Even as the migration into Europe increased exponentially the justifications that officials reiterated were the same ones that had been used for decades, and they permeated everywhere from the heads of supranational organisations down to the level of local government. In the middle of August 2015, as the Chancellor prepared to open the borders, the mayor of the town of Goslar in Lower Saxony insisted that his town would welcome migrants with ‘open arms’. Mayor Oliver Junk – a member of Angela Merkel’s own centre-right party – highlighted the fact that Goslar had been losing a small part of its population each year. Over the last decade the population of 50,000 had diminished by around 4,000 people – a factor caused by young people leaving the area to look for work as well as a diminishing birth rate among local people. In 2014 the town had taken in 48 migrants. Now the mayor announced that in his opinion there could not be enough migrants coming to Goslar. Migrants would, he said, ‘give our town a future’.3 Rather than find a way to create jobs that would attract the town’s young people to stay in Goslar, the mayor thought it a sensible policy to largely replace the population of Goslar with a wholly different population.

During that same crucial month of August 2015 the EU head of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal (Europe) to outline another familiar argument. In the opinion of Eugenio Ambrosi it was ‘troubling’ that the continent was having ‘difficulty’ accepting the unprecedented wave of migrants that had already come that year. Ambrosi claimed that Europe could easily cope with the influx of migrants. The greatest scandal, he claimed, was that Europe was ‘experiencing the most widespread and intense anti-immigrant sentiment seen in decades’. This should change, he insisted, and one way of doing so was to explain the basic argument that he and his colleagues chose to push – which was that this influx of migrants presented a great opportunity for Europe. Migrants, he said, bring ‘new ideas and high motivation’ and also ‘pitch in and contribute to our economies and societies when given a fair chance. Sometimes they have a better work ethic than native Europeans.’ And then there came the familiar claim: ‘Europe is getting older and will soon be dealing with a serious shortage of working-age people … Germany alone could experience a labour shortage of up to 2.4 million workers by 2020, according to the Boston Consulting Group. Our existing social-security systems are not threatened by migration. Quite to the contrary: The contribution of migrants will ensure that the support Europeans receive now will continue into the future.’4 This was another argument for population replacement, this time dressed up in the language of palliative care.