Findings & Recommendations

Key Findings

• The theoretical contribution of the concept of coerced return framework paper is significant and it has started to be widely cited by other scholarly work.

• WP1 defies distinctions between voluntary and forced return as a dichotomy and points to a continuum starting with a spontaneous voluntary return out of despair with one’s situation to accepting a return after a refused asylum decision and being deported.

• It proposes a spectrum of returns- pushing, incentivising and imposing - based on coercion and taking the sites of return (before and after borders).

• It shows how migration journeys are ‘fragmented, non-linear, including different intermediate stops and multiple returns and new departures.

• GAPs research on return data shows that quantitative and qualitative data on migrants’ return and readmission are challenging to access, often inadequate and patchy at the national and sub-national levels.

• The legal and institutional complexity prevents the collection of coherent data on returns. Even at the European Union (EU) level, there are problems with quantitative return data (e.g. return rates) due to the issues about reliability, structural problems about data collection and sharing of member states, technical issues such as backlogs, different calculation methods, and interpretations.

• Available datasets often cover EU countries; they do not give us an idea of returns happening beyond Europe.

• GAPs Data repository provides a comprehensive overview of available qualitative and quantitative data on national return regimes, now accessible through an advanced web interface at https://data.returnmigration.eu/. The Repository organizes data into five main categories, covering diverse aspects and offering a holistic view of return regimes: country profiles, legislation, infrastructure, international cooperation, and descriptive statistics. These categories, further divided into subcategories, are based on insights from a literature review, existing datasets, and empirical data collection from 14 countries. This report also includes a detailed codebook to help users understand the structure, variables, and methodologies used in data collection and organization. This addition ensures transparency and provides a comprehensive framework for researchers and practitioners to effectively interpret the data. (Specific return related data problems at national levels are elaborated further in WP2, WP3, and WP4 reports).

• Concept notes, mapping the return related terminology in the research in international law, history, anthropology, and economics provides the following insights. 1) ambiguity remains for the terminological definitions of and conceptual approaches to return-related matters in international law 2) Anthropological research  approaches return as a ‘natural’ homecoming experience and then in terms of more critical work on forced return and refugee return.3) Economy research questions how  returnees may contribute to the economic progress of their countries of origin through such as in the reconstruction and development efforts 4) There is still need to incorporate history as a disciplinary perspective into studies on return migration.

Key Findings

1. Return decisions: fragmented administrative governance

• Return decisions are primarily administrative but involve multiple actors across different institutional levels.

• This multi-actor structure frequently produces fragmentation, weakening accountability, standardisation, and rights-based oversight.

• Variability in interpretation and implementation leads to uneven procedural outcomes across contexts.

2. Procedural safeguards & non-returnability

• Access to legal information and representation remains uneven, undermining the effectiveness of remedies.

• Safeguards against refoulement are formally embedded but inconsistently applied.

• Individuals who cannot be returned often remain in prolonged legal limbo, with limited access to stable status or rights.

• Non-returnability remains insufficiently addressed within current policy frameworks.

3. Detention: erosion of the last-resort principle

• Detention is widely used despite its formal designation as a last resort.

• Significant variation exists in duration, oversight, and conditions across contexts.

• Safeguards for children and vulnerable groups remain insufficient.

• Alternatives to detention are underused or inconsistently applied.

4. Data & transparency

• The gap between “orders to leave” and actual returns reflects not only enforcement outcomes but also definitional and reporting inconsistencies.

• Data systems remain fragmented, limiting transparency, comparability, and evidence-based policymaking.

• Despite recent reporting requirements, harmonisation remains incomplete.

Policy Recommendations

Reform priorities converge around five core areas:
legal clarity, rights-based implementation, transparency, reduced reliance on detention, and sustainable solutions.

1. Strengthen legal clarity and compliance

• Clarify definitions and scope within the Return Directive.

• Strengthen monitoring of compliance with fundamental rights.

• Ensure consistent interpretation across Member States.

2. Improve data governance and transparency

• Harmonise definitions, reporting standards, and timelines.

• Reduce inconsistencies and missing data.

• Increase transparency on return practices and outcomes.

3. Re-establish detention as a last resort

• Prioritise alternatives to detention.

• Strengthen safeguards for children and vulnerable groups.

• Ensure independent oversight and adequate conditions.

4. Strengthen voluntary return and reintegration

• Expand voluntary return and reintegration support.

• Integrate these mechanisms into the core of return governance.

5. Address non-returnability

• Apply residence pathways more consistently where return is not feasible.

• Develop sustainable solutions for long-term non-returnable individuals.

The central challenge of EU return governance should not be only whether returns are faster or more numerous, but whether they are legally legitimate, transparent, and humane. When legitimacy and effectiveness are not aligned, several risks emerge:

• normalisation of detention

• expansion of legal limbo

• weakened safeguards

• misleading statistical narratives

A sustainable EU return framework, therefore, requires stronger alignment among enforcement objectives, legal certainty, procedural fairness, and human dignity.

Key Findings:

• The study of Return Migration Infrastructures (RMIs) highlights the non-linear, relational, complex and dynamic character of the everyday reality of return procedures. Returns are implemented in practice by a vast web of actors characterized by multiscalar, asymmetric, and competitive power relations with each other.

• Contrary to the prevailing perception among many actors of a rigid dichotomy between enforced and voluntary return, the different RMIs are in practice situated along a continuum of coercion. Within this continuum, assistance, persuasion and enforcement of return are not distinctly separated but rather interwoven.

• Return Migration Infrastructures are marked by entrenched informal practices—often accompanied by a lack of transparency and accountability. These informalities permeate various aspects of the return processes, including procedural mechanisms, the actors’ practices and the relations among the actors involved. They may manifest in various forms, such as persuasion techniques targeting returnees, unlawful activities such as arbitrary detention, and even illegal pushbacks and pushforwards. Thus, informalities become systematically instrumentalised, while the return processes also generate and reinforce informal practices.

• The protection of human rights and human dignity are often overlooked in return processes. First and foremost, the implementation of return policies by EU countries is predominantly based on the reproduction of irregularisation, the extensive use of detention, and the imposition of marginalization; all incentivizing migrants to return. The simultaneous existence of standardized, uniform, and seemingly ‘one-size-fits-all’ procedures, and of a ‘case-by-case’ and individualized assessment approach often results in differentiated treatment among returnees. Migrants’ ‘collaborative’ behavior tends to be rewarded through the type of return migrants are subjected to; yet another factor impacting the ‘voluntariness’ of returns which is achieved via subtle forms of enforced cooperation.

• While reintegration support has gained visibility and is increasingly incorporated in the stated goals and actual doings of multiple actors, its actual implementation remains inconsistent, limited, or altogether absent. This shortfall is especially evident within the infrastructure of forced returns, but it also extends to assisted returns, revealing a broader neglect of reintegration across the return migration landscape.

• Return Migration Infrastructures, understood as actors, doings, places, and materials that regulate migrants’ ‘exit’, clearly overlap with infrastructures and spaces of ‘entry’, reception and protection, as well as with detention facilities and infrastructures. These overlaps reflect the fluid boundaries between (not so) different phases of migration governance. Moreover, spatial arrangements designed to improve institutional coordination—such as the ‘co-location method’ aimed at minimizing dispersal—further complicate the landscape. The diversity and evolving nature of the sites devoted to the implementation of returns contribute to the formation of complex, shifting, and expanding geographies across all types of RMIs.

• Funding, knowledge (and knowledge production), as well as force, in its physical sense (including detention as part of both assisted and forced returns) seem to be three basic sources of power in RMIs.

• Complex power relations among actors reproduce entrenched inequalities between the Global North and the Global South, between wealthier and poorer countries, and between the core regions of the EU and its peripheries. An EU ‘integration’ of returns transpires, with some, mostly Northern EU countries, being increasingly involved in shaping the agenda and processes of returns as well as the RMIs (in national, EU, extra-territorial, third country places).

Policy Recommendations

• The immediate cessation of pushbacks and pushforwards is vital. Ensure that out-of-law return practices and violations (even in cases of ‘emergency’) by state and supra-state authorities and other institutional or related actors are effectively discouraged and punished.

• Disassociate the implementation of returns from the use of physical force, strictly avoid and punish the use of physical violence as a means of enforcement in any step of the return procedure. Disassociate the implementation of returns from migrant detention. Moreover, replace soft-power techniques of coercion in the daily operation of RMIs with free legal aid and access to reliable information provided by involved actors, including those contesting the operation of the RMIs.

• Do not implement any return procedure in/from spaces within the infrastructures of asylum and reception. Make sure that infrastructures of entry and international protection are not used in practice as grey zones of coercion to return.

• Enhance multi-level international cooperation in monitoring and evaluating the operation of RMIs, especially incorporating voices from the civil society in countries of return and transit countries. Enhance NGOs and CSOs that provide advocacy and legal aid.

• Make sure that actors are held responsible for the data they collect and create and data production is discussed and negotiated among actors with different points of view. Make sure that returnees and their representatives (legal or otherwise) have access to their own data. Increase measurability, transparency and accountability in funding mechanisms.

Key Findings:

• Migration management in the African and Middle Eastern regions has shifted from initial solidarity and/or pragmatism to an increased focus on coercing return. This follows from the ever more protracted nature of displacement as well as the EU’s emphasis on externalization and containment.

• Similar to practices in EU countries, regional host countries predominantly seek to return humanitarian migrants by creating push factors for self-return through irregularization and marginalization.

• Return migration governance in the settings studied is often highly informal and opaque as a consequence of securitization. Overtly coercive forms of return (pushbacks and deportations) in particular are not monitored.

• International organizations, often funded by the EU, play a fundamental role in providing the financial, legal, technological, institutional, and operational support that is necessary for assisted returns. Such capacities may also be used for deportation and pushbacks. There is thus a risk that European support for assisted return in regional host countries is repurposed for coerced return.

• Current forms of return migration governance in the African and Middle Eastern regions often undermine migrant protection and erode the principle of non-refoulement. EU and member states can be complicit in this in the form of chain refoulement.

Return migration governance has become a key agenda item and a key instrument of political leverage in international relations between regional host countries and the  EU.

Policy Recommendations:

1. Acknowledge the potential negative rippling effects of the EU’s focus on externalization and return for regional host countries in terms of intra-regional mobility.

2. Be transparent about the EUs internal conflicts of interest between externalization of migration governance on one hand, and upholding the adherence to the Refugee- and Human Rights conventions.

3. Prioritize protection over containment. Stop funding schemes and capacity building that in practice enable violations of refugee and human rights.

Ensure the systematic independent monitoring of return practices and demand access of independent observers to return centers and border sites, and the systematic inclusion of the capacity and voice of migrant-led organizations in return planning and monitoring.

Key Findings:

• Return cooperation typically follows one of two distinct pathways: it is either built on material incentives (such as visa facilitation or aid), or it is rooted in historical and post-colonial ties.

• Material incentives rarely succeed in isolation; they require credible, pre-existing bilateral relations to create administrative capacity and continuity. While historical ties can replace financial leverage, they frequently reproduce older asymmetries.

• Origin and transit states leverage return negotiations to pursue broader strategic interests. States bordering the EU (e.g., Georgia) accept EU-wide readmission agreements primarily to advance their EU accession prospects.

• Conversely, non-accession states (e.g., Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia) resist EU-wide treaties. They prioritise sovereignty and developmental advantages, preferring flexible, bilateral deals with individual member states.

• The material incentives offered by returning countries (particularly legal migration pathways) are frequently limited, poorly funded, or encumbered by restrictive criteria. This diminishes their diplomatic value and raises questions regarding the sincerity of the cooperation.

• Return diplomacy in non-EU contexts (e.g., Türkiye and Afghanistan) relies heavily on informality, humanitarian diplomacy, and historical or religious networks, allowing both parties to pursue domestic priorities and international legitimacy outside formal legal frameworks.

Policy Recommendations:

• Base migration negotiations on sustained bilateral dialogue and mutual respect for the sovereign claims and political contexts of third countries, strictly avoiding coercive conditionalities.

• Fulfill promises regarding legal migration pathways (including expanded access to labour mobility schemes and study visas) to maintain the EU's credibility and offer dignified alternatives to irregular routes.

• Commit to robust/ multi-level reintegration support for returnees; inadequate reintegration infrastructure directly fuels origin countries' reluctance to formalise agreements.

• Align return cooperation with broader development initiatives that address the root causes of emigration, rather than treating readmission as an isolated governance objective.

Key findings

The following fifindings and recommendations stem from a large online survey on public attitudes towards return, with over 5,900 participants across Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, conducted from August 2024 to January 2025 via social media recruitment.

• The public in all five countries (Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Greece, Poland) support return of irregular migrants if home conditions improve, if they break any rules, or if they rely heavily on welfare.

• Germans emphasizes integration and economic contribution, resisting return of well-integrated or working asylum seekers.

• Right-leaning political orientation strongly predicts support for return; on the other hand, higher education, being of migrant background, levels of personal contact, and trust levels reduce support for return.

• Return is widely seen as easing pressure on social services, and in some cases also as creating job opportunities.

• The levels of dissatisfaction with government performance on asylum and return are widespread.

 Policy Recommendations

• Engage with public perceptions while addressing fairness, integration, and human rights concerns.

• Adapt return strategies to national contexts rather than relying on one model.

• Improve transparency and communication on asylum and return processes.

• Promote opportunities for meaningful citizen–migrant interaction to reduce hostility.

• Recognize and address polarization along political, educational, and income divides.

• Invest in trust-building measures in institutions and communities.

Key Findings

1. Transit states turned destination countries: Turkey, Greece, Morocco, and Poland have transitioned from being transit zones to de facto host countries, reflecting broader geopolitical shifts in global migration governance. This transformation has created hybrid migration regimes - simultaneously oriented toward containment, temporary protection, and return.

2. Differential and securitized return governance: Return migration has become a central policy tool, increasingly framed by securitization and deterrence. Across the four countries, return practices range from “voluntary” programs to pushbacks and deportations, often blurring the boundaries between voluntary and forced return. Nationality-based hierarchies shape policy responses, producing unequal access to protection and reintegration.

3. Migrant agency within constraint: Despite restrictive environments, migrants actively negotiate their mobility within the limits of legality, economy, and security. Their strategies - ranging from invisibility and informal work to onward migration - illustrate resilience and adaptation rather than passivity. Economic resources remain the main enabler of such agency.

4. Persistent barriers to return: Security risks, political instability, and economic precarity in origin countries are the main deterrents to return. Legal insecurity, deportability, and psychosocial costs (such as the stigma of “failed migration”) further reinforce migrants’ reluctance to go back, even when host conditions are harsh.

5. Onward migration as an enduring aspiration: Rather than returning, many migrants aspire to move onward to Western European destinations where they perceive greater legal stability, economic opportunity, and inclusion. Restrictive policies and the high costs of irregular travel, however, trap many in a state of “involuntary immobility.”

6. Converging patterns across diverse contexts: Despite differing political and economic settings, the four countries show convergent outcomes: precarious legal statuses, fragmented mobility trajectories, and limited prospects for secure settlement or return. These shared dynamics challenge rigid, state-centred distinctions between “transit,” “host,” and “origin” countries and call for migrant-centred analytical frameworks.

Policy Recommendations

An effective and ethical return migration policy in Europe and its partner countries must move beyond coercion and deterrence to embrace rights-based, realistic, and sustainable approaches. The following recommendations draw on findings from the GAPs research project in Turkey, Morocco, Greece, and Poland.

1. Uphold the Principle of True Voluntariness

Return should be a genuinely informed, autonomous, and uncoerced decision, not one made under threat or deprivation.

• Separate voluntary and forced returns institutionally and procedurally to avoid blurred lines between consent and coercion.

• Ensure migrants have access to independent legal advice, counselling, and psychosocial support, and adequate time to make decisions.

• Remove indirect forms of pressure such as service withdrawal, detention threats, or punitive deadlines.

• Pilot exploratory return visits - temporary, reversible visits to origin countries - to enable informed decision-making without loss of rights or residence status.
  Embedding voluntariness at every stage is key to procedural fairness, legitimacy, and long-term policy effectiveness.

2. Enhance Counselling, Information, and Support Mechanisms

Comprehensive, multilingual, and context-sensitive return and reintegration counselling should accompany all return initiatives.

• Information must be accessible, culturally appropriate, and tailored to individual situations.

• Counselling should address stigma and psychosocial burdens, particularly where return is perceived as a failure.

• Integrate post-return follow-up mechanisms to ensure reintegration support and reduce cycles of re-migration.

3. Address the Predicament of Migrants in Legal and Mobility Limbo

Many migrants are trapped between unsafe return and blocked onward mobility. To respond effectively:

• Ensure that mutual recognition of return decisions across EU Member States does not undermine procedural justice or individual assessment.

• Provide sectoral support (training, legal pathways, work permits, and access to services) to those at risk of return but unable to safely repatriate.

• Replace deterrence-oriented approaches with mobility governance that prioritizes protection, solidarity, and fairness.

• All measures must comply with non-refoulement obligations and ensure individual case review before implementation.

4. Leverage Migrant and Diaspora Networks

Diaspora and transnational networks are critical in facilitating sustainable and informed returns.

• Actively involve migrant and diaspora organizations in the design, implementation, and monitoring of return and reintegration programs.

• Recognize these networks as partners and sources of social capital, not merely beneficiaries or intermediaries.

• Support migrant-led initiatives that provide peer guidance and community-based reintegration.

5. Reconsider the Use of Return Hubs

The proposed return hubs raise serious ethical and operational concerns.

• Without clear rights-based safeguards, these hubs risk replicating coercive detention-like environments and exacerbating migrant precarity.

• For many migrants, transfer to a third-country hub constitutes an additional displacement, reinforcing insecurity and trauma.

• Unless they guarantee voluntary participation, transparent procedures, and legal oversight, such hubs should not be implemented.

• Any model inspired by the “hotspot” approach must be re-evaluated to avoid legal limbo, procedural delays, and rights violations.

6. Address the Root Causes of Migration Before Promoting Return

True voluntariness cannot exist when the drivers of displacement persist.

• EU migration partnerships should integrate development, trade, and diplomatic policies to address structural conditions - conflict, repression, poverty, and lack of opportunity - in origin countries.

• Returns should be embedded in comprehensive cooperation frameworks that aim to stabilize and support local livelihoods, not only enforce readmission.

• Sustainable return depends on tackling the economic, social, and political roots of forced migration, ensuring that those who wish to return can do so in safety and dignity.

7. Move Toward a Rights-Based and Realistic Model of Return Governance

Across all levels - EU, national, and local - return governance must:

• Center migrant dignity, rights, and agency over enforcement rationalities.

• Ensure independent monitoring of all return and detention sites, with access granted to humanitarian and legal observers.

• Develop evidence-based policy through ongoing qualitative research that reflects migrants’ lived realities and aspirations.

Only by aligning return policies with human rights principles and social realities can the EU and its partners achieve ethical and effective migration management.

GAPs conducted a survey study about Returnees Experiences and Reintegration Challenges four countries of origin (Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, and Nigeria), and published four country survey reports and an integrated report.

Key findings

• Across all four countries, most survey respondents reported having been forcibly returned and having experienced detention prior to departure. This challenges the dominant framing of "assisted voluntary return" as the typical pathway and raises serious questions about rights compliance in practice.

• Psychological wellbeing is both a resource for and an outcome of reintegration — and it is under pressure. Using contextualised Hope, Resilience, and Depression scales, the study found that psychological wellbeing is not a stable trait but a dynamic condition shaped by post-return circumstances. Hope erodes when returnees face unemployment, documentation gaps, and limited services; depression indicators rise and re-migration aspirations intensify. Psychological support and material reintegration conditions cannot be treated as separate policy domains — each undermines the other when addressed in isolation.

• Gender shapes reintegration trajectories in systematically overlooked ways. Women face restricted employment access, heightened social stigma, exclusion from pre-return decision-making, and care burdens that constrain labour market re-entry. Men face distinct pressures tied to provider role expectations and status loss. Gender-neutral reintegration indicators capture neither, and few programmes in the four countries offered gender-sensitive support pathways.

• Reintegration support is structurally insufficient and unevenly distributed. Support programmes are typically short-term, project-based, and disconnected from national development strategies. Access is shaped by geography, gender, nationality, and return type — with urban returnees and those who returned through assisted channels consistently better served than others.

• Post-return outcomes reflect the interaction between governance conditions and individual psychological resources. Where institutional capacity is weak, eligibility criteria opaque, and service delivery fragmented, even returnees with strong hope and resilience scores struggle to sustain progress. Programmes targeting only psychological recovery, or only material support, are insufficient on their own.

• Re-migration aspirations are widespread where reintegration is not viable. A significant share of respondents across all four countries expressed the desire to migrate again — not as evidence of individual failure, but as a rational response to structural conditions that make sustainable reintegration impossible. High re-migration intent is a governance indicator in its own right: a signal that return has been imposed rather than enabled.

Policy Recommendations

• Tailor programmes to country- and demographic-specific needs. Returnee profiles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, and Tunisia differ substantially by age, gender, marital status, and return type. Standardised templates are insufficient; eligibility criteria, service design, and delivery must reflect these differences.

• Integrate psychological and material support. Hope and resilience are shaped by lived conditions, not fixed in advance. Reintegration programmes must combine psychosocial support with concrete pathways to employment, legal documentation, housing, and services — addressing both dimensions simultaneously.

• Make gender-sensitive reintegration a baseline standard, not an add-on. All programmes should incorporate gender-sensitive design, assessment, and monitoring — ensuring women have independent access to financial and legal assistance, and that gender-differentiated stigma and care burdens are explicitly addressed.

• Extend the duration and coverage of reintegration support. Short-term interventions that close after six to twelve months are insufficient. Support must be embedded in national social protection frameworks, with long-term follow-up and clear handover protocols from international implementers to national institutions.

• Use re-migration intent as a governance performance indicator. Monitoring systems should track re-migration aspirations alongside employment, housing, and wellbeing outcomes. High re-migration intent signals failed reintegration conditions — not individual shortcomings.

• Invest in independent, longitudinal monitoring. Reintegration data remain sparse and are often controlled by the programmes being evaluated. Independent, longitudinal tracking of outcomes — stratified by gender, age, return type, and location — is essential for accountability and evidence-based governance.

WP9 drew from evidence collected across all WPs (1–8) and produced seven substantive outputs: four concept notes (on 1. human rights trade-offs of current return policies; 2. Alternatives to returns; 3. Cost of returns in Germany; 4. Financialisation of return and readmission policies in the EU; 5. Gender and return), 6. an inventory of promising return practices across 12 countries, and 7. an indicator proposal for evaluating return governance effectiveness.

Furthermore, GAPs coordinated the synergy workshop with the other Horizon projects (FAiR and MORE), which included a panel discussion on “Exploring Alternative Pathways to Returns” at the European Parliament (19 November 2025) and a synergy workshop on the same day at CEPS, Brussels. These two events combined with a World Café on Return and Readmission in the EC-event “Ten Years of EU Migration Research and Innovation” (18 November 2025).

Key findings

• The cost of coerced returns is high and resource-intensive, yet a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis remains impossible at the EU member-state level due to data fragmentation and dispersed reporting standards. The cost analysis found that financial and administrative costs of deportations in Germany are high, complex, and systematically under-documented, due to federal structures, strict data protection rules, and dispersed budgetary practices. The report distinguishes between direct costs (deportation operations, detention, transportation, escorts) and indirect costs (loss of prior integration investments, labour market impacts, and wider social effects).

• The Promising Return Practices inventory defines promising practices as those that actively promote migrants' rights, dignity, and agency while also contributing to effective and sustainable return governance. Eight recurring themes characterised these practices, including creating pathways out of precarious status, prioritising alternatives to detention, embedding multi-actor coordination, and delivering holistic and sustained reintegration support. The inventory attracted direct policy interest: Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) invited the research team to present three featured practices from the report.

• The GAPs Indicator Proposal structures return governance assessment across three interconnected stages — policies on paper, policy implementation, and outcomes — drawing on the policy effectiveness framework by Czaika and de Haas (2013). Crucially, it integrates both efficiency metrics and normative dimensions, including human rights protection, procedural fairness, and reintegration sustainability. This moves beyond simple return-rate statistics toward a more comprehensive and accountable governance framework.

• Alternatives to return are under-governed and under-theorised. Concept notes on financial, political, and human rights trade-offs of current return policies show that alternatives to return — including regularisation, temporary protection, and tolerated stay — are not marginal edge cases. They affect large numbers of people across EU member states and carry significant legal, financial, and human rights implications that are currently managed inconsistently and without minimum standards.

• Gender remains a blind spot in return governance research and practice. Research on gender and coerced returns remains fragmented, with pronounced gaps in intersectional, longitudinal, and comparative analyses. A targeted review of 49 studies published since 2010 found pronounced gaps in intersectional, longitudinal, and comparative analyses of gender and coerced returns. Gender considerations are inconsistently integrated into policy design and almost entirely absent from governance indicator frameworks.

Policy recommendations

• Establish standardised, transparent cost-reporting mechanisms for return operations at EU and national level. Without consistent accounting of both direct and indirect costs — including the costs of failed reintegration — informed policy assessment is impossible and public accountability is absent.

• Promising Return Practices inventory is designed to serve as a policy benchmarking tool. The eight identified practice themes provide a replicable analytical framework that national authorities and programme designers can use to assess and improve existing return and reintegration programmes.

• The GAPs Indicator Proposal is designed as a multi-level return governance monitoring framework, applicable at EU, national, and programme levels. Measuring return governance only through removal rates misrepresents performance. The three-stage indicator framework — covering policy design, implementation, and outcomes — provides a more accurate, rights-consistent, and policy-relevant basis for evaluation.

• Legislate minimum standards for alternatives to return across EU member states. Alternatives to return must be governed by clear legal standards, consistent eligibility criteria, and judicial oversight — not left to discretionary administrative practice that varies arbitrarily between and within member states.

• Mainstream gender as a structural analytical lens, not an afterthought. Gender-sensitive design, monitoring, and evaluation must be built into all return governance instruments — from readmission negotiations to reintegration programme design — with specific attention to intersectional vulnerabilities.

For the full evidence base underpinning these findings and recommendations, readers are directed to three key project outputs: the GAPs Final EU Policy Brief, which synthesises recommendations across all research strands; the Promising Return Practices inventory, which documents evidence-based approaches from 12 countries; and the GAPs Indicator Proposal, which provides a comprehensive framework for measuring return governance quality.