Authors: Francesco Renzini, University of Milan, Arjen Leerkes, Erasmus University Rotterdam & Flaminio Squazzoni, University of Milan
This report is based on a survey experiment involving 16,301 respondents from 13 EU+ countries. It includes two studies: The first study examines public preferences regarding different return and non-return policies for irregular migrants, while the second study explores the socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles associated with these preferences. Study 1 reveals that respondents generally favour forced return over assisted voluntary return. They also favour restrictive, short-term permits funded by migrants or European institutions over more stable pathways to regularisation. Access to regularisation is viewed as being more dependent on cultural integration than employment. Preferences generally follow a sharp left–right divide, but moderates, including the highly educated, tend to align more closely with the right, where even detention and abandonment are favoured. Basic humanitarian shelter is a limited point of convergence across ideological groups. Study 2 shows that support for forced return spans at least two distinct demographic groups: predominantly male, lower-educated, economically active respondents of working age and an older, predominantly retired population with similar gender and educational characteristics. However, supporting forced return does not necessarily extend to detention. For example, highly educated, employed respondents who strongly favour forced over assisted voluntary return are divided on the issue of detention. These findings reveal an impasse: public preferences favour restrictive and coercive responses, while institutional evidence indicates that large-scale return is limited by structural constraints and competing policy objectives.