At the Crossroads between Care and Control: A Cross-Country Comparison of Assisted Return

Abstract

Assisted return (AR) is a widespread policy tool offering financial support and counselling to returning migrants. Policymakers present it as a durable solution vis-à-vis undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers. However, AR has been proven to display the concurrence of care and control typical of contested humanitarianism. This concurrence takes different shapes across nation states. Our paper looks at how Sweden, Finland, the UK, Italy, Spain, and Portugal concretely configure care and control in their AR programmes, by focusing particularly on accessibility criteria, the landscape of the actors implementing the measure and their main implementation strategies. We finally find that the care and control balance of a particular layer within the AR national system can hardly be appreciated without considering the (lack of) life opportunities available to the potential beneficiaries of the measure, both within the confines and outside of it. Therefore, our comparative research ultimately conveys that what we call the intrinsic humanitarianism of AR—or its internal care-control balance—can give insight into the durability of the measure only when associated with what we term the extrinsic humanitarianism of AR—namely its broader relationship with forced return. In order words, AR ultimately appears migration control in disguise if it is not coupled with the enlargement of dignified life chances for migrants.

Pathways to reintegration in Senegal and Nigeria promoted by Italian Assisted Voluntary Return programmes

“…The crucial difference is that these are successful migrants who, as such, do not require AVRR programmes in order to return to their homeland. Indeed, as already emphasised, those who return home under AVRR programmes are generally vulnerable people with very limited resources and professional and entrepreneurial skills at their disposal; at the most, they will—as confirmed by our study—make use of these programmes to set up small businesses which, apart from rare exceptions, can at best provide for the returnee's basic essentials for survival (Marino et al., 2022: 2).

[We have often helped] people who have recently left reception centres because the period has expired. Even people who were simply tired of remaining in Italy after so many years because they no longer saw a future, there was no work, they were on the streets or in reception centres and, when they learned of the AVRR opportunity, they thought about it seriously.

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“…Moving beyond the initial research questions, we can develop a further concluding reflection on how the issue of repatriation is increasingly being associated with the idea that returning migrants can contribute significantly to the development of their country of origin. The relationship between return migration and development is now supported by a variety of empirical evidence (Faist et al., 2011) and is sometimes brought up by policymakers as an additional incentive to promote AVRR programmes, as well as garner the cooperation of recipient countries in implementing them (Marino et al., 2022: 2). However, in the specific case of AVRR, this link – if indeed it exists at all – is incredibly tenuous, as our research project also revealed.…”

“…Indeed, over the past few decades, NGOs have seen an ever‐growing degree of involvement in the management of countries' migration policies and AVR programmes (Vandevoordt, 2017: 1907–1908). For the implementation of said programmes, in particular, NGOs receive government funding which, in the case of Italy, for example, is proportional to the number of migrants who agree to the measure (Marino et al., 2022: 18). This results in migrants to be repatriated becoming a ‘desired category’ for NGOs (Shaidrova, 2023: 510), which could force migrants to accept AVR, thus making the decision even less voluntary in reality (Marino et al., 2022: 18).…”

“…The logical conclusion to this is that many authors consider AVR to be nothing more than a form of ‘soft deportation’ (Cleton & Schweitzer, 2021: 3; Kalir, 2017; Leerkes et al., 2017), in which the use of the term voluntary is simply a means to lend a veil of legitimacy to returns that are, to all intents and purposes, forced (Erdal & Oeppen, 2022: 75). Consequently, some countries and authors prefer not to refer to AVR, as such, and instead use the term Assisted Return (Lietaert, 2022: 110; Marino et al., 2022).…”

“…For the implementation of said programmes, in particular, NGOs receive government funding which, in the case of Italy, for example, is proportional to the number of migrants who agree to the measure (Marino et al., 2022: 18). This results in migrants to be repatriated becoming a ‘desired category’ for NGOs (Shaidrova, 2023: 510), which could force migrants to accept AVR, thus making the decision even less voluntary in reality (Marino et al., 2022: 18). This means that NGOs are caught between, on the one hand, their moral imperative to assist migrants—which also involves respecting their full autonomy and freedom of choice—and, on the other, the priorities of those holding the purse strings, which tend to be geared towards restricting the flow and presence of migrants (Vandevoordt, 2017: 1907).…”