In the corridors of Brussels, the topic of undocumented migrants rarely occupies center stage in political dialogue, at least not in terms that reflect their de facto role within the Union.
Debates around migration continue to orbit familiar binaries: legal versus illegal, humanitarian duty versus border control, integration versus deportation.
Yet the day-to-day functioning of many EU member states quietly rests on the presence of millions of people who do not exist in official registers. Their labour is deemed illegal, yet their presence is tolerated; their contributions are unrecognised, yet essential.
This is not merely a policy blind spot. It is a profound political contradiction, one that reveals the gap between what the EU claims to be and what it has become.
At the heart of the matter is the quiet institutionalisation of a parallel reality: one where entire political economies operate under a regime of selective illegality.
This is not a matter of enforcement failure. It is the result of deliberate, if unspoken, political design.
Member states uphold tough migration rhetoric while allowing the proliferation of legal grey zones. Border control agencies are expanded while amnesties are quietly issued in crisis years. Deportations are emphasised in public statements, while administrative backlogs conveniently delay removals for years.
These contradictions are not accidents; they are mechanisms of political containment.
What has emerged is a form of 'dual governance' in which one side of the state enforces visibility, legality, and compliance, while the other depends on invisibility and informality to preserve political stability.
National governments, aware of voter sensitivities and far-right pressure, cannot openly embrace the idea of integrating undocumented migrants; neither can they afford to eliminate a labour force that provides essential services without demanding political rights.
This is not hypocrisy, but rather, it is a strategy. Undocumented migrants are politically voiceless, and thus politically useful. Their very lack of legal status becomes a political tool, a way to satisfy multiple constituencies without committing fully to any of them.
The EU itself is complicit in this arrangement. While it offers funding for border security and asylum processing, it rarely addresses the systemic dependence on undocumented workers in key sectors such as care, construction, or agriculture.
Supranational institutions issue statements on human rights and integration, but rarely acknowledge the structural role played by people who live entirely outside their legal definitions. The result is an institutional silence that legitimises a two-tiered system — not just of labour, but of political being.
The quiet endurance of this arrangement reveals something deeper about European governance.
It reflects the EU’s difficulty in reconciling its normative identity — based on law, rights, and order with the practical realities of a fractured political union.
Migration policy is technically shared between the EU and its member states, but the power dynamics are unbalanced. National politics dominate, and populist movements ensure that migration remains a toxic electoral issue. This has led to a kind of informal federalism-by-avoidance: Europe pretends to have a unified approach, while each state improvises its own unspeakable truths.
The irony is sharp.
The EU demands transparency from candidate countries, yet its own treatment of undocumented residents is opaque by design.
It champions the rule of law abroad, but builds political structures at home that depend on the suspension of law for certain people.
It claims to stand for equality, but perpetuates a caste of non-citizens whose lack of rights is politically expedient. These are not just inconsistencies, they are political technologies. Invisibility, in this context, is not a failure of policy. It is the method by which policy is sustained.
Politically, the greatest risk is not the presence of undocumented migrants, but the exposure of the system that depends on them.
Far-right actors exploit the fear of uncontrolled migration, yet they benefit from the same silent tolerance that allows undocumented labour to exist.
Meanwhile, centrist parties attempt to triangulate between ethical responsibility and electoral caution, often landing in paralysis. This vacuum prevents the development of a coherent policy — not just on migration, but on the nature of citizenship itself.
As Europe's geopolitical environment grows more volatile, with war, climate displacement, and economic asymmetries fuelling future waves of migration — the current model becomes unsustainable.
Political actors will soon face a decision they have long postponed: to either acknowledge the undocumented as part of the polity, or to deepen the contradictions that already erode institutional trust.
This is not merely a matter of border policy. It is a question of what kind of polity the EU wishes to be, one bound by law and rights, or one that survives through their strategic suspension.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Binu Daniel is professor of finance at Berlin's CBS University of Applied Science.
Binu Daniel is professor of finance at Berlin's CBS University of Applied Science.