We have to tame the state’s near-absolute control over migration.

This article engages with Lea Ypi’s argument that migration becomes a political problem only when it is constructed as such through public discourse. While endorsing much of her diagnosis and normative vision, it offers several refinements. First, it argues that public perceptions of migration are profoundly disconnected from empirical realities, with migration levels consistently overestimated despite international migrants constituting only a small share of the global population. Second, it highlights the transformation of borders from fixed territorial lines into diffuse legal and technological systems of control that regulate mobility before, at, and beyond state frontiers. Third, it suggests that Ypi’s distinction between class and culture is overly rigid, as contemporary populist nationalism draws on the interaction of economic insecurity and cultural anxieties rather than either factor alone. Finally, the paper situates migration within the historically contingent relationship between sovereignty and border control, questioning the legitimacy of a state-centric system that normalizes unequal global mobility. It concludes by arguing that Ypi’s vision provides an important ethical framework for rethinking political community and freedom of movement in an era of intensifying global crises.