by Jovana Ostojic – No Way Home? An event organised by Erasmus University Rotterdam on European asylum and return policies on Friday, March 13th, 2026 in Rotterdam.
Words shape how we see problems. And in migration policy, one phrase has been causing trouble for a long time: voluntary return.
You will find it in government reports, on official websites, in EU policy documents. It sounds reasonable — even humane. People choosing to go home. No force involved.
The problem is that in most cases, it simply is not true.
What actually happens
Claudia van der Horst works at the Dutch Repatriation and Departure Service — the government body responsible for managing the return of people who have been told to leave the Netherlands. She has nearly 25 years of experience in the field. And she has been trying, from inside the institution, to change this language.
“When someone is being told to leave the Netherlands and they comply — that is not really voluntary. I’m on a mission to get this out of our communications. I prefer the term assisted return or facilitated return.” — Claudia van der Horst, Dutch Repatriation and Departure Service
Her point is straightforward. When a person has received a legal order to leave — and the alternative is detention or forced removal — there is no real choice. They are not leaving because they want to. They are leaving because the law says they must. Calling that voluntary is not just inaccurate. It is misleading.
Van der Horst’s preferred words — assisted return or facilitated return — are more honest. They say what is really happening: the state is helping to organise the departure, within a legal framework that the person did not choose.
Why this is not just a question of words
Language shapes policy. When return is described as voluntary, it creates the impression that people in these situations are exercising a free choice. That impression affects how caseworkers are trained, how the public understands what the repatriation service does, and how politicians talk about what counts as a successful return.
It also makes it harder to think clearly about what genuine choice actually looks like — and when it is missing.
Agency in return exists on a scale. At one end, there are people who independently decide to go back to their country of origin — perhaps because their circumstances at home have changed, or because family pulls them back, or because they have concluded that their future lies elsewhere. Organisations like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) work with some of these people. That is voluntary in a real sense.
At the other end of the scale are people who have received a return order, who may face detention if they do not comply, and who are being processed through a government caseload. Calling that voluntary does not describe the reality. It describes a wish.
The link to trust
There is a practical problem too. Research from the FAiR project — based on surveys with more than 1,200 people living in Dutch asylum reception centres — shows that how people experience the asylum and return process matters for how they respond to it. When people feel the process is honest and fair, they are more likely to cooperate. When the language used to describe their situation does not match their experience of it, trust breaks down.
A person who has been told they must leave, and who then reads that their departure was ‘voluntary’, does not feel seen accurately. That disconnect is not neutral. It has consequences for the relationship between the person and the institution — and for the effectiveness of the whole system.
A small change that is harder than it sounds
Van der Horst acknowledges that changing long-established language is not easy.
“When you have been saying something for 20 years, it is quite difficult to erase.” — Claudia van der Horst, Dutch Repatriation and Departure Service
The Dutch Repatriation and Departure Service handled more than 7,000 assisted returns last year. The word ‘voluntary’ appears regularly in official communications about this work. Changing it requires updating procedures, training, websites, and political messaging — in an environment where migration is one of the most contested topics in public life.
But the difficulty of doing something does not mean it is not worth doing. If migration policy is going to work — if it is going to command the trust of the people it affects and the public it represents — it needs to be built on honest language. That starts with saying clearly what return actually is.
Assisted return. Facilitated return. Accurate words for a real process. That is where the conversation should begin.