The fundamental weakness of nation state and EU efforts to effectively manage migration to Europe lies in ensuring the return of foreigners who pass or avoid border controls but are then neither granted asylum nor a (renewal of their) residence permit. The significant gap between the number of migrants who are officially ordered to return, and that of confirmed departures, strikingly reflects liberal states’ limited capacity to make unwanted foreigners leave their territory. Faced with this problem, many governments rely on public policies for the so-called “voluntary return” of irregular migrants and (refused) asylum seekers. These policies work in tandem with those for the forced removal (deportation) of the same group of people from or between EU Member States. Among scholars it is widely acknowledged that what governments thereby present as “assisted voluntary return (AVR)” is usually not underpinned by genuine voluntariness and leaves very little room for migrant agency and decision-making. Through this research project I wanted to further substantiate and go beyond this claim by investigating the complex role that the politics of voluntary return plays within the Austrian and British return regimes.
My research provides important insights into how these approaches work in practice and points out ways to ensure that they are in line with official policy goals, ethical standards, and human rights legislation. The project had three objectives: Firstly, to better understand the role and functioning of voluntariness in the context of state-managed migratory return, thereby contributing to recent scholarship on the in/effectiveness of migration policies, the agency of implementing actors and of migrants holding no or highly precarious statuses. Secondly, to develop a framework for analysing, assessing and comparing such policies with regard to both their effectiveness and legitimacy. Thirdly, to contribute to evidence-based and workable policy solutions that allow for genuinely voluntary returns without undermining the very logic underlying this highly contested approach to unwanted migration.
My close and comparative analysis of AVR policies in the two countries focused on the positions and perspectives of various kinds of implementing actors. In particular, I became interested in the complex and changing role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) providing return-specific advice and counselling. My comparative analysis shows how the recent shift from NGO to state provision of AVR counselling in the UK (2015/16) and in Austria (ongoing) affects the production of voluntariness and the meaning that different actors attach to this principle. Based on detailed empirical evidence including ethnographic insights into the provision of return counselling in Austria and in collaboration with a colleague working in the Netherlands, I have also highlighted the significant variation in how individual return counsellors perceive and (ab)use their own role in relation to their clients’ potential return and aspirations. Together with a colleague from the University of Innsbruck, I have used data from this and a previous research project to provide a theoretical explanation of how and why even social workers become part of a “hostile environment” for irregular migrants and start collaborating with the (British) return regime.
The project also allowed me to start linking my own and others’ analyses of the policies and practices of “voluntary return” with critical research on voluntary work with or for refugees, in order to contribute to broader theoretical debates around the governmentality of migration control. What makes “voluntariness” such a crucial element in contemporary migration governance, is that framing certain aspects or instances of it as voluntary can help governments to overcome some of the inherent limitations of state control over unwanted immigration. By giving me the opportunity to conduct this research and engage in the necessary exchanges with other scholars, this fellowship will have an important impact on my career as international scholar and researcher.
