GAPs’ aims and objectives

The project ‘De-centring the Study of Migrant Returns and Readmission Policies in Europe and Beyond’ (GAPs) is a comprehensive study on the return migration, focusing on the policies, the implementation practices and migrants’ experiences. 

The overarching aims of GAPs include the examination of the main dynamics and mechanisms of the return discontinuities from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the gaps and shortcomings in the governance of returns with both its internal and external dimensions, the complex interactions and practices of diverse actors involved in the return processes, and the perspectives of migrants themselves.

GAPs aims to decentre the dominant, one-sided understanding of ‘return policymaking’ by bringing multiple perspectives into play and by combining three innovative concepts: a focus on ‘Return Migration Infrastructures’ that enables GAPs to analyse governance fissures; an analysis of return migration diplomacy to understand how relations among EU and Member States and with third countries hinder cooperation on returns; and a trajectory approach that uses a socio-spatial and temporal lens to understand migrant agency.

GAPs’ specific objectives are: 

    • To examine drivers of return governance by focusing on (i) existing policy, legal, and operational infrastructures as well as (ii) the gaps between policies and practices to advance return governance indicators

    • To analyse enablers and barriers of international cooperation by (i) assessing various cooperation attempts of EU and its MSs targeting origin and third countries and (ii) studying specific dynamics and drivers of South-South returns in connection with EU policies.

    • To examine the agency of migrants and the autonomy of migration processes that influence and are influenced by governance and cooperation

    • To co-create and suggest alternative pathways and models for existing return policies, practices, and cooperation with ‘Stakeholder Expert Panels’ in 13 countries that would contribute to the interplay between policy and science.

GAPs’ Research and EKKE’s involvement: 

GAPs develops multidisciplinary, multi-sited, qualitative and quantitative comparative research in in Europe, Africa and the broader Middle East, by involving 17 partners in total. Field work will be conducted in five European countries (Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Poland) and eight non-European countries (Nigeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, Georgia, Turkey, Tunisia, Jordan, and Iraq). 

The project includes 11 Work Packages (WP). National Center for Social Research (EKKE) is engaged in WP1 on Concepts & Data on Returns; WP2 on the Legal and Policy Infrastructures of Returns in Greece and the EU; WP3 (which co-leads it) on the ‘Return Migration Infrastructures’ (RMIs) and their institutional, material, and social dimensions including field research in RMIs with a range of stakeholders; WP6 on Public Attitudes on Return Policies; WP7 on analyzing return experiences and trajectories of migrants in transit countries (pre-return phase) in the context of broader im/mobility experiences through research with migrants (potential) returnees; and WP10 and WP11 on Impact Strategy, Project Management and Ethical Governance.