GAPs Team Members Publish Article on Coerced Returns in JEMS
We are excited to announce the publication of a significant new article by GAPs team members, Zeynep Sahin-Mencutek and Anna Triandafyllidou, in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, as a part of the special issue on Special issue: Governing Transit and Irregular Migration: Beyond Formal Policies and Informal Practices edited by Maria Koinova.
The article, titled "Coerced Return: Formal Policies, Informal Practices, and Migrants’ Navigation," provides an in-depth exploration of how formal policies and informal practices intersect to coerce the return of migrants without legal status, refused asylum seekers, and those unlikely to receive asylum.
This study raises critical questions: how do these formal and informal mechanisms coerce returns, and how do migrants navigate these pressures? The authors develop a nuanced typology of involuntary returns, categorizing them into pushing, imposing, and incentivizing policies and practices. This typology reveals the complex dynamics between forced and voluntary returns, showing that coercive practices are embedded to varying degrees across different situations.
The article further investigates how migrants exercise agency, either by resisting or complying with return procedures, thereby contributing significantly to the existing scholarship on return migration. The empirical foundation of the paper includes observations and 97 interviews with returnees from EU countries and Turkey to Albania, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, conducted between 2018 and 2023.
You can read the full article here.
Full citation:
Sahin-Mencutek, Z., & Triandafyllidou, A. (2024). Coerced return: formal policies, informal practices and migrants’ navigation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–18.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2371209
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2371209
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