Research has linked a significant increase in jihadist violence in Europe to large-scale immigration and failed integration policies, accompanied by a documented rise in radicalization among second- and third-generation immigrants.
The influx of migrants has produced settled Muslim communities across Western Europe. Large swaths of these populations have failed to integrate in France, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and the children and grandchildren of the original immigrants, born on European soil and holding European passports, have become the primary radicalization pool from which the continent’s jihadist terrorism now draws.
Europol’s EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report recorded 120 terrorist attacks across the EU in 2023, up from 28 in 2022 and 18 in 2021, with 14 classified as jihadist and 334 jihadist arrests, a rise from 266 the prior year. In 2024, 58 attacks were recorded across 14 member states, 24 of them jihadist, with arrests climbing to 449, the highest figure in recent years. Spain, France, Belgium, and Germany accounted for the majority of both years’ arrests.
The profile of the perpetrators is consistent across multiple independent research bodies. Grey Dynamics, analyzing Europe’s jihadist threat through 2025, concluded that rather than recent immigrants or asylum seekers, the threat is primarily domestic, involving EU citizens or long-term residents who are frequently second-generation.
START InSight found that 89% of terror attacks in Europe were carried out by first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants. Of those attacks, 26% were committed specifically by second- or third-generation immigrants.
Lorenzo Vidino, whose research on European jihadism is widely cited, found that ISIS-mobilized jihadi terrorists in Europe have tended to be second-generation Muslim immigrants. He also noted that countries such as Italy and Spain, which have smaller second-generation Muslim populations, have experienced fewer attacks than France, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom, where those populations are larger.
The mechanism driving radicalization among this cohort is documented in academic literature. A core driver is identity crisis. Second- and third-generation immigrants often do not feel a sense of belonging to their European host societies or to their ethnic countries of origin.
Radical Islam can fill that vacuum by providing a sense of dignity, identity, and purpose to young people who feel marginalized or discriminated against. The Council of Europe identified a typical radicalization profile as young people between the ages of 16 and 24 with histories of school failure, criminal records, and little or no work experience.
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, analyzing thwarted jihadi plots in Europe between January 2022 and March 2025, found that minor plotters are more likely to be EU citizens than third-country nationals, and that several were second- or third-generation immigrants.
The radicalization of minors represents the most acute current development. A 2026 study found that youth and minors accounted for 42% of all terror-related investigations in Europe and North America in 2025, a threefold increase since 2021.
In 2024, teenagers were involved in nearly two-thirds of Islamic State-linked arrests in Europe. Belgian intelligence reported that one-third of its terrorist investigations between 2022 and 2024 concerned minors.
The radicalization process has also accelerated dramatically. What historically required months or years can now occur within weeks or even days. This shift has been driven by short-form online propaganda, algorithmic amplification, and the exploitation of developmental vulnerabilities among adolescents.
The ethnic and national origins of the perpetrator pool are also consistent across the data. START InSight found that the ethno-national groups most represented in European jihadist terrorism are Moroccans and Algerians. Moroccans predominate in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, while Algerians are most prominent in France. Their representation is broadly proportional to the size of those immigrant communities in their respective host countries.
French Interior Ministry data from 2023 showed that 4,263 of the 20,120 individuals listed in France’s National Database for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Terrorism were foreign nationals. That amounted to 21% of the database, compared with foreign nationals comprising 8.2% of the total population.
In Germany, 138 of 480 individuals assessed as dangerous Islamist extremists held no German passport. That represented 29% of the total, while foreign-born residents accounted for 16.6% of the population.
The full causal chain supported by the data runs from immigration through integration failure to domestic terrorism. Second- and third-generation radicalization is a downstream consequence of the original immigration decision. Without large-scale immigration from Muslim-majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East, the second- and third-generation radicalization pool would not exist.
Researchers who argue that recent arrivals are not the primary perpetrators are technically correct in a narrow sense. However, that framing can obscure the longer generational chain of causation.
Europol, West Point’s CTC, START InSight, and Grey Dynamics collectively document a terrorism threat that is domestic in execution and generational in origin. Their findings trace the threat to immigration patterns and the failure of European states to manage the long-term social consequences of integration.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/06/migration-second-generation-radicalization-drive-rise-islamic-terrorism/
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