Europe is stuck in a need-hate relationship with migrants

Asurge ofEU EU small boats is arriving on Europe’s southern shores, brimming with migrants willing to work, for example doing low-skilled jobs in construction or caring for the elderly. In entirely separate news, Europe has a mounting shortage of workers, especially in low-skilled sectors such as construction or taking care of the elderly. To some, that may suggest a solution about as complex as slotting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle. Alas, migration is not amenable to such reasoning. Countries have borders for good reasons; economic needs are often subservient to political imperatives. Still, the end result is that Europe is nuttily deploying barbed-wire fences and “workers wanted” banners at the same time. Meanwhile, thousands are drowning as they try to reach a place that may soon realise it needs them.So migration is, alas, back at the forefront of politics. The bloc is on track to receive over 1m asylum applications this year, the most since a rush of arrivals in 2015-16. Back then, in the midst of turmoil in Afghanistan and Syria, the mood was fairly welcoming: Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, had pronounced that in the wake of a large inflow of migrants “”—we can manage this. Now Europe no longer feels it can quite as much. Whether liberal or conservative, northern or southern, the feeling is of a continent at its limits. Millions of Ukrainians fleeing war into the have strained resources—and sympathy—that might have gone to those from farther afield. Countries that took lots of migrants in 2015 have not fared well: Sweden is calling in the army to help deal with a surge in , much of it related to its previously porous border. Migrant-hating populists have surged there, as they also have in Germany.