Returning migrants in host countries

Within the broad field of migration studies, the notion of return migration, understood as the process of returning to the country of origin after residing for a certain period abroad, covers a variety of forms of mobility (Čapo, 2010). Several subgroups within the group of returnees are sometimes denoted, based on the time the returnee stays in the country of origin once (s)he has returned (e.g., occasional, seasonal, temporary and permanent return [King, 2000]), returnees’

reasons for returning (e.g., failure to reach their migration goals, retirement, or a nostalgic relationship to the homeland (Cerase, 1974; Wessendorf, 2010) and returnees’ legal status before returning to the country of origin (e.g., refugee,

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labour migrant (high- or low-skilled, expatriate or entrepreneur), student, asylum-seeker or undocumented migrant).

Researchers have tried to understand the motives of migrants in host countries for returning to their country of origin and the factors influencing this process.

Deciding whether or not to return is a complex process in which migrants simultaneously weigh multiple considerations and mostly return for a series of interconnected reasons, rather than just on the basis of a single return motive (De Haas, 2011; King, 2000; Senyürekli & Menjivar, 2012). Investigating the return decision processes of migrants who would potentially return through an AVR programme, Black and colleagues (2004) identified a range of economic, social, personal and political factors in the host and home countries that influence migrants’ decision to return to stay. These authors concluded that conditions in the home country have a larger influence on the return decision than conditions in the host country, and found no associations between the respondents’ legal status and their return motives. In contrast, a study of the views of Afghan residents in the UK on return and AVR programmes pointed out that migrants’ residence status was the most important factor affecting their desire to return, with those awaiting a decision on asylum applications and others with insecure residence status being the least interested in return (Blitz et al., 2005). Furthermore, a number of researchers argue that political factors in the home country (peace and security) are of primary importance in the decision-making processes (Black et al., 2004; Blitz et al., 2005; Van Wijk, 2008), while the availability of support programmes in the host country seems to have little influence (Black et al., 2004).

Decision processes on return are thus possibly impacted by a range of different factors framed in the particular social context (Black et al., 2004; Senyürekli &

Menjivar, 2012; Zimmermann, 2012). At the same time, individuals also make personal choices and exert agency; these factors are thus not simply a series of deterministic factors (De Haas, 2011). Following Long and Oxfeld (2004), we therefore consider return migration to be a ‘situated concept’, framed in and impacted on by particular contexts, events and experiences, and at the same time highly personal (Black et al., 2004) and receiving its specific meaning from the returning individuals’ experiences and points of view.

These questions about migrants’ motives for returning (or not) and the space they have to exert agency during the migration process relate to the important notion of ‘voluntariness’ in migration studies (Ottonelli & Torresi, 2013). While studies have often strictly separated ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ migration (Turton, 2003), scholars increasingly argue that this distinction is rather blurred, since decisions to migrate are often a response to a complex set of factors of both compulsion and choice (Turton, 2003; Van Hear, Brubaker, & Bessa, 2009). However, a sharp distinction between ‘voluntary’ and ‘forced’ migration is largely maintained in

115 migration policy, with both categories, determining migrants’ rights and entitlement to support (Ottonelli & Torresi, 2013; Van Hear et al., 2009). This distinction is also maintained in return migration policy, with ‘voluntary return’

referring to a return out of ‘free’ will (or compliance with an ‘order to return to the country of origin’ without the use of force), and ‘forced return’ meaning a return that is enforced by compulsory physical transportation out of the host country (EMN, 2011). Webber (2011, p. 103), however, argues that “virtually none of the schemes currently operating as ‘voluntary return programmes’ from Europe meet the criteria for voluntariness”. If ‘voluntary’ is understood as a

‘genuine, not induced choice’, this would require that the returnee has (at least) a legal basis for staying in the host country. In reality, most migrants who return through AVR programmes comply with this ‘voluntary’ return because they lack any hope of still obtaining a residence permit and/or they want to avoid staying as an undocumented migrant in the host country and the related risk of forced repatriation to their country of origin (Black et al., 2004; Strand et al., 2008). Yet, it remains unclear how returnees themselves experience the elements of compulsion and choice in the return decision process, in particular those migrants who have a precarious (temporary) or no permission to stay in the host country (Blitz et al., 2005; Turton, 2003).

All these studies are based on migrants’ hypothetical return intentions and the decision-making processes of potential returnees, which might significantly differ from the actual return motives of returnees, given that the correlation between migrants’ intentions and their actual behaviour is weak, and intentions may change over time (Black et al., 2004; De Haas, Fokkema, & Fihri, 2015). In this study, we aim to uncover the return motives and perspectives of migrants who have already decided to return ‘voluntarily’, with a particular focus on an understudied group in this field, migrants with an insecure or no residence status¹. Considering return migration as a ‘situated concept’ (Long & Oxfeld, 2004) we will investigate the complex and multi-layered decision processes of returnees who decide to return within the framework of a support programme for voluntary returnees, giving particular attention to lived experiences in the host country and the way these impact on migrants’ decisions to return. These enhanced insights into returnees’ decision-making processes will be helpful for social workers in developing appropriate support interventions for returning migrants.

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4.2 Methods