Policy Brief: Beyond Listening – Aligning Return Policies with Reintegration Realities

Authors: Dr Nassim Majidi, Juliette Samman and Devyani Nighoskar, Samuel Hall

FAiR research in Georgia, Iraq, Nigeria and Türkiye shows that return policy is often organised around administrative categories, while reintegration depends on how prepared people are for return and on the social, economic and institutional conditions they encounter afterwards.

Four policy shifts are needed:

1. Beyond consultation to co-production: mobilise returnees’ knowledge to shape policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
2. Make preparedness the organising principle for support so that the level and type of assistance reflect people’s actual needs and capacity to prepare.
3. Build and connect local reintegration systems: link pre-return preparedness to sustained, locally grounded support after arrival.
4. Measure reintegration realities over time, not only return and assistance outputs, and use the evidence to adapt policy and programmes.