Mapping bilateral return agreements: towards a comprehensive inventory

One of the main objectives and ambitions of this inventory is to contribute improving the quality and clarity of existing data on return and readmission. The current main sources of information on bi- and multilateral cooperation regarding return and readmission are the inventory compiled by Cassarino (2022) and the data collection by the European Migration Network (2022). These resources provide essential insights into the agreements shaping return policies and cooperation between European states, but they are mostly limited to taking quantitative stock of IRFs. This FAIR inventory on IRFs goes beyond these current data collections and will provide more detailed information on the content of IRFs to date. It will do so by providing systematic and comparative information on the scope of IRFs, their implementation mechanisms, or issue-linkages. To build this dataset, FAIR national experts conducted a detailed analysis of the agreements themselves. Unlike other inventories, which primarily catalogued return frameworks, our approach required country experts to systematically read, identify, and code specific elements within the agreements. The dataset includes intergovernmental return frameworks (IRFs) from 11 countries and European Union's return agreements with third countries. While we used Cassarino’s and EMN’s inventories as a starting point, national experts expanded the research by looking at additional agreements through national repositories.