Discover GAPS Project

The return policies implemented by the EU do not provide effective links between return and asylum policies and they lack policy harmonization among member states. Moreover, these policies overlook the perspectives, experiences, and concerns of migrants, leading to discrepancies between the priorities of return policies and the interests of all parties involved in migration processes.

GAPs aims to decentre the dominant, one-sided understanding of ‘return policymaking’ by bringing multiple perspectives into play and studying the complex interaction of diverse actors (including migrants themselves) involved in the return processes; scrutinizing gaps and shortcomings in the governance of returns, with both its internal and external dimensions; and devoting specific attention to the study of practices.

A short video gives a first insight into GAPs - the multidisciplinary Horizon Europe project that launched in March 2023 and runs until 2026.

GAPs is a comprehensive study on the drivers of return policies and barriers/enablers in international cooperation on returns. The project examines the disconnects between expectations of return policies and their actual outcomes by de-centering the dominant, one-sided understanding of “return policymaking.”

The project combines a decentering approach with three innovative concepts to analyze governance fissures, understand how relations among EU MSs and third countries hinder cooperation on returns, and use a socio-spatial and temporal lens to understand migrant agency. The project involves multi-disciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative comparative research in 11 countries, with wide-ranging impacts such as the creation of an interactive data repository on returns, a return cooperation index, policy briefs and workshops, stakeholder expert panels, a digital storytelling and video series, a MOOC, and open access policy and scholarly publications. The findings will be disseminated through policy briefs, thematic reports, exchange workshops, dissemination tools, an anthology book of life stories, and a final conference targeting policymakers and key stakeholders.

Aims of the project
Areas of focus
Methodology

GAPs Specific Objectives

Objective 1

To examine drivers of return governance by focusing on (i) existing policy, legal, and operational infrastructures as well as (ii) the gaps between policies and practices to advance return governance indicators.

Objective 2

To analyse enablers and barriers of international cooperation by (i) assessing various cooperation attempts of EU and its MSs targeting origin and third countries (ii) studying specific dynamics and drivers of South-South returns in connection with EU policies.

Objective 3

To examine the agency of migrants and the autonomy of migration processes that influence and are influenced by governance and cooperation.

Objective 4

To co-create and suggest alternative pathways and models for existing return policies, practices, and cooperation with stakeholder expert panels in 12 countries that would contribute interplay between policy and science.

Return migration is a vital component of national and EU-level asylum governance as well as international governance attempts both in the Global North and Global South. Yet, despite its policy salience, there is a lack of an agreed definition of what a ‘return’ entails, with a wide variety of terms in use, such as repatriation, deportation, expulsion, readmission, removal, assisted voluntary returns, and pushbacks, among others. Adding specificity, nuance and empirical depth to these concepts is one of the major goals of GAPs. In line with Horizon Europe’s Strategic Plan, GAPs’ overarching ambition is to contribute to the development of resilient and sustainable governance and cooperation models for global migration and returns. Migration and returns require a comprehensive approach that should promote partnerships between a variety of stakeholders to ensure that migration occurs in an orderly and dignified manner.

The dialogues emerging from GAPs will contribute to (a) the development of new legal frameworks and policies, new synergies and strategies for facilitating safe and dignified return and readmission, as well as sustainable reintegration as stated in Global Compacts; (b) the development of effective mechanisms for monitoring return operations both at the EU level and across MSs as well as in transit and origin countries; (c) the co-creation of a proposal for return governance indicators that will be linked to the International Organization of Migration’s (IOM) existing migration governance indicators; and, (d) last but not least, to the convergence and rapprochement between Global North and Global South that will result in effective and ethical cooperation models. By building a large consortium of universities, research institutions, and civil society organisations from European countries, Africa, the wider Middle East, and North America, GAPs will contribute to broadening participation beyond Europe and as part of a global research agenda.

Areas of Focus

The project’s geographic focus stems from a desire to adopt a holistic, decentring, and relational perspective that highlights the complexities, interdependencies, and nuances of migrants’ return. We focus on return gaps in three return systems between EU countries and transit or origin countries spanning over the broader Middle East (including Afghanistan), Africa (north and western), and eastern Europe.

GAPs’ Consortium is composed of renowned universities and institutes from a wide range of origin, transit, and destination countries in Europe, North America, the (wider) Middle East region, and Africa. Our partners offer a multidisciplinary and multidimensional approach necessary for a holistic understanding of return issues. The research benefits from the participation of a range of world-class universities, with disciplinary backgrounds spanning political science, sociology, law, social and cultural anthropology, psychology, economics, geography, and journalism.

Click image to access interactive GAPs partners map

Country Profiles

Methodology

GAPs grounds itself in an interdisciplinary perspective and a mixed-method approach to provide scientific evidence into debates on return governance and cooperation. The project treats “gaps” as a heuristic that enables us to zoom in on three dimensions: 1) governance; 2) international cooperation; and 3) migrants’ agency. Each of these dimensions orders our research design and is associated with three novel conceptual lenses that contribute to policy and scholarly debates on returns. The lenses briefly are: 1) return infrastructures to examine governance; 2) return migration diplomacy to explore international cooperation; and 3) migration trajectories to focus on migrants’ agency and the autonomy of migration processes.

We use fieldwork, interviews, qualitative discourse analysis, surveys, and an online experiment, among other methods. For example, we will conduct interviews with prospective returnees, including irregular transit migrants, settled migrants, those enrolled in voluntary return programs, those experiencing procedures of forced return, those pushed back, and those who have returned and can inform about their prior aspirations. We will conduct a survey to explore public attitudes on return and readmission policies and practices with 1000 respondents in each selected country. We also create Stakeholder Expert Panels to guide our research and provide feedback on our results.

GAPs Project | Grant agreement ID: 101094341 | Start date 01 March 2023 End date 28 February 2026 | Funded under Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Project summary pdf

Press release pdf