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Across the destination countries of migration, i.e. migrant-receiving countries, in Europe there has been an increasing emphasis on return and reintegration programmes. These programmes particularly target rejected asylum-seekers forced to return, irregular migrants unable to legalise their stay in the migration country and migrants wishing to return of their own volition. Reintegration commonly refers to the processes that unfold after the return of migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons to their country of origin or place of residence as they set about trying to re-establish their lives. However, the reintegration trajectories of assisted and non-assisted returning migrants in different contexts have scarcely been researched. Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) under a Special Initiative on "Tackling the root causes of displacement and (re-)integrating refugees", BICC has undertaken over the past four years (2019-2022) a qualitative research project entitled "Trajectories of reintegration" designed to tackle this desideratum. This Synthesis Report brings together selected findings of the project’s empirical studies in the Western Balkans (Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo), West Africa (Ghana, Senegal, the Gambia) and the Middle East (Iraq). The BICC project team conducted an in-depth, long-term investigation into reintegration trajectories focusing on the perceptions, experiences and strategies of returning migrants. We collected data through in-depth qualitative interviews, life-stories, informal conversations and observations. The interview sample includes returnees who were displaced persons (refugees, rejected asylum-seekers), long-term labour migrants, ‘irregular’ migrants, student migrants, and circular or seasonal migrants. We conducted semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, including government officials, municipal actors and representatives of local NGOs and development agencies. The project team also cooperated closely with local researchers and research assistants, integrating their feedback into the ongoing research findings. To this end we ran training courses and organised several stakeholder workshops in the countries of research.

Fear of detention and deportation prevents many migrants in Europe (especially the undocumented) from asking for advice on their options to return. Statebased Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes should disseminate information on return programmes to a broader spectrum of third sector organisations (e.g. churches, diaspora organisations) to inform potential returnees of their options. Migration management policies have to reflect domestic politics in destination and return countries. National policies relating to migration need to be unified to synergise and streamline AVRR programmes efficiently. A holistic and participatory approach that includes community-based and civil society organisations would help to better adapt (multi)national policies to the realities of domestic politics concerning return and reintegration. The lengthy bureaucratic processes involved in AVRR programmes is one of the biggest challenges for beneficiaries, that lead to frustrations and push people into additional expenses. The high level of formality involved in these programmes disregards that the Ghanaian context is in many ways fundamentally different from the European Union. Reintegration assistance should be coordinated with local non-governmental and civil society organisations to ensure that the assistance being offered does not multiply red tape.

Since February this year, the intergovernmental negotiation process on developing the Global Compact for Migration has been taking place in New York. The German government should (1) advocate for the National Labour Migration Strategy and the National Labour Policy of the Government of Afghanistan to be taken into account. It should (2) support a reduction in transfer fees for remittances sent by Afghan migrants, as suggested by the KfW. The government should work towards ensuring that internally displaced people in Afghanistan and refugees in the regional host countries, Iran and Pakistan, receive the right to education, land and housing, medical care and effective legal protection as a matter of principle. Administrative authorities in the German states should only carry out deportations of Afghans if they can guarantee the safety of the deportees in the long term and enable sustainably humane living conditions. An immigration law would regulate legal access to the German jobs and educational/training markets for qualified people and skilled workers from abroad, including from Afghanistan, and rule out the immigration of ineligible people. Training and employment schemes should be implemented in areas that are under the control of the government as well as outside of these areas through collaboration with locally elected community development councils, guilds and professional associations.

As of 2017, 65 million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced by war and political violence. Several millions more have fled because of environmental disasters and socio-economic marginalisation. As there is no immediate end in sight to this steadily increasing global trend, forced migration is one of the central challenges in world politics today - and it is very likely to remain so in the near to medium-term future. Only a small (albeit increasing) proportion of forced migrants have managed to come to the Global North. The main flows take place within and between Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. A focus on South–South displacement thus represents not only a more pluralistic, but also a more accurate picture of global forced-migration trends. The most visible drivers of forced migration are war and political violence. While Syria stands out in this regard, the country also shows that conflict-induced displacement is often intertwined with forced migration resulting from environmental disasters and the adverse effects of development projects. Disaster-induced displacement denotes population movements in the wake of global environmental change, including fast-onset events such as floods, storms, or fires, and slow-onset events, such as droughts, land degradation, and sea-level rise. With its low-elevation islands, the Pacific region of Oceania is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Development-induced displacement results from socio-economic exclusion as a result of large-scale infrastructure projects, mining, deforestation, urbanisation, and biosphere projects. The case of India underlines that many development-induced forced migrants are typically internally displaced. As forced migration continues to occur mostly within the Global South, it is necessary to better understand its causes, dynamics, and effects in Africa, Asia, ­Latin America, and the Middle East in their own right - and not primarily or even exclusively in terms of the implications for the Global North. Also, when drafting policy responses to forced migration, a holistic understanding of the complex interlinkages between conflict-, disaster-, and development-induced drivers and dynamics precludes one-size-fits-all approaches.