From social instrument to migration management tool: assisted voluntary return programmes : the case of Belgium

The return of migrants to their country of origin and the development of efficient return measures have become more prominent on the political agenda of many Western European countries. Since policymakers prefer ‘voluntary’ return, governmental programmes to support the return of migrants – Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programmes – were developed as far back as the 1970s and have played an increasingly important role in migration policy over the last three decades. At the same time, general migration policy and welfare systems have undergone profound change, including in the meanings and connotations attached to social welfare, return support and return policy. This raises questions about the implications of these broader societal and policy changes for the widely implemented AVR programmes. In this article, we discuss the interpretation and evolution of AVR programmes by analyzing how one particular European country, Belgium, has developed its AVR programme over time. We explore the evolution of the programme’s content, target group and institutional positioning, which shed light on its changing goals and are closely linked to a broader shift towards a ‘managerial’ approach to migration policy and the welfare state. We argue that return support may become decontextualized when it adopts ‘conditional entitlement’ as a central principle. This leads to strong differentiation, based on personal responsibility, between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrants, the levelling down of the support given to returnees, and a more coercive voluntary return policy in which social support is linked to deportation

Decomposing Welfare Wedges: An Analysis of Welfare Dependence of Immigrants and Natives in Europe

In the past few decades, the European Union (EU) has experienced a steady increase in the share of immigrants residing on its territory, and immigration has become the primary source of population growth (Eurostat 2011). Some analysts (e.g. Razin and Sadka 1999; Zimmermann 2008) argue that this development is beneficial for European welfare states as immigrants generate additional revenues to finance the increasing welfare expenditures related to population aging. This call for increased immigration is, however, somewhat at odds with the fear of many Europeans (documented by Boeri 2010) that immigrants are a fiscal burden on the welfare state. This may be the case if – as is often claimed in the public debate – immigrants have access to cash transfers beyond what eligibility rules would imply. Alternatively, this may occur if immigrants are poorer than natives, have other personal characteristics that make them more likely to benefit from social transfers or if, as maintained by the welfare magnet hypothesis (Borjas 1999), poorer or less able immigrants are disproportionately strongly attracted by the more generous European welfare systems