrantâ are routinely used as though they do. Earlier this year, I termed the effect of this framing âalien epistemologyâ, whereby the foreigner becomes known through assumptions of threat, abuse and competition.

South Africa and the politics of attribution

South Africa provides fertile conditions for those politics, while public concern about immigration has a rational basis. Much of the distrust surrounding Home Affairs was produced by its own historical failures, although Minister Leon Schreiberâs digitalisation and administrative reforms mark a welcome change in direction. Nevertheless, the revised White Paper still locates migration within a vocabulary of national security, abuse of the asylum system and competition for scarce resources. Last week Schreiber told the National Council of Provinces that he hopes to table legislation, giving effect to it by March 2027. For an overhaul spanning citizenship, immigration and refugee protection, that pace deserves scrutiny. As the Swahili warning proverb has it, haraka haraka haina baraka: haste has no blessing.

Outside government, many of the same anxieties have found expression through March and March. Citizens are entitled to demand enforcement of immigration law, and debate is poorly served when every argument for stronger migration control is dismissed as hostility towards foreigners. The harder question is what else is being attributed to immigration, and on what evidence.

Foreign nationals are increasingly blamed for unemployment, pressure on hospitals and schools, crime, drug trafficking, the decline of township businesses and deteriorating communities. GroundUp recently examined five claims made by March and March founder Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and found several misleading or unsupported by the available evidence. Such claims find a ready audience where unemployment is exceptionally high, public services struggle and crime shapes daily life. Genuine grievances, however, do not establish their own cause.

Immigration becomes an attractive explanation for failures that are harder to unravel. The weakness of government data compounds the problem: South Africa still lacks a reliable picture of its undocumented population, leaving estimates to acquire authority through repetition and making it easier for political assertion to fill the evidential gap.

Rebecca Davisâs recent Daily Maverick investigation into South Africans for Constitutional Reform shows how anti-foreigner sentiment can become a mobilising frame for political objectives extending beyond immigration.

From attribution to mobilisation

Another example arose in July 2024, when three young girls were murdered in Southport in the UK. Almost immediately, false claims spread online that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker, although he was British born. Anti-migrant and anti-Muslim demonstrations were followed by riots and attacks on mosques and premises housing asylum seekers; a parliamentary inquiry later found that the information vacuum had allowed disinformation to flourish.

Those events in the UK showed how quickly a false immigration attribution can move beyond explanation and become a basis for collective action. By the time the facts were established the narrative had already acquired a political life of its own.

Ceuta, South Africa and Southport demonstrate the political versatility of migration. It can provide leverage between states, supply a single explanation for domestic failures and draw otherwise disparate grievances into a common cause. That political usefulness becomes particularly apparent during election periods, when immigration acquires greater salience and existing anxieties about security, scarcity and national decline can be mobilised around the foreigner. Social media adds speed and scale, allowing a claim to travel farther than the evidence on which it rests.

Beyond enforcement statistics

The numbers now cited with some pride in South Africa tell us more about enforcement activity than about irregular migration itself. The recent repatriation operation has cost almost R300-million, while Parliament has warned that inadequate border security risks turning deportation and repatriation into a ârevolving doorâ. Before deportation totals become a measure of success, we need better knowledge of the undocumented population: its size, how people became irregular and whether removal without durable border control is simply creating an expensive cycle of departure and return.

Visible enforcement can itself become part of the political message, especially when numbers are offered as proof that the state has regained control. Public debate should remain open to criticism of immigration policy and enforcement but claims about foreign nationals should be tested with the same rigour as other claims of public policy. Journalists should use legal categories accurately, political movements should substantiate causal and statistical claims, and platforms cannot be indifferent when demonstrably false information is amplified in circumstances capable of producing physical harm.

Weaponisation succeeds when migration is stripped of its legal and factual complexity and reduced to a political symbol. The individual matters less than what he or she can be made to represent: pressure on the border, competition for resources, crime, insecurity or a convenient explanation for failure. The more important question is how such narratives acquire authority and whose interests they ultimately serve. Once the category eclipses the person, migration becomes available for purposes far beyond the border. DM

Reporting originally appeared via Daily Maverick. Read the full source for additional context.