GAPS in migrant return policies

GAPs aims to examine the disconnects and discrepancies between expectations of return policies and their actual outcomes by decentring the dominant, one-sided understanding of ‘return policy-making’. The project examines the shortcomings of the European Union return governance, analyses enablers of and barriers to international cooperation and explores the perspectives of migrants themselves to understand their knowledge, aspirations and experiences with return policies.

The GAPs project focuses on return gaps in three return systems between EU countries and countries of transit or origin, spanning the wider Middle East (including Afghanistan), Africa (northern and western), and eastern Europe. The project treats ‘gaps’ as a heuristic that allows us to zoom in on three dimensions: 

• governance
• international cooperation
• migrants’ agency.

The project combines a decentring approach with three innovative concepts to analyse governance fissures, understand how relations among EU member states and third countries hinder cooperation on returns, and use a socio-spatial and temporal lens to understand migrant 
agency. The project involves multi-disciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative comparative research, 
with wide-ranging impacts such as the creation of an interactive data repository on returns, a return cooperation index, policy briefs and stakeholder expert panels. 

GAPs also aims to examine the agency of migrants and the autonomy of migration processes that influence and are influenced by governance and cooperation. It will also seek to co-create alternative pathways and models for existing return policies, practices and cooperation that would contribute to the interplay between policy and science.

Find more information on the GAPS website