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This paper examines the governance of internally displaced persons’ mobility in post-conflict settings. Drawing on policy documents, multi-sited political ethnography conducted between 2019 and 2024, and over 160 interviews across various regions of Iraq, it investigates the processes of internally displaced person (IDP) (non-) returns with a specific focus on camp closure policies. The study addresses three questions: (1) How do different actors operating at federal and regional levels contest and negotiate camp closures and return processes? (2) How does the agenda of the European Union (EU), as the principal donor shaping migration governance in Iraq, intersect with these dynamics? (3) What are the implications of this policy process for displaced people? The article argues that IDP-return governance in Iraq is best understood as an unstable political assemblage, in which heterogeneous actors and their shifting relations—rather than coherent hierarchies—shape how displacement is governed within a fragile state context. We develop this argument by identifying three relational mechanisms: containment, cooperation, and contestation. First, the emergence of IDP (non-) return operates as a technique for mobility control and authority restoration, particularly in disputed territories. Baghdad’s containment strategy through camp closures is contested by the Kurdistan Regional Government, while both develop temporary cooperative arrangements with para-state actors to regulate (im)mobility. Second, external actors—such as UN agencies, NGOs, and the EU—focus on containing migration from Iraq, which indirectly impacts IDP return politics of national actors seeking funding and legitimacy. Third, these actor configurations produce emergent effects including coerced (im)mobility, vulnerability, and social fragmentation among minority groups. By foregrounding IDP governance and subnational dynamics in a Global South context, an area still less explored in migration scholarship, the paper advances debates on how migration politics and broader power struggles mutually constitute one another, producing instability. It offers insights into post-conflict displacement governance and the impact of coerced returns on the lives of IDPs.

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