Uganda this week tightened immigration restrictions, underscoring how poorer countries and those that once championed progressive refugee and asylum systems are now turning their backs on them.
The decision by Kampala — which has long welcomed people fleeing conflicts both in east Africa and as far afield as Afghanistan, even giving them the right to work and land to farm — is among several such moves in Africa: Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya have all, for varying reasons, announced curbs.
Other former proponents of migration are shifting tack, too, with Sweden’s once-dominant Social Democrats pivoting to more restrictive policies. The party’s spokesperson on integration, the daughter of Kurdish political refugees, argued she wasn’t “imitating far-right parties,” but “the reality has changed.”