1. Fostering the Social and
Professional Reintegration of
Return Labour Migrants
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

2. Dealing with return and reintegration :
Current policies and priorities
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

3. “Return” policies and bilateral
cooperation for readmission
What is a return policy?
Should cover all stages of the return process (in receiving
and sending countries);
The durability of a return policy depends on the extent to
which :
• The country context is enabling for returnees to invest their
financial and human capital at home;
• Inclusion of measures to support the socio professional
reintegration, regardless of the migrant;
• It mutually serves the interests of receiving and sending
countries;
• Effective cooperation between sending and receiving
countries.
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

4. Return and reintegration is part and parcel of the EU’s approach to
migration;
“Effective return has to be ensured”→ incentives.
Are there mechanisms to sustain the reintegration of migrants in their
countries of origin, whether return is temporary or permanent?
• April 2002: Green Paper on a Community Return Policy on Illegal
Residents…[the understanding of “return” is framed];
• November 2002: Return Action Programme;
• September 2005: Communication on migration and development: “the
return of migrants to their country of origin may have a significant
positive impact in development terms”;
• Late 2005: Global Approach to Migration (GAM): strengthened dialogue
on return management and illegal migration.
• Late 2006: GAM Mobility packages
• May 2007: Circular migration schemes + mobility partnerships (selective
and conditionally linked with security-driven safeguards);
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

5. • The EU Return Fund (as of 2008): “The Fund would in principle cover the
return of both [illegally staying] immigrants and asylum-seekers who
have received a negative decision”.
• Directive on common standards for returning illegally staying third
country nationals.
• March 2011: “Return arrangements” and readmission further promoted
in the framework of the New European Neighbourhood Policy + Mobility
partnerhips + “Partnership for democracy and shared prosperity”.
• May 2011: Mediterranean dialogue on migration, mobility and security:
called for “assistance for the voluntary return of third country nationals
apprehended as irregular migrants on the territory of the partner State” +
“voluntary return arrangements”.
• June 2011: The conditional link between mobility partnerships and
effective cooperation on readmission and security is reasserted +
cooperation is differentiated.
• November 2011: Global Approach to Migration and Mobility:
“Readmission and return should be firmly embedded in the broader
Global Approach” + integrated border management.
• May 2012: The EU announced the opening of „dialogues‟ with Tunisia and
Morocco on mobility partnerships.
• October 2012: Malta declaration...
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

6. Current priorities and implications
A credible offer?
• The search for securitised temporariness + security-driven conditionality
• Resilient bilateralism + subtle alignment prioritizing security concerns over
migrants‟ rights and over development concerns
• Recurrent dialogues…shaped by a common lexicon and predominant schemes
of understanding + search for a consensus which remain biased by receiving-
country concerns
• Temporariness impacts on :
 the ability to benefit from economic and social rights and to be protected from
vulnerability
 The realisation of migrants‟ labour and human rights
 Family reunion rights
 Migrant workers‟ freedom of association
 Migrant workers‟ working conditions
 employers‟ (low) propensity to invest in the training of temporary workers (see
EMN study).
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

7. It is the drive for temporariness, not
the repeated to and fro movements of
migrants, that has configured the
rationale for circular migration
programmes. If it were the opposite,
the issues of return and reintegration
would have been dealt with more
substantially by policy-makers in
countries of destination and of origin.
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

8. Some data
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

9. The Cobweb of Agreements Linked to Readmission
Concluded Among the EU Member States and with Third
Countries, (1970s)
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

10. The Cobweb of Agreements Linked to Readmission
Concluded Among the EU Member States and with Third
Countries, (1980s)
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

11. The Cobweb of Agreements Linked to Readmission
Concluded Among the EU Member States and with Third
Countries, (1990s)
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection

12. The Cobweb of Agreements Linked to Readmission
Concluded Among the EU Member States and with Third
Countries, May 2010
Migration in ACP Countries :
Promoting Development and Enhancing Protection