Last week, Ohio Republican gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy questioned other Republicans about their idea that ancestry or heritage is what makes someone truly American.
“The idea that a ‘heritage American’ is more American than another American is fundamentally un-American,” Ramaswamy, who was born to Indian immigrant parents, said during Turning Point USA’s annual conference.
Remigration, once a fringe far-right notion that advocated the deportation of ethnic minorities, is now gaining traction in US Republican circles as President Donald Trump’s second term enters the final weeks of his first year.
Earlier this year, reports said the US State Department was considering creating a remigration department. A few months later, the Department of Homeland Security posted a pro-remigration message online.
But it is not only far-right American figures who evoke the idea of remigration; Far-right European leaders are also joining in.
Here’s a closer look at what remigration means and what its origins are.
What is remigration?
Broadly speaking, remigration refers to when an immigrant voluntarily returns to their country of origin.
However, in the context of far-right movements, remigration is a method of ethnic cleansing.
For white ethnonationalists, remigration is a process by which all non-white people are forcibly removed from traditionally white countries.
W.What are the origins of remigration?
Ideas of remigration date back to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. The Nazis attempted to “remigrate” Jews from Germany to Madagascar.
But the concept went viral thanks to the work of Renaud Camus, a French novelist who came up with the Great Replacement conspiracy theory in his 2011 book, Le Grand Remplacement.
His widely discredited white nationalist theory suggests that elites are replacing white Christians in the West with non-white people, primarily Muslims, through mass migrations and demographic shifts. Camus calls this “genocide by substitution.”
Far-right nationalists in Europe and beyond have borrowed ideas from this theory.
Heidi Beirich, an expert on American and European far-right movements, told Al Jazeera that the term remigration is “relatively new” in far-right circles.
Beirich said the concept was popularized by Martin Sellner.
Sellner, 36, is the leader of Austria’s ultranationalist Identitarian Movement, a far-right group known for its anti-immigration activism and promotion of an ethnonationalist ideology. Ethnonationalists define the nation primarily by its shared ethnicity, ancestry, culture, and heritage.
“Remigration advocates the forced removal of non-white people from what Sellner and others with his beliefs see as historically white countries, basically Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand,” Beirich explained.
Beirich said remigration is, at its core, a “political solution to the white supremacists’ ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory.”
Do different groups have different ideas?
There are currents of nationalists beyond ethnonationalism.
Civic nationalists, who are also called liberal nationalists or constitutional nationalists, define the nation by shared political values, laws, and institutions, regardless of ethnicity. They believe that a person belongs to a country if they have legal citizenship and are committed to the principles of the State.
While civic nationalists are less enthusiastic about remigration than ethnonationalists, for them, remigration means voluntary return migration. This could mean policies or incentives for immigrants to return to their home country if they wish, often for economic, family or cultural reasons.
Why is the idea of remigration becoming widespread?
Beirich said Sellner has been pushing this idea with far-right parties in Europe for the past two years.
“What is surprising is not that a xenophobic political party like the AfD in Germany is open to this, but that now the US government is pushing a white supremacist political position.”
The AfD is a far-right party called Alternative for Germany, which is classified as an “extremist” organization in the country.
In May 2025, Axios reported, citing an anonymous State Department official, that the department plans to create an “Office of Remigration.”
Then, in an Oct. 14 X post, the Department of Homeland Security wrote “remigrate,” adding a link to its mobile app, which allows American immigrants to self-deport.
Where is the remigration movement picking up?
The idea of remigration has also been revived by far-right leaders in Europe.
Among them is Herbert Kickl, leader of Austria’s far-right anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO).
“As People’s Chancellor, I will initiate the remigration of all those who trample on our right to hospitality,” Kickl said in the FPO manifesto ahead of the September 2024 elections.
While the FPO won the majority of seats in the election, other parties – the conservative People’s Party (OVP), the Social Democrats (SPO) and the liberal NEOS – joined together to form a ruling coalition under an early 2025 agreement that sidelined the FPO.
Across the border in Germany, AfD leader Alice Weidel referred to “remigration” while supporting closing the country’s borders to new immigrants at a party conference in January.
In May 2025, a conference called the Remigration Summit was held in Italy. Far-right activists from all over Europe attended. InfoMigrants, a website that covers migration issues in Europe, estimated that 400 right-wing activists attended the summit.
But Beirich said remigration, if implemented as a policy, would in effect be an “attempt to create exclusively white countries through ethnic cleansing.”
