Remigration and the Great Replacement: The Mobilisation of Revanchist Nativism in Western Europe

This article provides the first comparative overview of the mobilisation of remigration in Western Europe. It traces its intellectual foundations back to the ethnopluralism of the Nouvelle Droite, the ‘Great Replacement’ theory and the more recent book by Martin Sellner. By comparing various extreme and radical right actors in western Europe, we reveal an uneven but patterned mobilisation. The extreme right applies it to irregular migrants, asylum seekers, settled legal residents, naturalised citizens and, in the most radical cases, their European‐born descendants, relying on coercion and citizenship revocation. By contrast, the radical right often avoids the word ‘remigration’ and restricts its official scope to those without legal status or to foreign criminals, and favours incentivised return, though individual representatives frequently go further. We argue that remigration marks a shift in nativism, from a defensive approach that restricts entry to a revanchist one that seeks to reverse the ‘Great Replacement’ and reclaim the nation.