Abstract This article examines the assisted voluntary return and reintegration (AVRR) programmes as a distinct discourse that redefines the governance of the expulsion of irregular migrants. While critical scholarship has largely blurred the line between AVRR and deportation by emphasizing how AVRR masks coercion by using the rhetoric of ‘voluntariness’, this article moves beyond that debate to argue that AVRR’s distinctiveness lies in the production of specific knowledge on expulsion. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA) of key AVRR policy documents and informed by the concept of problematization, the article explores how AVRR reshapes the knowledge and techniques surrounding expulsion and establishes post-expulsion as a problematic domain that requires reintegration interventions. The analysis shows that AVRR policy actors make use of migration management discourse to position itself as a humane, cost-effective, and sustainable alternative to deportation. Three key discursive moves are identified: first, AVRR redefines expulsion as a process involving mutually exclusive interests that needs to address the concerns of all parties involved in the expulsion process; second, it recasts coercive techniques as counterproductive and instead promotes neoliberal tools such as financial incentives and psychosocial counselling; and third, it incorporates reintegration assistance as an essential domain of governance, bringing post-expulsion condition of expelled irregular migrants under the remit of expulsion policy. Yet the article shows that these discursive moves also reveal important limitations, as they remain embedded in existing power asymmetries and ultimately centralize the interests of receiving states over those of countries of origin and irregular migrants.
Valon Junuzi (Wed,) studied this question.