Citizens may be broadly in agreement with government immigration policy and acknowledge the consequent logic of illegality and deportation, but its actual practice can be deeply unsettling, challenging liberal respect for physical integrity and freedom of choice. State funded ‘Assisted Voluntary Return’ (AVR) programmes seem to resolve these contradictions and are on the increase across Europe. Returnees are not subjected to outward mechanisms of enforcement (handcuffs, guards, etc.) but rather ‘choose’ to return and are granted a support package to reintegrate. NGOs are becoming heavily involved in these programmes, and in the UK the entire programme is implemented by a refugee charity, Refugee Action.
This briefing will draw on ‘Tried and Trusted ? the Role of NGOs in the Assisted Voluntary Return of Refused Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants’ a joint research project between the Centre for Population Change, University of Southampton and COMPAS, Oxford University. It will discuss how ‘choice’ is understood in the context of state enforced destitution and ‘illegality’. Does AVR make immigration enforcement more acceptable in liberal democracies? Does the focus on choice mean we miss questions of justice? How do NGOs implementing the programme negotiate these tensions? Can NGOs maintain independence when funded by governments? Does this relationship open space for weighty advocacy’ or are NGOs simply ‘doing the government’s dirty work’? These issues will also be discussed in relation to detention centres, where the Home Office has recently removed access to AVR. AVR is a laboratory for the development of new forms of co-operation between states and NGOs.
Speakers: Derek McGhee and Claire Bennett, University of Southampton
15 May 2015
13 March 2015
13 February 2015
7 November 2014
17 October 2014
Friday 13 June 2014
Friday 16 May 2014
Friday 14 March 2014
Friday 14 February 2014
Friday 6 December 2013
Friday 22 November 2013
Friday 18 October 2013
Friday 27 September 2013
Friday 14 June 2013
Friday 10 May 2013
Friday 12 April 2013
Friday 8 February 2013
Friday 16 November 2012
Friday 27 April 2012
Friday 9 December 2011
Thursday 6 October 2011
Friday 10 June 2011
COMPAS, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, 58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6QS
T. +44 (0)1865 274 711
E. info@compas.ox.ac.uk
Privacy | Terms & Conditions | Copyrights | Accessibility
©2023 University of Oxford
Managed by REDBOT