Return Migration Infrastructures in Poland and Georgia - WP3 Country Dossier
Executive Summary:
This Poland-Georgia country dossier is part of Work Package 3 (WP3) of the GAPs project. This work package aims to study how return migration governance is put into practice through the concept of ‘Return Migration Infrastructures’. In this report we present three types of returns—assisted voluntary returns, forced removals, and pushbacks. However, we explore mostly forced removals, which is a broad category of returns being in the middle of the continuum of coercion between assisted voluntary returns and pushbacks. Pushbacks are an object of interest of an emerging body of scholarship on the crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. At the same time, the ‘standard’ return procedures remain under-researched, and this report aims to address this gap. This report mainly focuses on Poland, an EU member state that is considered a country sending foreign returnees, mostly to their countries of origin outside the EU. An important characteristic of Poland is that its eastern border is part of the EU’s (and Schengen area’s) external border. Poland borders three non-EU countries: Russia (Kaliningrad region), Belarus, and Ukraine. The land border with Ukraine is the longest of these. Another country we take into account in selected aspects is Georgia, a non-EU country, one of the countries targeted by the EU Eastern Partnership initiative, and a country receiving a significant number of its nationals returned from the EU. We pay particular attention to the returns of Georgian citizens from Poland (with various levels of coercion), as they represent one of the largest groups of returned foreigners under Poland’s return practices. In the case of Georgia, we treated its RMI as the extension of Poland’s RMI, with a strong focus on how Georgian nationals are received in their home country and what they are offered after return, especially within the reintegration scheme.
Three types of returns presented in this report—assisted voluntary returns, forced removals, and pushbacks—should not be seen as strictly separate forms of border practices targeting migrants in Poland. Instead, they occupy different points on a continuum of coercion regarding the construction of return. A given person, e.g., one entering Poland irregularly from Belarus with the will to apply for international protection, may be either pushed back or issued a removal order. If the application was lodged but ended with negative decision, the person may leave voluntarily or forcibly. Thus, each form can happen to the same person and many contingent factors can impact how the return is processed. These factors concern the practices of various actors and their capabilities stemming from accessible materials. Moreover, as the practices (doings) are based in legal acts, they also vary depending on the interplay of actors engaged, their power and interests. The presented construction of return should be understood in the context of Poland’s position in the global migration system. The cooperation of Georgia and the EU in terms of returns is an example of the externalisation of migration policies by the EU. It is substantially facilitated by the previous commitment of Georgians to European integration but also by the extensive network of local non-governmental organisations implementing reintegration schemes. However, despite the relevance of Georgia as a country receiving returnees from Poland, there are currently no bilateral programmes enhancing return procedures developed by Polish authorities.
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