Migrants in Saxony-Anhalt weigh their future after AfD's best-ever state election result

Mixed · 2Migrants in Saxony-Anhalt say they are questioning whether to stay after the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) won its best-ever result in the state's 6 September 2026 election. 1 2 Mixed · 2Ola Akhras, a doctor who fled Homs, Syria, for Germany in 2018 and lives in Magdeburg with a husband and two young daughters, says they discuss going back to Syria daily, no longer feel welcome, and that Akhras no longer feels safe leaving home in the evening. 1 2 Mixed · 2The AfD fell three seats short of a majority in the 83-seat legislature, and it remains uncertain whether it will form the next state government, which would be Germany's first far-right regional government since the Second World War; a governor is unlikely to be chosen before December. 1 2

Mixed · 2The legislature met in Magdeburg on 6 October for the first time since the vote; Arab News reports it elected the AfD's Tobias Rausch as speaker, a post that traditionally goes to the largest party, while The Hindu's text, written beforehand, said the AfD hoped for that symbolic victory. 2 1 Mixed · 2Many immigrants and refugees fear that an AfD-led government would try to implement campaign promises that include more and faster deportations and restrictions on admitting asylum seekers. 1 2 Mixed · 2There are no figures yet on whether racist incidents have increased, but Undra Dressler, executive director of the Saxony-Anhalt State Network of Migrant Organisations, said counselling centres are extremely busy and fully booked, and that some people have left, some are considering it, and others have decided to stay and get involved. 1 2

Mixed · 2Mohamad Aldabagh, a 34-year-old pharmacist from Homs who arrived in 2015, said he will stay and will not let anyone take his rebuilt life away, but would move to another state if respect is lost; he argues skilled foreign workers are needed. 1 2 Mixed · 2The AfD's programme for the state does not reject labour migration altogether but proposes not recruiting workers it calls "culturally foreign" and ending a state programme supporting integration of foreign skilled workers, according to Rahim Hajji of Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, who asked how an ageing state with labour shortages would meet its needs. 1 2 Mixed · 2As of August 2026, 27.1% of doctors in Saxony-Anhalt's hospitals did not hold German citizenship, according to a Mediendienst Integration survey. 1 2

Mixed · 2The articles place the result against a changed national mood: a decade after Germany welcomed more than a million migrants under Angela Merkel, sentiment has soured amid slow growth, high inflation and rising energy prices, and the AfD, which is gaining fastest in the weaker eastern states, is the strongest opposition party and leads recent polls as Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government is unpopular. 1 2