fostering the social and professional reintegration of return labour migrants en 2

Migration in ACP Countries : Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

Fostering the Social and Professional Reintegration of Return Labour Migrants


Dealing with return and reintegration :

Current policies and priorities


“Return” policies and bilateral cooperation for readmission

What is a return policy? Should cover all stages of the return process (in receivingand sending countries);The durability of a return policy depends on the extent towhich :

• The country context is enabling for returnees to invest their financial and human capital at home;

• Inclusion of measures to support the socio professional reintegration, regardless of the migrant;

• It mutually serves the interests of receiving and sending countries;

• Effective cooperation between sending and receiving countries.


Return and reintegration is part and parcel of the EU’s approach to

migration;“Effective return has to be ensured”→ incentives.Are there mechanisms to sustain the reintegration of migrants in theircountries of origin, whether return is temporary or permanent?

• April 2002: Green Paper on a Community Return Policy on Illegal Residents…[the understanding of “return” is framed];

• November 2002: Return Action Programme;• September 2005: Communication on migration and development: “the

return of migrants to their country of origin may have a significant positive impact in development terms”;

• Late 2005: Global Approach to Migration (GAM): strengthened dialogue on return management and illegal migration.

• Late 2006: GAM Mobility packages• May 2007: Circular migration schemes + mobility partnerships

(selective and conditionally linked with security-driven safeguards);


• The EU Return Fund (as of 2008): “The Fund would in principle cover the return of both [illegally staying] immigrants and asylum-seekers who have received a negative decision”.

• Directive on common standards for returning illegally staying third country nationals.

• March 2011: “Return arrangements” and readmission further promoted in the framework of the New European Neighbourhood Policy + Mobility partnerhips + “Partnership for democracy and shared prosperity”.

• May 2011: Mediterranean dialogue on migration, mobility and security: called for “assistance for the voluntary return of third country nationals apprehended as irregular migrants on the territory of the partner State” + “voluntary return arrangements”.

• June 2011: The conditional link between mobility partnerships and effective cooperation on readmission and security is reasserted + cooperation is differentiated.

• November 2011: Global Approach to Migration and Mobility: “Readmission and return should be firmly embedded in the broader Global Approach” + integrated border management.

• May 2012: The EU announced the opening of ‘dialogues’ with Tunisia and Morocco on mobility partnerships.

• October 2012: Malta declaration...


Current priorities and implications

A credible offer?

• The search for securitised temporariness + security-driven conditionality• Resilient bilateralism + subtle alignment prioritizing security concerns over

migrants’ rights and over development concerns• Recurrent dialogues…shaped by a common lexicon and predominant

schemes of understanding + search for a consensus which remain biased by receiving-country concerns

• Temporariness impacts on : the ability to benefit from economic and social rights and to be protected from

vulnerability The realisation of migrants’ labour and human rights Family reunion rights Migrant workers’ freedom of association Migrant workers’ working conditions employers’ (low) propensity to invest in the training of temporary workers (see

EMN study).


It is the drive for temporariness, not the repeated to and fro movements of migrants, that has configured the rationale for circular migration programmes. If it were the opposite, the issues of return and reintegration would have been dealt with more substantially by policy-makers in countries of destination and of origin.


Some data


The Cobweb of Agreements Linked to Readmission Concluded Among the EU Member States and with

Third Countries, (1970s)



Third Countries, May 2010

fostering the social and professional reintegration of return labour migrants en 2

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