In extreme conditions such as those that the applicants in the main proceedings have endured, their option to choose is as limited as the option of the Member States of the Mediterranean Basin to turn themselves into landlocked countries" Advocate General Mengozzi, General Opinion, case C-638/16 PPU, X, X v. État belge, 7 February 2017, § 174
THE MIGRATION-POPULIST "CONNECTION": ALWAYS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CONSTITUTIONALISM?1 Within this trend, it is necessary to recall the role played, according to the populist rhetoric, by the systematic call to the connection between uncontrolled immigration and risks for European societies linked to the terrorist threat. This link is often used in order to justify, and in a certain way impose, very restrictive migration policies based on dissuasion, control and eventually real contrast of the phenomenon as a whole. In this sense, the confusion between supposed different "types" of migrations (see further below) favours the gradual but inexorable transition from the fight against terrorism also in the context of migration, to the struggle to irregular immigration up to the fight against immigration tout court (Gattinara 2017; Armillei 2017: 154).