Barone, Sabina; (2024) Returns Upturned: A critical ethnography of the IOM’s ‘Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration’ programme from Morocco towards West and Central Africa. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This research explores the IOM’s ‘Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration’ (AVRR) programme from Morocco. It is based on 19 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Morocco and a further 19-month period of online tracking of West and Central African migrants’ return decisions and trajectories. I present a critical ethnographic account of migrants’ interaction with and use of the IOM’s return programme, and how this works, including its connections with institutional actors, such as African consulates and Moroccan authorities. I examine migrants’ return decision process and the family negotiations surrounding it, before and after their encounter with the AVRR procedure, and the outcomes of it, be it returning, moving on or staying in Morocco. The thesis examines the ethnographic material through a chronological and thematic structure, combining attention to the emergence and unfolding of the return decision with a focus on how three pivotal AVRR principles, namely ‘voluntariness’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘sustainable reintegration’, are enacted in everyday practices during the pre-departure stage. I propose instead to redefine these as contingent and multidimensional (in)voluntariness, illegible vulnerabilities, and captive mobilities. I argue that, in Morocco, AVRR’s functioning is far from its stated principles as a humanitarian and development programme. Firstly, it is at odds with individual and family migration plans, overlooking their agency and migration cycle. Secondly, it does not manage to assist in situations of intersectional vulnerabilities, such as unaccompanied or separated children and mothers with children, by either not guaranteeing sufficient protection or leaving would-be returnees in legal limbo. The return policy may remain trapped by bureaucratic barriers and legal instruments restricting migration. Thirdly, AVRR fails to engender sustainable reintegration in migrants’ home countries and can instead lead to re-migration and captive mobilities between the North and West-Central African regions.

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