Remigration: Returning to Ourselves

by Romain Petitjean

Jun 02, 2026

Issue no. 220 of Éléments is devoted to “remigration” — a concept that is progressively gaining ground in French and European political discourse. A range of figures from the dissident political and cultural world were asked to respond to the question: “Do you think ‘remigration’ is possible and desirable, and if so, in what form and under what conditions?”
Here is the response of the Institut Iliade’s director of development, Romain Petitjean:

Remigration is a vital necessity. For Europeans, the task is to regain demographic, cultural, and territorial control of their continent and to put an end to a deleterious situation that they did not choose. While Afro-Asiatic immigration may suit the purposes of rootless1 rulers by exerting downward pressure on wages, it is a catastrophe for the host countries, which watch their identitarian cohesion—the bedrock of the polity—collapse. One cannot assimilate entire peoples with alien customs into our centuries-old civilization.

Our liberal societies, founded on the individual contract, are powerless in the face of the Great Replacement. They are incapable of conceiving of existence in any terms other than inclusion — at best, assimilation, which is always possible for individuals, but wholly illusory when it comes to integrating foreign communities into historic cultures. We are currently witnessing a sort of utopian head-first plunge2 and a generalized denial.

Yet politics consists precisely in confronting reality (and in doing everything to show it to our people), in saying YES or NO when the situation demands. It must confer a destiny upon the people. Remigration, which is neither more nor less than the reversal of migratory flows, fully meets this requirement. It has the advantage of breaking a dynamic that has become deadly, and of offering a mobilizing and unifying myth. NO to the Great Replacement, YES to the reconquest of what we are. We must salute the European identitarians who are working to impose this simple idea—whose benefits everyone can see, and which is now growing in people’s minds, as the many opinion polls and electoral results indicate.

But it is urgent to put it in place, for if managing flows is one thing, managing the stocks—which swell with each passing day—is another. I would say that this is the foremost reason remigration must be brought about, its modalities being, obviously, numerous. Trust within our society is already badly shaken, owing as much to growing insecurity as to ever-sharper cultural gaps, and the lasting settlement of populations that receive far more than they contribute to the redistributive system now imperils our welfare state.

Let us recall that this migratory crisis is affecting more and more countries around the world, and that while Europe is the great loser for the moment, it is, broadly speaking, a zero-sum game for peoples of emigration and immigration alike. Discharging one’s demographic surplus abroad with the complicity of corrupt elites is neither healthy nor viable for the Afro-Asiatic countries that resort to it.

As for “selective” immigration, which consists in granting residence permits only to qualified or credentialed foreigners, it relieves the host country, on the one hand, of having to fix its endemic problems of training and educational policy, while on the other it bleeds dry the countries of departure, which are thereby stripped of their lifeblood. These practices are not profitable in the long run, neither for European, Asian, nor African countries.

Cooperation between states is therefore indispensable. Nothing prevents us from banging our fist on the table, from putting in place binding and spectacular measures to make an impression, while negotiating intelligent shared solutions with an arsenal of aid and incentives to return. The diplomatic corps—which the rootless liberal elites are busy destroying—is made for precisely this.

Let us be at once determined and idealistic, for what is at stake is the future of our children and our survival, and let us be pragmatic, for that is the path of effectiveness. Finally, it must be recalled that remigration has already been carried out by various peoples, by various political camps, in various eras, and according to various modalities. From post-colonial repatriations to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Afghans from Pakistan in 2018, to contemporary Scandinavian experiments, examples abound.

From a more political standpoint, more and more European parties (still in opposition, for the most part) are putting remigration—the reversal of migratory flows—on the agenda of their programs, and certain countries, notably the Danish and Swedish social democracies, are beginning to put it into practice. It is a process to be set in motion, and for that we must change our perspective and our mindset.

No, the law does not forbid us from doing so; quite the contrary, remigration consists precisely in applying the law. As in a funnel, the point is to begin with the most obvious cases (illegal aliens, foreign delinquents, temporary stays, fraudulent entries…), which will send a clear signal to these populations: “You are not welcome and are meant to leave. Prepare yourselves.”

We must rediscover that life-drive, that desire to make our own children and to perpetuate what we are. To that end, a return to the source of our history and our own genius, and taking back our territory into our own hands, for us, the autochthonous people, is indispensable.