In this timely and powerful Voice of Youth (VoY) essay, Emmanouela Papapavlou reframes migration not as a crisis or threat, but as a defining human reality of the twenty-first century. Moving beyond populist slogans and fear-based rhetoric, the piece exposes the gap between political discourse and the lived experiences of migrants—marked by legal precarity, exclusion, and everyday vulnerability. It critically interrogates the selective use of “legality” in public debates and highlights how populism redirects anger away from power and toward the powerless. Importantly, the article identifies Generation Z as a potential counterforce, emphasizing its everyday engagement with diversity and its rejection of xenophobic narratives. Published on the occasion of International Migrants Day, the essay is a compelling call to restore dignity, humanity, and ethical responsibility to migration politics.
By Emmanouela Papapavlou*
In an age of global instability, migration is not an exception and not some marginal social phenomenon, it is a defining feature of the modern world. Wars, political persecution, economic collapse, environmental disasters and inequality push millions to leave their homes in search of safety, opportunity, and a sense of dignity. Within this reality, the 18th of December, International Migrants Day, is not just another “awareness day,” it is a powerful reminder that migration is one of the most central human experiences of the twenty-first century, and that the way we talk about it in public spaces has real consequences on real lives.
Despite its profoundly human dimension, migration has become one of the most polarized subjects in global politics. Populist rhetoric, flourishing across Europe, the United States, and beyond, finds in the “migrant” the perfect target, an “other” onto whom fears, insecurities, and imagined threats can be projected. Migrants are framed as a faceless mass, as an economic burden, as a cultural threat, or even as enemies of national security. Yet the reality of migration is dramatically different from these oversimplified narratives.
For millions, migration is not a choice, it is a necessity. And for those who manage to reach countries of arrival, the journey does not end, it begins. Access to legal documents, endless visa backlogs, the slow and often arbitrary asylum process, and the requirements for work authorization create a system that is frequently insurmountable. In the United States, for example, hundreds of thousands of people live for years without papers, not because they refuse to comply, but because the system is designed to delay, discourage, and exclude. Even proving that you qualify for asylum often requires documents that no one could possibly rescue while fleeing a bombed home or a collapsing life.
While political discourse focuses obsessively on “flows” and “invasions,” what almost never gets discussed is the actual everyday reality of migrants, the labor exploitation, the lack of access to healthcare or education, the constant uncertainty of “will I be allowed to stay tomorrow,” the threat of deportation, the social stigma, the ghettoization, the absence of meaningful integration. Many states treat migration as a problem that must be “controlled,” not as a social fact that must be understood, integrated, and addressed with humanity.
International Migrants Day exists precisely because of this gap, the gap between rhetoric and reality, between what is said and what people live. It is a day dedicated to rights and dignity, to the fundamental right to move and to the right to live without fear. It is also a reminder that societies do not show their humanity in how they treat the powerful, but in how they treat the vulnerable.
Here we see another dimension of populism, the selective invocation of “legality.” Public debate suddenly fills with people who appear deeply committed to the rule of law when the conversation turns to migrants. “They came illegally,” they say, as if respect for the law were a consistent personal value and not something invoked only when convenient. Because the same people who express moral outrage at a refugee are often the same people who consider underage drinking normal, who speed on the highway, who drive under the influence, who use recreational substances, who pirate movies, music, and games without a second thought. In those cases, the law becomes a “technicality,” and strictness evaporates.
Yet when the “offender” is someone who ran from war, when it is a mother holding a child in a boat, when it is a young person who left everything behind just to survive, then suddenly the law becomes absolute and unforgiving. And even worse, we almost never see the same outrage when the offenders are powerful, corrupt politicians who steal public funds, evade taxes, exploit systems for personal gain, or embezzle compensations. In those situations, anger disappears. Outrage fades. “Illegality” becomes almost invisible.
This contradiction has nothing to do with the law. It has everything to do with control, with fear, and with the political function of populism, which is to divert collective anger away from those who cause injustice, and direct it instead toward those who are least able to defend themselves.
Yet within this landscape, there is a source of hope, and it comes from Generation Z. Gen Z is the first generation in history to grow up fully online, exposed every day to the lives of people across the world, from every background and every context. Diversity is not perceived as a threat; it is an intrinsic part of reality. For this generation, multiculturalism is not an ideological position, it is the texture of daily life in schools, universities, neighborhoods, and digital spaces.
Young people do not see migrants as outsiders, they are classmates, friends, coworkers, neighbors. They are the stories shared on social media, the voices heard without intermediaries, the people facing the same universal anxieties, work, education, safety, rights. Take the example of someone like Zohran Mamdani, who arrived in the United States as a child refugee and eventually became an elected representative in New York. His story is not an exception, it is a sign of a new era in which identity is shaped not by where you were born, but by who you are and what you contribute to your community.
What becomes clear is that Gen Z, through everyday contact with diverse cultures and people, rejects fear based rhetoric. They are not easily persuaded by politicians who weaponize xenophobia, and they do not accept narratives of “threat” without question. They see migration as a human reality, not as a tool for propaganda. And this generational shift carries enormous political weight for the future.
If we truly want to honor International Migrants Day, it is not enough to acknowledge its existence. We must promote policies that allow for safe, legal, and humane migration, support integration programs that go beyond survival and lead to participation and dignity, reform asylum and legalization systems so they do not trap people in bureaucratic limbo, and build societies that recognize diversity not as a danger but as a collective strength.
Because at the end of the day, the question we must ask is simple, and its simplicity is what makes it so revealing: How can a human being be considered “illegal” on an earth we were all born into? How can anyone be treated as worthless simply because they were born a few kilometers away?
If we cannot answer that clearly, then perhaps International Migrants Day exists to remind us that before borders, politics, and identities, we are, above all, human.
(*) Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com
