Replacement theory: blaming the migrant, not the employers

The Great Replacement blames the migrant while employers ask for more

In the greenhouses of Murcia, a Spanish region governed by the PP and Vox, the crews picking fruit are almost entirely foreign. The scene does not bother the farming associations, which have spent years demanding more workers from abroad. And there lies the crux of the matter: while people debate whether a plan exists to replace the population, some people need hands and want them cheap.

The Great Replacement thesis holds that a deliberate strategy is changing the population of the West. Economic analysis finds no documentary trace of such a plan. What it does find is something else: entire sectors that depend on labour willing to accept what a local worker no longer will, and a debate over pensions, birth rates and public spending that crosses its path.

What is the Great Replacement theory and where does it come from?

The story is not new. Some trace its origins to the aftermath of the Second World War, others pin it down to the 1974 Kissinger report or the Club of Rome's work on population control. These attributions circulate without any documentation to back them up, and that is how they are presented: as suspicion, never as proven fact.

What does exist is a technical concept. The United Nations Population Division has studied so-called replacement migration: whether the arrival of people from abroad can offset demographic decline and ageing. It is a statistical exercise on fertility and mortality scenarios, not a manual for social engineering. The confusion between a demographic hypothesis and a secret plan is the exact point where the theory unravels.

Who asks for more immigrants, the left or the employers?

The question breaks the left-right axis. Spain's leading business association, CEOE, demands more immigrants for strategic sectors. In Italy, Meloni's government — presented as the toughest in Europe on the issue — manages half a million entries a year, and business organisations were asking for double that. On the Spanish right, some argue for prioritising Latin American immigration rather than closing the door, while the institutional left and the unions call for welcoming more.

If the criterion were ideological, the map would not add up. If the criterion is who has payrolls to cover, everything fits. The argument that resurfaces most often is trinc the money: corporate profits grow, GDP adds up, and the question of who pays the social bill is shelved.

The business of undocumented labour

Anyone who has worked side by side with migrant crews in agriculture describes it without embellishment: the temporariness, the harshness and the pay explain why no local workers remain in those jobs. Construction and hospitality repeat the pattern. The incentive is obvious: a person in an irregular administrative situation does not complain, does not report abuse and accepts whatever is handed to them.

On that basis grows the suspicion that part of the business world benefits from things staying as they are. Bringing in someone indebted to the networks that financed the journey turns need into submission. In that scheme, the border is not a problem: it is part of the model. Other analyses flatly deny this, arguing that employers are simply trying to fill jobs nobody wants.

The objection: does immigration cost more than it contributes?

Not all diagnoses point in the same direction. One current holds that the fiscal balance is negative: that public services, benefits and integration costs exceed revenue, and that the system is sustained more by external funding than by productive activity. In that framework, spending on the care of migrant minors is cited, along with a monthly cost per place that nobody breaks down in public.

The counterargument is that these figures are used without context. And that the underlying problem is not who arrives, but a country that fails to generate skilled employment. That is where the pay-as-you-go pension system comes in: fewer births and more retirees force the search for contributors wherever they can be found. And that is where birth rates come in, in a Spain where a single wage no longer supports a family, housing costs have soared and work-life balance is a pipe dream.

Why Europe imports workers and not robots

There is an uncomfortable explanation: Europe does well with low-skilled migration because it lacks technological depth. Its main industry is still automotive while the United States and China fight over big data and artificial intelligence. A continent that does not generate high-value employment ends up needing hands for everything else.

Japan, with minimal birth rates, responds by robotising and opening its doors only grudgingly. The contrast feeds a doubt nobody wants to face: if ageing is the problem, the solution should not be importing workers for the jobs nobody fills, but paying better for the ones that already exist.

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Italy, with a government that prides itself on a hard line, lets in half a million people a year. The employers' associations wanted a million. If that is a replacement plan, someone has forgotten half the plan.