Search

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.

Migration in northern Iraq is a product of global, postcolonial processes driven by highly unequal international relations of global capitalism and geopolitics. With a focus on 'reintegration' experiences of returnees to northern Iraq who have left abroad over the last four decades and returned since the 1990s, this Working Paper takes into view a myriad of people who had very different reasons for migrating - either for conflict/political and/or economic reason - and returning at some or several points in time. While their experiences after return with settling (back) in are highly individual, this Paper focuses on reintegration as a process from an emic perspective. It analyses the experiences of compelled and self-decided returnees in re-establishing themselves after return by looking at their return preparedness - understood as the willingness and readiness to return - at the individual and institutional level. Therefore, four reintegration dimensions (economic, social, psychological, political-structural) form the lens for the investigation. Studying (northern) Iraq, among other origin and return countries for migrants in Europe, is unique because financial remittances do not constitute a main motivation for emigration as, e.g., in West Africa or the Western Balkans. Instead, Iraqi Kurds seek a better life, and their migration entails the search for autonomy and often signifies a political act of emancipation from governance failure in the origin context.

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.

Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 45 (1999) 6, S. 885-902, Dieser Beitrag bietet einen Überblick über zentrale Ergebnisse des DFG-Forschungsprojektes FAFRA (Familienorientierung, Frauenbild, Bildungs-und Berufsmotivation von eingewanderten und westdeutschen Frauen und Familien in interkulturell- vergleichender Perspektive), das in den Jahren 1991 - 1997 an der Universität Osnabrück durchgeführt wurde. In diesem Projekt wurden Aussiedlerinnen und Aussiedler aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion vergleichend zu Arbeitsmigrantinnen und Arbeitsmigranten aus der Türkei und zu westdeutschen Frauen und Männern stufenweise mittels quantitativer und qualitativer Befragungen untersucht. Untersuchungsziele waren verschiedene Aspekte des Akkulturations- und Eingliederungsprozesses von in die Bundesrepublik eingewanderten Gruppen. Im Vordergrund standen dabei die Fragen von Geschlechtsrollenwandel und Einwanderung, Sozialisationsbedingungen und Erziehungseinstellungen in den Familien, Familienorientierung, Berufs- und Bildungsorientierung, Stereotypenbildung sowie Vergleichs- und Identifikationsprozesse. (DIPF/Orig.), The authors give a survey of the central results of a research project funded by the DFG (German Research Association) at the University of Osnabrück between 1991 and 1997, which was called FAFRA (family orientation, concept of womanhood, educational and professional motivation of immigrant and of West German woman and families from an intercultural-comparative perspective). Within the framework of this project, woman and men coming from the former Soviet Union and resettling in Germany were gradually investigated and compared with male and female migrant laborers from Turkey and with West German women and men on the basis of quantitative and qualitative surveys. The aim of investigation was to reveal different aspects of the process of acculturation and integration undergone by groups having immigrated into the Federal Republic of Germany. The project centered on the following issues: changes in gender role and immigration, conditions of socialization and pedagogical attitudes of the families, family orientation, professional and educational orientation, formation of stereotypes, as well as processes of comparison and of Identification. (DIPF/Orig.)