Authors: Jiancheng Gu & Mathias Czaika – University for Continuing Education Krems
The text tackles a puzzle that keeps resurfacing in EU migration debates. Even with heavy political pressure, only about a fifth of return orders are actually enforced, and the gaps between countries can be huge. Legal rules don’t fully explain this, so the authors blend two ways of thinking about cooperation: one that treats states as strategic actors responding to incentives, and another that highlights socialization, norms and alignment.
They analyse an unusually large dataset, tracking enforced returns from 28 EU countries to non-EU states over more than a decade, plus a second dataset that separates forced from voluntary or incentivized returns. What stands out is that practical, long-term ties matter far more than the formal tools policymakers tend to emphasise. Embassy presence, government capacity, colonial connections and visa waivers consistently predict higher return rates. Meanwhile, readmission agreements and leverage through aid or trade barely move the needle. Different factors also matter depending on the return modality, suggesting a more textured—and less state-centric—picture of what drives cooperation.