Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MORE (Motivations, experiences and consequences of returns and readmissions policy: revealing and developing effective alternatives)
Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2024-12-31
MORE critically examines the Returns and Readmissions policy of the EU and the UK, which is used as priority response to administrative irregularity among foreign citizens. This policy approach and measures have resulted in narrowing pathways meant to safeguard the rights of migrated populations across Europe. Increasingly restrictive interpretations of the Returns Directive, along with intensified efforts to expedite deportations, have led to severe human rights violations, without making any meaningful progress in effectively addressing the phenomenon of irregularity. The project analyses how the dynamics of the securitisation of borders, economic interests and political imperatives have converged to support current returns policies. It explores the consequences of these on the daily lives of irregularised migrants, their families, communities and the European society at large. Furthermore, the MORE project also searches to identify and explore other methods beyond return to tackle the structural causes of irregularity and provide dignified alternatives.
The initial phase of the research focused on the development and prioritisation of returns and readmission policies as responses to administrative irregularities among foreign citizens residing in the EU and the UK. It also examined the range of legal options for third-country nationals that cannot return to their country of origin. These assessments were based on an analysis of policy documents and parliamentary debates from the past 20 years. These were complemented by 46 in-depth interviews with policymakers, policy analysts, and high-ranking officials involved in policy implementation.
The second phase, currently ongoing, explores the multiple connections between public opinion and the development of returns and readmissions policies. This involves creating a comprehensive database of public opinion surveys addressing return and irregularity. This is investigated using regression analysis, incorporating key covariates identified by prior theories as influential on policy preferences. Special attention is given to the impact of media consumption, partisanship, social values, and political trust, with an emphasis on differences in preferences across various groups.
The third phase focuses on analysing the enforcement of returns and readmissions policies on the ground. It concentrates on conducting ethnographic fieldwork with implementing agents, including police forces, judges, prosecutors, detention centre workers, and border control officers. Simultaneously, this ethnographic phase focuses on revealing and analysing the consequences of these policies on irregularised people by looking at how the risk of return impacts their daily lives.
The second phase, currently ongoing, explores the multiple connections between public opinion and the development of returns and readmissions policies. This involves creating a comprehensive database of public opinion surveys addressing return and irregularity. This is investigated using regression analysis, incorporating key covariates identified by prior theories as influential on policy preferences. Special attention is given to the impact of media consumption, partisanship, social values, and political trust, with an emphasis on differences in preferences across various groups.
The third phase focuses on analysing the enforcement of returns and readmissions policies on the ground. It concentrates on conducting ethnographic fieldwork with implementing agents, including police forces, judges, prosecutors, detention centre workers, and border control officers. Simultaneously, this ethnographic phase focuses on revealing and analysing the consequences of these policies on irregularised people by looking at how the risk of return impacts their daily lives.
Recent findings from the MORE project indicate that policymakers primarily assess returns and readmissions through the lens of "effectiveness." In this context, effectiveness is understood in a predominantly quantitative manner, focusing on the seemingly low number of returns, compared to the total deportation orders of individuals living with irregular administrative status. This approach not only has led to severe human rights violations, without making any meaningful progress in addressing the phenomenon of irregularity, but also has failed to account for the number of deportations as it overlooks critical data on regularisation and international protection. Still, the notion of ineffectiveness persists as predominant, leading return policies while ultimately prioritising a higher expulsion rate at all costs. This, in turn, has led the EU Member States to view the legal grounds for freezing or suspending expulsions as obstacles or as optional measures to use under their discretion.
In this line, MORE preliminary findings also expose a prevalence of fragmented and often punitive approaches towards irregularised third-country nationals who cannot be expelled, leading to precarity, insecurity and further victimisation. Similarly, in the framework of enforcement mechanisms, there has been a process of institutionalisation of preexisting bureaucratic and policing practices such as detention, without due assessment backing their adequacy. In this regard, the research demonstrates that, where they exist, alternative enforcement mechanisms are underutilised. While these mechanisms are less punitive than detention, they still undermine rights by reinforcing a return-focused approach.
MORE empirical findings also point towards an opposition from frontline implementing agents to overarching return policies and specifically towards expulsion as a wide-reaching measure. This is mainly due to inherent conflicts between different norms, rights, and regulations that challenge a wide-reaching implementation of returns. Similarly, agents that are responsible to implement return and readmission measures on the ground consider the protection of certain rights a priority above the enforcement of deportation. Instead, they call to adjust the scope of deportation enforceability.
Findings also unravel that these implementing agents tend to make hierarchical distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants, construed around expectations of normative behaviour, and ‘civic behaviour’. This categorisation often serves as grounds to argue the need for deportation to those perceived as ‘bad migrants’.
Finally, results point at implementing agents making an instrumental use of expulsion to address repeated minor offences, triggering deportation processes rather than judicial responses. Thus, expulsions and deportation mechanisms are used as a further punitive instrument.
In this line, MORE preliminary findings also expose a prevalence of fragmented and often punitive approaches towards irregularised third-country nationals who cannot be expelled, leading to precarity, insecurity and further victimisation. Similarly, in the framework of enforcement mechanisms, there has been a process of institutionalisation of preexisting bureaucratic and policing practices such as detention, without due assessment backing their adequacy. In this regard, the research demonstrates that, where they exist, alternative enforcement mechanisms are underutilised. While these mechanisms are less punitive than detention, they still undermine rights by reinforcing a return-focused approach.
MORE empirical findings also point towards an opposition from frontline implementing agents to overarching return policies and specifically towards expulsion as a wide-reaching measure. This is mainly due to inherent conflicts between different norms, rights, and regulations that challenge a wide-reaching implementation of returns. Similarly, agents that are responsible to implement return and readmission measures on the ground consider the protection of certain rights a priority above the enforcement of deportation. Instead, they call to adjust the scope of deportation enforceability.
Findings also unravel that these implementing agents tend to make hierarchical distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants, construed around expectations of normative behaviour, and ‘civic behaviour’. This categorisation often serves as grounds to argue the need for deportation to those perceived as ‘bad migrants’.
Finally, results point at implementing agents making an instrumental use of expulsion to address repeated minor offences, triggering deportation processes rather than judicial responses. Thus, expulsions and deportation mechanisms are used as a further punitive instrument.