Coerced return: formal policies, informal practices and migrants’ navigation

This article raises two questions: (1) how do formal policies and informal practices intersect in coercing returns of migrants without legal immigration status, refused asylum seekers and those unlikely to get asylum? (2) how do migrants at risk of return navigate the coercion they are exposed to? Focusing on the entanglement of formal and informal practices, we develop a typology of involuntary returns, distinguishing among pushing, imposing, and incentivising policies and practices. This typology invites us to see nuances in the forced and voluntary return dichotomy because coercive practices of implementation are embedded in all these types, but the level of coercion varies in different situations. The paper also investigates how migrants exercise agency by contesting/resisting or complying with the return procedures. The article contributes to the scholarship on returns by unpacking formal and informal policy and practice dynamics and migrant agency. Empirically, the paper is based on observations and documentation of practices derived from field research and 97 interviews conducted with returnees from EU countries and Turkey to Albania, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan between 2018 and 2023.