The return decision process of migrants in the host country*
4.3.3 The return decision process
The returnees also formed a heterogeneous group in terms of the time that they lived in the host country before they took the decision to return and in the way they made their return decision. For any of the different return motives, we found respondents who had made the decision to return rather quickly. This mostly followed a specific event, such as a rejection of their asylum request, loosing access to housing (e.g., because of a negative decision in their asylum procedure or because the people they lived with asked them to leave), or family members in the country of origin asking them to return urgently. Other respondents narrated about particular events that made them realize that returning to the country of origin was needed or possible. One returnee, who had lived for more than 10 years in different European countries without legal documents, told how he had never thought about returning until he received a ‘wake-up call’ from a priest, who reprimanded him that he was wasting his life and disappointing his parents by staying abroad. Another respondent decided to return when one of her acquaintances died, and she realized she did not want to die alone in a foreign country; given her age, she decided to return. Lastly, receiving information about the opportunities in the AVR programme was for some the trigger to make their decision:
I could not return home earlier, I had no work and no money, how could I pay for my ticket? Then, one time, a person told me that I could go to Caritas if I wanted to return, and gave me the address. (Armenian woman, 60 years)
For other participants, the decision to return was a gradual process, something they thought about for months or even years, or postponed for a long time until it seemed the best option or it became the only alternative:
123 I got a negative answer in February, but I stayed. I decided that maybe
I could stay and see if I could get married; but after some time, I decided to go back. (Armenian man, 24 years)
We reflected a lot, we had a lot of stress. I lost 10 kilograms, because of the procedure, because of the negative decision, because of the stress. We have been thinking for a long time. (Armenian family with adult son).
First, I was thinking ‘maybe we should go back’, and then I thought ‘no, no, no!’. Then my wife was thinking ‘maybe we should go back’ and then she was thinking ‘no, no, no!’. Two years, we were thinking about it. (Georgian family with little child)
Throughout the decision-making process, information about the possibility of receiving return support could be something the respondent had heard about quite some time ago, but used at the ‘right’ moment, when the decision to return was actually considered:
When I just arrived, I stayed in a place for five days, before I could go to the reception centre. During that time, there were some other Armenians who were talking about Caritas, and they told me: if you have no place to go, you can go to Caritas. But I did not use this opportunity at that time.
(Armenian man, 24 years)
Several respondents explained that they did not return because of the AVR support, but that the possibility of receiving support facilitated their decision. Yet, many respondents complained about the restricted amount of financial support they were offered,4 which they considered insufficient to start up an income-generating activity. For others, the support was an important precondition for finally taking the decision return:
We wanted to talk with Caritas first, and only after that go through with booking a flight with the social worker. We first wanted to be sure that Caritas would support us. (Armenian couple, 33 and 34 years)
Yet, a sizeable number of respondents doubted the authenticity of the support, despite being reassured several times by different social workers in Belgium about the project’s trustworthiness:
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How can I trust this (Armenian) organization? Will I receive my money? Can they just conceal it? Can it happen they never report that I arrived in Armenia and contacted them? (Armenian family with two children)
4.3.4 Lived experiences of return
Finally, the diversity within the group was also reflected in the variety of returnees’ feelings about their return: some returnees felt hopeful, happy or eager to return, often because of the prospect of being reunited with family and friends, given their decision the meaning of returning to a familiar and trusted environment. For others, their return was surrounded with negative feelings, such as fear because of unsolved problems, shame at returning or despondency about insecure future. Still others returned with mixed feelings: they felt relieved about returning, although knowing that their future living conditions would be worse than their current situation:
It is good that I return, that I can be with my parents, that I can see my children, but it is also bad for me to return, as there is no work in Armenia. I don’t have a job. (Armenian man, 54 years)
Without any doubt, taking the decision to return was hard and emotional. Some respondents spoke of their decision with conviction:
It is better for me to go back, it is my country over there. In your head, you always stay with your family… Before, I have always worked, and now, I just sit here, it breaks my head, it is not good. It is good to return, that is not as difficult as sitting all the time. (Armenian family, with little child)
However, others harboured serious doubts, and sometimes postponed or even reversed their decision, and then renewed it later. Once the decision had finally been made, the migrants wanted to return as soon as possible, which means that they experienced the period between the application and the moment the return date was announced (always a minimum of three weeks) as highly stressful.
Moreover, none of the participants considered it necessary or even possible to prepare for their return:
I cannot think here, I cannot decide what to do while I am here, because everything changes so fast. I’ll go back and see what works and what doesn’t, and then make my choice. (Georgian man, 27 years)
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4.4 Discussion
This study enlarges our insights into the decision-making processes and lived experiences of migrants who return ‘voluntarily’ to their country of origin within the framework of an AVR programme, and support social workers’ interventions assisting their return.
Migrants returning within the framework of an AVR programme form a heterogeneous group in terms of both when and how the decision to return is made. Migrants return at different moments in their migration trajectory, adding to the body of knowledge that counteracts the argument that the longer rejected asylum seekers stay in the host country, the less likely it is that they will return on a voluntary basis (Leerkes & Boersema, 2014). Further, our findings reveal the highly personal nature of the return decision process (Black et al., 2004), with a range of factors influencing the decision to return and those factors only receiving their value when considered in light of the perspectives and experiences of the migrants themselves.
Yet, some tendencies can be discerned. The respondents’ stories highlight the huge impact on their decision of their living conditions in Belgium and the absence of a residence permit, and any expectations of getting one, together with the impact of particular familial and life cycle factors (e.g., age) (Black et al., 2004;
Leerkes, Galloway, & Kromhout, 2011). In contrast, the impact of factors in the home country (e.g., political (in)stability, economic difficulties or personal safety), is relatively small, with differs from previous studies that return motives of potential returnees (migrants who had not yet decided to return) are mainly influenced by non-economic factors and by factors in the country of origin, and not by their legal status (Black et al., 2004). Importantly, particular factors, such as familial expectations and health conditions, also impacted on returnees’
decision processes, and were often experienced as factors of high ‘force’.
This significant role of the host country’s living conditions and migrants’ legal status in returnees’ decision processes, together with other ‘forcing’ factors, adds to arguments questioning the ‘voluntariness’ of ‘voluntary return’ (Blitz et al., 2005; Ruben, van Houte, & Davids, 2009; Webber, 2011). The (sometimes gradual) changes in returnees’ living conditions or their constrained legal status seriously limited their choices , forcing them to choose to return in an attempt to find a less painful alternative to a living situation of continued destitution or the risk of forced repatriation (Webber, 2011). The label ‘voluntary return’ is thus far more a state-centric approach, prioritized by governments in the framing of their policy for collaborating international organizations and the wider public (Noll, 1999).
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Although framing the return as ‘voluntary’ largely diverges from the language and experiences of migrants themselves (Cassarino, 2008; Noll, 1999), it is equally important to note that labelling our respondents’ return processes as ‘forced return’ is problematic as well. We thus argue that the continuum from ‘voluntary’
to ‘forced’ should be considered more as a multi-layered concept in which elements of force and choice closely interact in complex and varying ways. Some participants, for example, stressed that they made the decision to return themselves, while mentioning at the same time that the host country’s circumstances, in combination with other elements, forced them to this decision.
Labelling the return as ‘a choice’ by returnees can (as well) be regarded as an act of performativity (Butler, 1993), as a way of coping with the failure of the migration project and in an attempt to maintain their dignity, as a way to rationalize the decision and to make sense of the return process (Cornish, Peltzer,
& MacLachlan, 1999). The return itself can also be a strategy to improve returnees’ own wellbeing and regain control over their lives (Stein & Cuny, 1994), and thus experienced, despite strong elements of force or without any ‘desire’ to return, as a positive, ‘voluntary’ choice. Migrants’ individual choices and agency should thus not be overlooked, since even in a context of highly limited choices, they keep on struggling to maintain space for personal decision-making (Turton, 2003; Zimmermann, 2012).
This experience of their return as a personal choice does not always correspond with a positive view on this new migration (Leerkes et al., 2011). As much as in other migration processes, returning to the home country is also often a highly ambiguous experience (Cornish et al., 1999), containing both positive and negative aspects, leading to mixed feelings of fear ànd hope, and loss ànd gain and is often experienced as a new migration process (Métraux, 2011). This adds once more to scholars arguing against the conceptualization of return migration as a
‘simple’ ‘homecoming’ or as a return to the familiar and comfortable context one belongs to (Hammond, 1999; Ruben et al., 2009). Further, the respondents view on return migration contrasts a view on voluntary migration as a ‘safe’ or ‘easy’
form of migration, without any detrimental consequences for migrants’ wellbeing (Vathi & Duci, 2016). We thus argue that when considering return migration as a new migration, support practices for returnees should try to enhance greater continuity in people’s lives, giving attention to elements such as the returnee’s farewell process (also for the children involved), material objects people can take with them, and processes to try to align migrants’ aspirations and expectations with their (imagined) realities. Our interviews also showed, however, that returnees often do not prefer to spend time preparing for their return and want to leave as fast as possible. More research is needed to clarify this contradiction and to explore how social workers can deal with the tensions arising (Gmelch, 1980).
The availability of AVR support did sometimes facilitate the decision process to
127 return and was generally considered to have added value to restarting life after return (IOM, 2010). Yet several respondents doubted whether the amount of support would meet their needs (Ruben et al., 2009). This suggests a need for social workers to reflect with returnees on their expectations of the post-return reality, in relation to the AVR reintegration support (Carr, 2014; DRC, 2008). At the same time, we should also question current return migration policy on the type and amount of reintegration support that is provided and how this is portrayed to (potential) returnees.
To conclude, our findings indicate that return migration should be regarded, firstly, as a situated concept, framed in and impacted by situational and contextual factors, and receiving its specific meaning from the returning individuals’ points of view (Long and Oxfeld, 2004; Turton, 2003), and, secondly, as a new migration process, in both respects furthering our understanding of the return decision process and returnees’ lived experiences. In this regard, dichotomous thinking in terms of a forced-voluntary distinction (Noll 1999; Van Hear et al., 2000) often directly related to returnees’ legal status, does not reflect returnees’ experiences and multidimensional, nuanced views on the ‘voluntary’ and ‘forced’ character of their return, and denies the reality of their making a ‘constrained choice’ to return.
Acknowledging this mixture of aspects in the processes supporting returnees would open up more opportunity to support (potential) returnees’ agency and dignity (Vathi & Duci, 2016), and as such increase their overall wellbeing.
4.4.1 Limitations
When interpreting the findings, the following limitations of the study need to be acknowledged. First, our focus on migrants returning within a voluntary return and reintegration programme limits the findings to this particular group, while other groups, such as migrants returning without support or only with a flight ticket, are not included. Second, language and cultural barriers between researcher and respondents might have impacted on the data collection (van de Vijver & Leung, 1997), although the use of interpreters helped to reduce these barriers. Third, the country-specific approach does not allow direct generalizations of the findings to other countries, though they may indicate similarities with other groups of returnees.
Notes
1. As long as an asylum request is pending, asylum applicants receive a temporary residence permit. This permit ends when the migrant’s application is rejected; he/she then receives an order to leave the territory (Kruispunt Migratie-Integratie, 2015).
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2. The Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum-Seekers in Belgium introduced new admission criteria for the AVR programme in 2012 (Fedasil, 2012). All respondents applied for AVR support before these new criteria came into force.
3. Asylum requests and granted refugee statuses of Armenian nationalities in Belgium: in 2009: 1099 (5th out place of all asylum applications) – 6 received refugee status; in 2010: 986 – 4 received refugee status; in 2011: 691 – 4 received refugee status. For Georgia, the numbers were as follows: in 2009:
327 asylum applications – 3 received refugee status; in 2010: 323 applications – 6 received refugee status; in 2011: 324 applications – 1 received refugee status (CGVS, 2015).
4. The reintegration support the respondents received varied between a minimum of 500 and a maximum of 2,700 euros for a person returning single.
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