Flanked by market stalls selling everything from Turkish borëk pastries to bedazzled iPhone cases, Lina, 53, confessed that she was racked with worry about what may lie ahead for her three children once Sunday night’s election is over.
She has lived in Germany for decades, carving out a life for herself and her family after moving from Lebanon. Now – after a frenzied election campaign in which most politicians have scrambled to ward off the rise of the far right with tough talk on migrants – she wondered what the consequences would be for the lives they had painstakingly built.
“It’s scary,” she said. Worse still, the torrent of anti-migrant rhetoric had seemingly done little to stem the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD), with polls suggesting that the far-right party is poised to vault into an unprecedented second place in Sunday’s election.
“They are against Islam, against Arabs,” she added. “Who knows if they will bring in laws against us? It’s really upsetting.”
Her words were a hint of the high stakes at play as Germany heads to the ballot box. Migration has loomed large in the lead-up to the election, cast repeatedly as a problem to be solved; from Olaf Scholz’s promise to “deport people more often and faster” to the proposals by the conservative opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, to turn away asylum seekers at Germany’s borders and revoke the citizenship of dual nationals who commit a crime.
Both have seemingly sought to keep pace with the AfD, who have peddled promises of remigration and repeatedly tied migration to crime, falsely tarring the millions of Germans who hail from around the world and live peacefully in and contribute to the country.
“It’s the first time, I would say, that I really feel like a foreigner in my own country,” said Cihan Sinanoğlu, a social scientist who works with the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research. “Racialised people and groups understand that the whole debate about migration is also a debate about us, about what it means to be German and who’s in and who’s out.”
The myopic focus on migration had also allowed most politicians to skirt around the many challenges facing Germany, from soaring housing costs to the climate crisis and widening inequality. “Nobody wants to talk about structural problems,” said Sinanoğlu. “So all of the bad things in the world are projected on to this figure of the migrant or asylum seeker; rents, economy systems, poverty. That’s crazy.”
The result was an election that had left many reeling. “I’m super scared and many of my friends are scared,” said one 28-year-old, who asked not to be named.
She had arrived in Germany from Syria in 2015, as a wave of “welcome culture” swept across the country, transforming Germany into a safe place for more than a million people fleeing conflict and persecution. Now she wondered how many people she knew were gearing up to embrace a far-right party whose ranks include neo-Nazis. “They are our neighbours, they are parents. And they are daring to again choose fascism,” she said.
The campaign had laid bare politicians’ stunning failure to tell a different story about Germany, one capable of capturing how the country’s diversity – from those with migration backgrounds to LGBTQ+ people – could be harnessed to tackle challenges such as ageing infrastructure and an ailing economy, said Tyron Ricketts, a film-maker and storyteller.
“Even before the election, the political climate was hijacked by the right-wing party,” he said. “And that comes with the tragic terrorist attacks being politicised rather than talking about the other real problems.”
The absence of any kind of inclusive model has helped to fuel scapegoating, said Ricketts. “I know that has worked before and especially in Germany, but it’s just a super dangerous game,” he said. “And I think it’s quite shameful for the parties that call themselves democratic and centre, or centre-right, to adopt those kinds of techniques.”
This week, the Munich-based Ifo Institute published a study that found there was “no correlation” between migration and higher crime rates. “The same applies in particular to refugees,” a researcher, Jean-Victor Alipour, said in a statement.
In central Berlin, surrounded by shops staffed by migrants, Samira, 25, lamented how politicians had chosen to depict those who come from abroad. “Migrants are a big part of Berlin and Germany in general,” she said, pointing to her father’s roots in the African country of Chad. “Without migrants, we wouldn’t have a lot of things that we currently have … I don’t really see why we should push them out.”
It was a point that has been highlighted throughout the campaign by trade unions, economists and thinktanks. After the fall of the Assad regime led some politicians to call for Syrians to return to their home country, the German Economic Institute swiftly said that about 80,000 Syrians were working in sectors experiencing deep labour shortages, from the auto industry to dentistry and childcare.
More than 5,000 Syrian doctors were also fully employed in the country, meaning returns could result in “critical shortages” in medical services, it noted.
The country’s reliance on migration to sustain its economy, however, has rarely been addressed by politicians during the campaign. Instead, many have leaned on a one-sided narrative, emboldening the far right in a way that could have dire impacts on people of colour, said Olivia, 23, whose father hails from Nigeria.
“You can feel it already,” she added. “It’s shifting already but it will probably get worse. I’m scared of seeing that in the future.”
In September, Germany’s federal anti-discrimination commissioner, Ferda Ataman, linked the rise of the far right to a “discrimination crisis”, citing the more than 20,000 cases that had poured into her office between 2021 and 2023.
“Millions of people are afraid for their future,” Ataman said at the time. “In view of the electoral successes of right-wing extremists, it is more important than ever to protect people effectively from hatred and exclusion.”
In Germany’s eastern states, where nearly a third of voters cast their ballots for the far right in last autumn’s state elections, migrant groups have warned of a spike in attacks as people report being spat on, sworn at, attacked, and punched in the face.
With days left until the vote, far-right actors like the AfD have already had success in that they have managed to usher in new divisions across Germany, said Markus Beeko as he crossed through one of the city boroughs formerly divided between East and West Berlin.
“You don’t see that there’s enough sensitivity around the fact that this is a debate where everyone should stand up. Like if you’re in a workplace, you want people to say ‘OK, we understand that this is an attack on you as a colleague and we are standing with you.’”
While some had taken to the streets to protest against the shifting political climate, many others in media and beyond had not clearly rejected far-right views, added the 57-year-old.
“And I think for many people who feel attacked – be it that you are female, transgender, or have a different cultural background – for many people it really stresses the feeling that they don’t belong,” he said. “And I think this is something which would be hard to heal and reconcile with because it has a lasting effect.”
