Enhancing the Study of Return Migration Diplomacy through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)
QCA as Set-Theoretic Method: Presence and Absence of Conditions. Source: Michael Barker
by: Samet Apaydın, University of Glasgow | Zeynep Sahin-Mencütek, BICC | Gerasimos Tsourapas, University of Glasgow
With the study of migration diplomacy gaining increased scholarly and policymaking attention in recent years, the GAPs project aims to further advance the field – particularly through innovative methodological tools. This short piece highlights one such advancement: the integration of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) into research on return policymaking, and its intersection with migration diplomacy strategies of sending and host states.
The GAPs project explores the discrepancies between expected and actual outcomes of return policies, moving away from one-sided understandings of “return policy making,” It focuses on understanding the barriers and enablers of international cooperation on return migration. International cooperation is seen as a potential solution to address complex migration governance challenges, including the return of unauthorized migrants and refugees. Countries use diplomatic channels to create agreements and arrangements, often referred to as ‘partnerships’ but known as ‘migration deals’, to expedite coerced returns to transit, origin, or other countries accepting returns.
This complex phenomenon has been typically examined in the context of migration diplomacy, where states strategical use migration flows as a means to achieve broader aims or employ diplomatic methods to reach migration-related goals. While extensive work has focused on how migration diplomacy affects forcibly-displaced populations, research on return migration diplomacy remains scant. This contrasts with multiple recent examples of such processes – such as the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding (2023), the Italy Albania deal (2023), and the UK-Rwanda deal. These agreements aim to prevent people from reaching Europe and increase the return of unauthorized migrants, including those of other nationalities. Despite the growing number of formal and informal return migration diplomacy arrangements, there is little understanding of the conditions that lead to diplomatic talks about return/readmission, the finalization of agreements, or the resumption of diplomatic talks.
The GAPs project aims to combine migration diplomacy with set-theoretic methods, particularly the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) approach, which has recently gained popularity in international studies.
QCA’s added value lies in its ability to highlight complex social phenomena such as return agreements and the policies surrounding them. These arrangements are the result of international bargaining and cooperation, as prior studies on migration diplomacy highlight, but what conditions or set of conditions make them successful?
Our starting point is that QCA differs from traditional methods in three main ways: equifinality, conjunctural causality, and asymmetry. First, in terms of equifinality, set-theoretic methods are not interested in finding a single causal relationship acknowledging that social sciences inherently have multiple paths to the same outcome. Instead, QCA identifies sets of conditions that might lead to the same outcome regardless of how different they are. Multiple case studies under the GAPs project have already highlighted the different barriers and enablers for the current return policies of a given country. Additionally, QCA focuses on set-theoretic relationships as causal conjunctures across multiple country dyads. In other words, QCA highlights the combined role of conditions, instead of understanding the impact of a single variable.
Finally, QCA allows asymmetry precisely because of equifinality and conjunctural causality. In the regression-like methods, the occurrence and non-occurrence of an outcome can be explained by a variable of interest. On the other hand, if a condition is, for instance, sufficient for an outcome, QCA does not conclude that the absence of that condition strictly causes the non-occurrence of the same outcome. For instance, while high incentives and low political and economic costs of return might be sufficient to initiate talks for readmission agreements, QCA does not assert that low incentives and high costs of return are strictly associated with the non-existence of readmission agreements, as the non-existence of an outcome requires another analysis.
By utilizing these concepts, we believe that QCA provides a valuable research avenue for understanding return regimes. We expect that QCA’s ability to discover complex configurational settings will bring new insights into research on readmission and return policies, which are not typically the focus of large-N studies on in-depth case studies. Additionally, we anticipate providing promising future avenues of research on migration diplomacy by identifying how interstate cooperation on return relies on specific configurations of necessary and/or sufficient conditions. By bringing these two contributions together, we aim to enrich the literature on readmission and migration diplomacy by exploring unexplored set-relations and highlighting alternative methods like QCA that bridge quantitative and qualitative research.
Contact:
Samet Apaydın | University of Glasgow, UK | samet.apaydin@glasgow.ac.uk