Sustainable Reintegration Of Returning Migrants A Better Homecoming

For many OECD countries, how to ensure the safe and dignified return to their origin countries of migrants who do not have grounds to remain is a key question. Sustainable Reintegration of Returning Migrants: A Better Homecoming reports the results of a multi-country peer review project carried out by the OECD, with support from the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

For many OECD countries, how to ensure the safe and dignified return to their origin countries of migrants who do not have grounds to remain is a key question. Alongside removal, return and reintegration assistance have become an integral part of the response. Development cooperation is expanding its activity to support the capacity of countries of origin to reintegrate all returning migrants. This publication reports the results of a multi-country peer review project carried out by the OECD, with support from the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It examines factors that can help improve the sustainability of reintegration at the individual level and at the programme level in countries of destination and origin. The report examines how casework and community-based programmes can increase uptake and improve outcomes. It identifies key elements of an effective individual reintegration programme, including outreach and counselling, case management and referral, and partnerships. The report makes proposals about how to improve programme design, evaluation, and monitoring, indicating areas where countries could co-operate more in implementation of programmes and in coordination with origin countries.

For many OECD countries, how to ensure the safe and dignified return to their origin countries of migrants who do not have grounds to remain is a key question. Sustainable Reintegration of Returning Migrants: A Better Homecoming reports the results of a multi-country peer review project carried out by the OECD, with support from the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

This book critically examines and theorizes the process of how return migrants reintegrate into their countries of origin. The result is a new methodology for understanding the experiences of return migrants, or their 'reintegration strategies'. This approach demonstrates that reintegration strategies differ by type of return migrant, leading to variations in how far they are able to contribute to the development of their nation states. The author uses female return migration to Ethiopia as a case study, focusing on the impact of gender on reintegration strategies to analyse the connection between return migration and social change. This book will appeal to scholars of migration and refugee studies, as well as a wider audience of sociologists, anthropologists, demographers and policy makers.

This volume focuses on the process of return migration, from a holistic and policy-oriented perspective. Studies in return migration, which remains a vibrant field for academics, researchers, and policy-makers, have provided a large body of knowledge on particular issues, but generally fall along two lines: they are either broad macro analyses and models (especially economic ones) or narrow ethnographic views (anthropological, sociological, or psychological). This volume attempts to chart a course between these two approaches, combining returning migrants’ life trajectories, as seen by themselves, with analysis of the structural processes that have taken place in the last three decades in Europe and in Poland, as a new EU country. In analyzing the social and cultural changes reflected in the biographies of returning migrants, the author uses a framework based on an original synthesis of Alfred Schütz’s phenomenological approach, focusing on the returnees’ “life words,” with the social realism of Margaret Archer, focusing on the concerns and projects of individuals interacting with social and cultural structures.

In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an increase in the number of migrants returning to their countries of origin. A significant proportion of these returnees moved back to rural areas. In this context, assisting returnees in the process of reintegration has become a key priority for stakeholders, both in terms of immediate and medium- to long-term support. This toolkit aims to support local stakeholders and actors in agrifood systems to integrate rural returnees into programmes and other initiatives to develop the agrifood sector. It provides resources to design and implement programmes and projects to facilitate the reintegration of returnees in rural areas. The ultimate objective is to coordinate these reintegration efforts with larger rural development and rural transformation efforts and stimulate mutually reinforcing outcomes that support the achievement of sustainable livelihoods and well-being for local populations. The publication also includes a variety of tools to guide stakeholders during all phases of the programme cycle in the designing and implementing interventions that align with the recommendations given in the forthcoming publication, Global lessons learned on sustainable reintegration in rural areas study report, which was commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and produced by Samuel Hall.

The report draws on three workshops, held in Tunis, Rabat and Brussels, that discussed return migration in different contexts. It examines the multiple factors that influence migrants' decisions to return to their countries of origin and their reintegration at home, including the role of family and community.

There is a new willingness in a growing number of European countries to adopt a more innovative approach to returning irregular migrants and asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected, by linking their return with re-integration and development assistance programmes. Some countries, such as France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, are already piloting such policies, whilst other countries are considering this approach. This report compares the experiences of a selection of existing assisted return programmes and draws lessons for best practice, focusing on three aspects: programme implementation, the targeting of assistance and programme evaluation.