research in progress…
GAPS’ Working Paper Series ‘Decentring the Study of Migrant Returns and Readmission Policies in Europe and Beyond’ features recent research output by the team members of 17 partner institutions involved in the Horizon Europe GAPS project, and is open to all researchers working on similar topics.
We welcome proposals for Working Papers from researchers. Please contact: soner.barthoma@crs.uu.se
For further paper submission rules and author guidelines, more information will be available here.
This concept note, prepared as part of WP9 of the GAPs project, aims to identify and categorise “good” and “promising” practices regarding coerced returns. Synthesising findings from GAPs Work Packages 2-9, it proposes both an analytical framework and a standardised structure to support a comparative and multi-dimensional mapping of returnrelated practices across selected countries.
Read MoreThis concept note examines how the European Union’s evolving financial architecture has turned funding into a central tool for governing return and readmission beyond its borders. Tracing four phases from the 1990s to the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, it shows how external migration funding grew from fragmented development aid into a consolidated…
Read MoreReturn has become a central pillar of contemporary migration governance in Europe, yet actual removal rates remain low, producing a persistent gap between the large numbers of non‑EU citizens ordered to leave and the much smaller share who are effectively returned. Against this backdrop, this concept note…
Read MoreThe report examines how the financial and administrative costs of coerced returns in Germany are high, complex, and systematically under-documented. It distinguishes between direct costs (such as implementation of return and reintegration programmes, deportation operations, detention, transportation, and escorts) and indirect costs (including the loss of prior integration investments, labour market impacts, and wider social effects), showing that available data do not allow for a genuine cost‑benefit analysis.
Read MoreThis report examines how European return policies towards Iraqi migrants generate trade‑offs between state interests in migration control and the protection of fundamental human rights within return programmes. It explores return cases from Sweden and Germany, focusing on Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) schemes and how these are incorporated within…
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