When Deportation is called Return: changes and continuities in the EU management of irregular migration flows

Abstract

The topic of irregular migration dominates the debate on migration control in Europe (Spencer, 2011). Since the 2015 refugee crisis, there has been a growing focus on strengthening the return of irregular migrants and asylum seekers (De Bruycker et al., 2016), intended as both voluntary (VR) and forced return (FR). This latter is also commonly known as “deportation” (Khosravi, 2021). However, differently from other policy domains, supranational harmonization and cooperation among European States have remained low in the return field. Despite the 2008 Return Directive sets up common EU rules on return, return policies are still developed and implemented mainly at the national level (Carrera, 2016). In such a context, in September 2020 the European Commission presented a New Pact on Migration and Asylum (“the Pact”), aiming at strengthening an EU-based system of returns. One of its most controversial amendments connects the border return procedure with the asylum border procedure into a single practice. While the topic of return is increasingly pressing among national and EU policymakers, political scientists have devoted only limited attention to it. Most of the contributions addressing the debate on irregular migration control have rather focused on other fields, especially border controls, visa policies and practices (Baldwin-Edwards 2001; Finotelli and Sciortino 2013; Infantino 2020). Conversely, legal scholars have dealt with this topic to a slightly larger extent. They have raised serious concerns about return (VR and FR) policies and operations in terms of human rights violations and lack of accountability (Giuffré 2015; De Bruycker et al., 2016). Nevertheless, they have left other important questions almost entirely unanswered – like, for example, the relation between return and the asylum principles. Against this background, the present panel aims at bringing together papers that delve into several issues and areas related to the return field, remained until now unexplored. We have identified three macro-areas of research that would deserve more attention. All of these can be addressed by different perspectives (political, sociological or legal) and with different approaches (theoretical, normative, or empirical). We welcome works adopting one or more of these. 1. The relation between VRs and FRs (at the national and EU level) 2. The relation between return and asylum in the 2020 Pact 3. The process of implementation of VRs and FRs (at the national level)

Title	Details
Social Work as Immigration Enforcement? A dispositional analysis of how British welfare workers become involved in the control and removal of irregular migrants	View Paper Details
The ethics of assisted voluntary returns	View Paper Details
Harmful systemic effects: the policy goal to “restore the credibility of the EU return system”.	View Paper Details