Detangling Reintegration Governance in Nepal: A Multi-level Perspective

Reintegration governance in Nepal emerged with the implementation of a decentralized three-tier federal structure in 2015, granting each level the power to develop policies on foreign employment, including reintegration. This paper employs a multi-level perspective to examine the development and implementation of reintegration governance in Nepal within this recent three-tier government structure. Through policy analysis and qualitative interviews with key stakeholders collected through six months of fieldwork in 2023 within Nepal as part of the Reintegrate project, it identifies three principal categories of reintegration governance: national, local, and supranational. At the national level, the Reintegration Directive 2022 has established overarching guidelines indicating a top-down approach that mandates local governments to implement reintegration programmes. Separate from the national policy, local reintegration governance has also emerged in Nepal through the development of a local reintegration policy in at least two separate local governments, demonstrating a bottom-up perspective in multilevel governance. Third, supranational reintegration governance has been established through bilateral initiatives such as the The Reintegration of Returnee Migrant Workers (ReMi) operated through international and national partners, with well-coordinated efforts across all three levels of the federal structure. This paper traces the evolution of each type of reintegration governance, assessing their current implementation status, how they interact with each other and existing gaps within this reintegration governance framework.