Together with Zoe Ogahara and Iman Rajabzadeh, this article has been published in International Migration and will hopefully be part of a special issue on Reintegration that I have been co-editing with Ine Lietaert. The article is open access and available here. Many thanks to the ILO Ethiopia for sharing with us this great dataset and to Aida Awel and Kidist Getachew for valuable comments on the paper. The situation is quickly changing in Ethiopia, but deportations and return are likely to … [Read more...]
Migration Studies Delegation Sweden: 10 Observations on Reintegration
In February, I had the pleasure to deliver a keynote speech at the Migration Studies Delegation (DELMI) workshop on Return and Reintegration in Stockholm. As I struggled to organize my presentation, my esteemed colleague Maarten Vink gave a great talk at our institute on 10 observations on citizenship naturalization. This approach inspired my presentation on 10 observations on reintegration. My 10 Observations on Reintegration can be briefly summarized as: 1. Multiple approaches to … [Read more...]
Boris Johnson Wants ‘Safe, Dignified Return’ for Rohingya – Why it’s Way too Early to Mention ‘Return’
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...]