Since 25 August 2017, 688,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh in one of the worlds worst humanitarian crisis of 2017. The Rohingya are a minority group that have long been persecuted in Myanmar, with new waves of violence and burning of villages beginning in August 2017 as an ethnic cleansing. The UK has pledged 59 million pounds to the crisis and Boris Johnson has visited both Bangladesh and Myanmar this week to promote ‘safe, dignified return’ for the Rohingya. Late last … [Read more...]
Panel Debate on Voluntary Return Policy as a Tool for Migration Management
On 21 November I had the honour to participate in a panel debate organized by the College of Europe and funded by the Swiss Mission to the EU on Voluntary Return Policy. The debate was active in discussing several different elements of return. My intervention was framed around three central recommendations: Dearth of research and evidence in this field, particularly in understanding post-return conditions. Post-return monitoring is severely lacking and should become an integrated … [Read more...]
Just Released: Reintegration Strategies
I am happy to announce that my book 'Reintegration Strategies' has just been published by Springer. This book critically examines and theorizes the process of how return migrants reintegrate into their countries of origin. The result is a new methodology for understanding the experiences of return migrants, or their 'reintegration strategies'. This approach demonstrates that reintegration strategies differ by type of return migrant, leading to variations in how far they are able to contribute to … [Read more...]
Taking stock of Assisted Voluntary Return from Europe: decision making, reintegration and sustainable return- time for a paradigm shift
Here is a new working paper that provides an overview of Assisted Voluntary Return from Europe. Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) is a central component of European Union (EU) member states migration management policies and has grown in popularity over the past two decades. At present, all EU member states have active AVR programmes, however, despite the growing prevalence of these programmes there has been a dearth of research and evaluation on AVR. In addition, a common goal of these AVR … [Read more...]
Presentation at IOM Launch Event in Athens on Understanding Safe and Sustainable Return
On 18th October I had the pleasure to return to Athens to present in a launch event of IOMs Global Migration and Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) on a paper commissioned on 'Understanding Safe and Sustainable Return'. In the presentation I discussed the current context of return from Europe, how to define and measure sustainable return, research gaps and recommendations for further research. The report is in progress and will be posted soon. … [Read more...]