Authors: Elina Jonitz (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Arjen Leerkes (Erasmus University Rotterdam). Ana Maria Torres Chedraui (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Gül Ince-Beqo (University of Milan), Monika Szulecka (Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Frowin Rausis (University of Geneva)
Every year, many non-EU nationals are told to leave the EU, whether because their asylum claims failed, they were found staying irregularly, or their permits expired. In practice, though, actually carrying out these returns is messy. States run into human rights constraints, uncooperative origin countries, missing documents and, at times, pushback from local communities. So a sizeable gap persists between the number of people ordered to leave and those who actually depart, leaving many stuck in long-term irregularity with limited access to basic rights.
European countries respond to these dead ends in very different ways. Some regularize, some tolerate, some detain and some more or less look away. These policies vary in restrictiveness, reach and how openly they acknowledge the limits of enforcement. The paper maps out several approaches in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Switzerland, judging them by their human rights implications, societal effects and political feasibility.