Italy’s far-right government is led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — a political ally of members of the Western “dissident” right like former President Donald Trump and Europe’s growing nationalist movements, including the German AfD, France’s National Rally and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz. In Oct. 2024, the government began implementing a controversial plan to transfer migrants to detention centers, not in Italy or another European Union (EU) member state, but in Albania, marking a troubling new chapter in Europe’s ongoing retreat from humanitarian obligations.
Much like the failed Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, this agreement outsources Italian asylum processing, sending migrants to facilities in Albania, which is a significantly poorer Balkan nation across the Adriatic Sea. The agreement, which will cost the Italian government €670 million (approximately $738 million) over five years and aims to process 36,000 migrants annually, represents not just a logistical shift in post-2015 Syrian refugee crisis EU migration management, but also an assault on basic human rights and any semblance of democratic “European values.” Like the ongoing debate over America’s southern border, this “Meloni” policy reflects a broader trend of the wealthiest Western nations attempting to externalize and coerce their immigration responsibilities onto their poorer neighbors.
The €670 million could fund comprehensive integration programs, but instead, the government’s anti-immigrant “culture warrior” celebration of “reduced arrivals” masks the grim truth of right-wing European apathy towards migrants. The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration reports an increase in deaths at sea and a rise in missing migrant boats; the fact of the matter is that this policy merely makes the journey deadlier rather than deterring it, and it’s clear that the Meloni government does not care.
The European Court of Justice has already ruled that the plan to offshore migrants from countries Italy deems “safe” — which the EU does not — lacks legal legitimacy. This contradiction was starkly made clear when a Rome court rejected the detention of the first 12 migrants sent to Albania, forcing their return to Italy. The Italian government’s response was telling of their actual rationale for doing this; rather than address the underlying human rights concerns, it simply shortened its list of “safe” countries from 22 to 19, now excluding Cameroon, Colombia and Nigeria, which does a good job of demonstrating the Meloni government’s willingness to manipulate definitions to achieve its anti-immigrant political ends, regardless of the human cost.
This whole arrangement exploits the power imbalance between “EU” & “Non-EU” Europe. Albania currently aspires to gain EU membership, and despite that aspiration, the Albanian government has been incentivized to participate in a system that potentially violates international law. The deal represents a pattern where wealthy, often Western, nations use their economic leverage to outsource their humanitarian obligations to their poorer neighbors. As other European countries, like the United Kingdom under Keir Starmer, express interest in replicating this model, adopting a milquetoast version of his conservative predecessor’s “Rwanda Plan,” we risk further normalizing these harsh anti-immigration policies in general, but also a commodification of human rights.
The Italian centers in the Albanian towns Shengjin and Gjader will concentrate up to 3,800 adult men at a time, located far from public scrutiny and legal oversight of the country this system was built for. These facilities create a two-tiered system where some asylum seekers face reduced access to legal representation and fair hearings. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have condemned the plan as “shameful,” warning that intercepted migrants will face longer journeys by sea, prolonged detention and curtailed rights to seek asylum.
The agreement lacks transparency about crucial protections, including access to lawyers and translators, which is particularly concerning given that the facilities will be staffed by Italian personnel but guarded by Albanian security, easily creating potential legal gaps for accountability. The practice of “externalizing” migration control is becoming standard in Europe, with the burden of processing asylum claims increasingly placed on non-EU countries that often lack the capacity to protect refugees’ rights.
If you’re even vaguely an advocate for human dignity, it’s imperative, at least in my view, to reject this precedent globally. The solution to migration challenges lies not in outsourcing our responsibilities but in creating safe, legal pathways for migration and addressing the root causes that force people to flee their homes; this requires a fundamental shift from the Western right’s militarist policies of deterrence to those of solidarity and human rights protection.
The Italy-Albania agreement represents more than just a migration policy; it represents a dangerous shift in how Europe approaches human rights and asylum obligations. Fifteen European countries, led by Denmark and including Italy itself, petitioned the EU to consider similar “new solutions.” For Italy, however, this is just talk. Italy can either continue down this path of rights erosion and burden-shifting, or its government can uphold its humanitarian obligations and work toward a different and equitable approach to migration.
The bottom line is that this policy is inhumane and coercive; whether in Europe or the United States, opposition to the “anti-immigrant Right” ought to have some backbone in resisting the normalization of rights violations against people deserving of dignity. Concerning immigration, the real value measurement of the “Western World,” the Right loves to gloat about lies not in how effectively we can deter struggling people and outsource our responsibilities to our poorer peers, but in how effectively and humanely we can respond to those seeking safety on our shores. As anti-immigrant rhetoric becomes more popular in the Western World, we must reject the false promise of deterrence and instead push for immigration policies based on dignity, human rights and our democratic values — values that are absolutely meaningless if they stop at our borders.
Andrew McDonald, FCRH ’26, is a history and political science double major from Sacramento, Calif.
