When Patriarchy Meets Crisis: Why the World Turns Right

Introduction

In recent years, anti-migrant protests have erupted worldwide: demonstrations in Japan against asylum seekers, rallies in Australia demanding tighter border controls, and the growth of far-right movements across Europe and the United States (Kyodo News, 2023; Khalil, 2023; Norris & Inglehart, 2019). These developments are often attributed to economic insecurity, demographic change, or cultural anxiety. While such factors matter, they do not explain the deeper logic that animates these responses. This article argues that anti-migrant politics is not simply a reaction to external pressures but a continuation of patriarchal power—a governing script that organizes order through hierarchy, purity, and control.

Patriarchy is commonly reduced to male dominance over women. Yet as feminist theorists emphasize, it functions as a broader political and cultural system that naturalizes inequality and polices boundaries (Walby, 1990). At its core, patriarchy frames stability and honor as dependent on the regulation of certain bodies—whether women, minorities, or outsiders. The logic first applied to the family easily scales up to the state: the same rationale that disciplines women’s sexuality in the name of “family honor” can be repurposed to justify controlling migrants in the name of “national integrity.”

History bears this out. In colonial regimes, women’s sexuality symbolized cultural purity, while intermarriage with colonized men was cast as dishonor (Stoler, 1995). In fascist Europe, family models fused with racial purity discourses, producing anti-feminist and anti-Semitic campaigns (Koonz, 1987). Today, right-wing populists such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Donald Trump in the United States invoke the need to “protect our women and children” to legitimize exclusion, casting migrants as violators of both family and nation (Dietze & Roth, 2020). Such rhetoric reveals how patriarchal scripts of protection and shame are recycled at the border.

This article makes three claims. First, anti-migrant politics should be understood as a patriarchal performance: a staged display of control drawing on affective economies of shame, honor, and purity (Ahmed, 2004). Second, while such politics may generate short-term cohesion, they deepen contradictions—economic dependence on migrants, demographic decline, and the gap between purity myths and global interdependence. Third, the global right turn can be read as patriarchy’s political form in crisis: a fragile order clinging to power through fear and exclusion.

By reframing anti-migrant politics through the lens of patriarchy, the article links sexism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism as expressions of the same logic of control. It also underscores the fragility of this system: just as women’s refusal to conform destabilizes patriarchal order, societies’ reliance on migrants undermines fantasies of purity. Exposing these contradictions opens space for alternative imaginaries grounded in solidarity, interdependence, and justice.

I. Patriarchy as a Logic of Power

Patriarchy is often defined as male domination in social, political, and familial structures. Yet as Walby (1990) emphasizes, it is not merely a gendered hierarchy but a wider mode of organizing power. Patriarchy naturalizes inequality, polices boundaries, and normalizes control. It is less “men over women” than a governing script that extends from family life to state institutions, labor markets, and international politics.

At its core, patriarchy assigns honor to some bodies and shame to others. This is why women’s sexuality has so often been politicized: it is treated not as private but as symbolic of the family’s—and by extension, the nation’s—integrity. Feminist historians have shown how nationalist movements cast women as “bearers of culture” (Yuval-Davis, 1997). Controlling women’s sexuality thus became synonymous with preserving national boundaries. In colonial Algeria, for instance, French authorities denounced Muslim men as “oppressors of women” while policing Algerian women’s dress as proof of colonial “civilization” (Fanon, 1965). Women’s bodies became battlegrounds of cultural legitimacy.

The same logic shaped European fascisms. In Nazi Germany, women were exalted as “mothers of the nation,” charged with reproducing a racially pure Volksgemeinschaft, yet excluded from political power (Koonz, 1987). Mussolini’s Italy offered childbirth incentives while restricting women’s employment, binding patriarchal family ideals to the authoritarian state (De Grazia, 1992). In both cases, the control of women’s bodies became central to national legitimacy.

Contemporary politics recycles these scripts. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign cast Mexican migrants as “rapists” and the border wall as national protection (Chavez & Wingfield, 2018). Viktor Orbán warns of a “demographic crisis,” urging Hungarian women to reproduce while denouncing migrants as invaders (Dietze & Roth, 2020). In such narratives, women are framed as reproducers of the nation, migrants as violators of its integrity, and leaders as patriarchal protectors.

This extension of patriarchal logic reflects what Foucault (1977) called the “microphysics of power.” Power is enforced not only by laws but through everyday practices of discipline: families regulate women through shame and gossip, while states regulate migrants through borders, legal categories, and stigmatization. Patriarchy thus operates as a template for governance, governing through naturalized hierarchies and affective controls.

Yet this order is fragile. Patriarchy presents the family as “natural,” heterosexual reproduction as “inevitable,” and the nation as an organic body in need of protection. In reality, these illusions require constant reinforcement through law, ritual, and violence. When women claim autonomy or migrants unsettle fantasies of cultural purity, repression intensifies, exposing patriarchy’s dependence on control rather than consent.

Patriarchy, then, is best understood as a logic of power that transcends gender. It explains not only the subordination of women but also the exclusion of migrants, the policing of minorities, and the appeal of authoritarianism in times of crisis. Anti-migrant politics resonates because it taps into these deeply ingrained scripts of protection and control, rehearsed and reinforced over centuries of patriarchal culture.

II. Crisis and the Rise of the Right

The global turn to the right cannot be separated from crisis. Economic inequality, climate disruption, demographic decline, and geopolitical conflict have shaken the foundations of neoliberal globalization, creating fertile ground for exclusionary politics (Fraser, 2019). But why do crises so often translate into patriarchal, anti-migrant responses rather than solidaristic ones? Because patriarchy offers the illusion of order when contradictions intensify.

History shows the pattern. During the Great Depression, fascist regimes in Germany and Italy linked instability to restoring family roles and excluding minorities (Koonz, 1987; De Grazia, 1992). Women were urged back into domesticity while Jews, migrants, and others were scapegoated. In the 1970s oil shocks, anxieties over stagnation and immigration fueled far-right parties that campaigned on “national identity” (Betz, 1994). Across these moments, crises were narrated through contamination, dishonor, and the need for protective strongmen.

The same logic persists. After the 2008 financial crash, right-wing populists blamed migrants for austerity and unemployment (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Trump promised to “build the wall” and restore “law and order.” In Europe, Marine Le Pen and Alternative für Deutschland linked precarity and terrorism fears to anti-immigrant platforms. In Japan, protests against asylum seekers in 2023 revealed nationalist retrenchment under demographic decline (Kyodo News, 2023).

Climate change adds new fuel. Scholars warn of “climate authoritarianism,” where ecological stress justifies harsher border regimes (Bettini, 2013). Rising seas and resource conflicts displace millions, while wealthy nations fortify borders under the banner of protecting “our land, our women, our children.” Ecological, cultural, and gender anxieties collapse into one exclusionary project.

Demographic aging reinforces the patriarchal turn. Countries like Hungary and Japan face shrinking workforces, yet rather than embrace migration, leaders demand more births from “national women.” Orbán’s government offers incentives for childbirth while denouncing migrants as invaders (Dietze & Roth, 2020), echoing fascist natalist policies that instrumentalized women’s reproductive labor while vilifying outsiders.

These examples reveal why patriarchy thrives in crisis: it supplies a simple, emotionally charged script. Where structural problems are complex—globalization, deregulation, ecological disruption—patriarchal narratives provide clarity: blame outsiders, restore hierarchies, defend the family and nation. But these responses deepen contradictions. Economies reliant on migrant labor face shortages when borders close. Societies that curtail women’s autonomy undermine the resilience needed in crisis. And authoritarian leaders who promise stability through exclusion often intensify polarization, weakening democracy.

Anti-migrant politics, then, is no solution but a patriarchal performance that temporarily masks contradictions. Like all performances, it relies on repetition and spectacle—walls, border patrols, shaming rituals—while the crises themselves remain unresolved. Patriarchy emerges less as a stable order than a fragile script that societies cling to when uncertainty threatens to overwhelm.

III. Anti-Migrant Politics as Patriarchal Performance

If patriarchy provides a script for order in crisis, anti-migrant politics is one of its most visible performances. By performance I do not mean insincerity, but a socially staged repetition of symbolic acts—rituals that create the illusion of stability. As Butler (1990) argued in her theory of performativity, power works not only through coercion but through norms that appear natural over time. Anti-migrant politics functions in the same way: it dramatizes boundaries, stages purity, and rehearses fear, converting deep insecurities into spectacles of control.

A central trope is protection and honor. Right-wing leaders frame migrants as threats not just to jobs or security, but to women and children. Trump’s claims about “rapists” from Mexico, or European campaigns warning of migrant men endangering “our women,” exemplify this logic (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). The script is patriarchal: dominant men as protectors, women’s bodies as symbolic territory, migrants as violators—regardless of evidence.

Another trope is contamination. Migrants are cast as carriers of crime, disease, or cultural dilution. In Japan, opponents of asylum seekers warn of “loss of purity” (Takahashi, 2023). Such narratives are less factual than affective. As Ahmed (2004) notes, emotions “stick” to certain bodies, making them feel threatening before they act. Anti-migrant politics thus performs disgust: a ritual cleansing of the imagined national body.

These politics also rely on visible spectacles. Border walls, detention centers, and militarized patrols are less practical defenses than staged sovereignty. Brown (2010) shows that walls perform sovereignty in a world where flows cannot be fully stopped. Australia’s “Stop the Boats” campaign, with its offshore detention centers, exemplified this theater of deterrence (McAdam, 2013).

Yet the need for repetition reveals fragility. Like gender norms, these gestures must be constantly restaged. Each caravan, boat, or asylum claim demands another wall, harsher speech, or stricter law. The gap between rhetoric and reality quickly shows: Japan relies on migrant labor even as it vilifies migrants; European economies depend on care work by migrant women even as they are framed as outsiders (Lutz, 2018).

Anti-migrant politics is therefore a patriarchal drama: leaders reassert control through scripts of protection, shame, and purity. But like all dramas, it depends on audience belief. When migrants keep arriving, when economies contradict purity myths, the performance falters. What remains visible is not strength but fragility: a patriarchal order sustained not by inevitability but by endless spectacle.

IV. Contradictions and Fragility of Patriarchal Borders

Although anti-migrant politics presents itself as a defense of stability, its contradictions expose the fragility of patriarchal power. The louder states demand stronger borders and purer communities, the more they reveal dependence on those very “outsiders” for economic, demographic, and cultural survival.

The first contradiction is economic. Migrants sustain agriculture, construction, and service sectors across Europe. In the United Kingdom, Brexit-driven labor shortages in farming and healthcare showed how nationalist policies undermined the very industries they claimed to protect (Portes & Forte, 2017). In the United States, meatpacking, hospitality, and eldercare rely heavily on undocumented workers, even as politicians demonize them (Massey et al., 2002). Migrants cast as contaminants are in fact indispensable.

The second contradiction is demographic. Aging societies like Japan face shrinking workforces yet continue to resist immigration, even though sectors from eldercare to technology cannot function without it (Shibata, 2020). Hungary exemplifies the paradox: Orbán rejects EU migrant quotas while urging Hungarian women to have more children, offering tax incentives for large families (Dietze & Roth, 2020). Patriarchal fantasies of renewal through reproduction collide with structural dependence on migrants.

A third contradiction is global interdependence. In a world of supply chains, pandemics, and climate migration, isolated sovereignty is impossible. COVID-19 revealed that border closures could not replace transnational cooperation (Connolly, 2020). Climate migration alone may displace over 200 million people by 2050 (World Bank, 2021). Fortress politics cannot contain such flows, yet attempts to do so consume resources and intensify suffering.

Finally, anti-migrant politics erodes democratic legitimacy. As Brown (2010) notes, proliferating walls signify not strength but waning sovereignty. Spectacles of exclusion expose governments’ inability to address inequality or ecological breakdown. Meanwhile, resistance movements—from sanctuary cities in the U.S. to migrant solidarity networks in Europe—contest exclusion and reveal that patriarchal performances cannot monopolize political imagination (Nicholls & Uitermark, 2016).

Taken together, these contradictions show that patriarchal border politics is unsustainable. It cannot reconcile reliance on migrant labor with fantasies of purity, nor sustain sovereignty in an interdependent world. Its reliance on spectacle—walls, speeches, rituals of strength—betrays its fragility. Far from securing stability, anti-migrant politics deepens inequality, fuels polarization, and corrodes democracy. What parades as strength is in fact a defensive posture: patriarchy anxious about its own decline.

V. Conclusion

Anti-migrant politics is not separate from patriarchy; it is one of its most visible contemporary forms. Both operate through the same logic: turning difference into danger, policing boundaries, and staging control through performances of purity and protection. As Butler (1990) reminds us, such performances must be endlessly repeated, for they rest on no natural foundation. Each speech about “national honor,” each new wall or detention center, is another anxious rehearsal of sovereignty that never fully arrives.

Recent protests in Japan, Australia, Europe, and the United States follow this pattern. They mobilize patriarchal scripts of shame and defense, casting migrants as threats and women’s bodies as symbolic territory. Yet these performances collapse under their own contradictions. Economies depend on the migrants they demonize; aging societies cannot renew themselves without new labor; global crises such as pandemics and climate change expose the impossibility of isolation. The louder patriarchal politics insists on purity and honor, the more clearly its fragility is revealed.

What presents itself as strength is in fact patriarchal anxiety: a fear of disorder projected onto migrants to sustain the illusion of stability. But illusions cannot replace solutions. Instead of securing the future, anti-migrant politics corrodes democracy, deepens inequality, and fuels polarization.

To recognize anti-migrant politics as a patriarchal performance is to see beyond its surface appeal. It is less about borders than about preserving a waning order of control. If patriarchy once promised security through hierarchy, today it can only repeat rituals of exclusion to mask its decline. The challenge ahead is to resist these spectacles and cultivate alternative logics of belonging—ones grounded not in purity or fear, but in interdependence, care, and shared vulnerability.

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