This report has provided an overview of the developments in EU Return Policy since its inception in the early 2000s until present-day operation under the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. After introducing deportation as a complicated and self-constrained power, the report conceptualized EU return policy as linked to the international management of mobile populations in two ways.
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On the one hand, return policy should be understood as a highly selective enforcement mechanism that is aimed to ensure that bodies are relocated to the territories they legally belong, typically defined in terms of nationality (‘who is where’). On the other hand, return policy also is a reclassification mechanism by defining which immigrants do not or no longer deserve to be a member of the society, such as when residence permit holders lose their right to stay because of having committed certain crimes’ (‘who belongs where’). In both senses – as an enforcement mechanism and reclassification mechanism – return policy is also a normative vehicle that substantiates membership ideals.
Authors: Laura Cleton, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) & Arjen Leerkes, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR)