„Rückführbarkeit fördern“ Das Zusammenwirken von freiwilliger Rückkehr und Abschiebungen in Nordafrika.

Current studies of deportation have, so far, mostly been developed independently from research on return and repatriation in Africa. This article links these literatures in order to analyse various practices of removal within the African continent as part of one complex, transnational repatriation regime. Using the International Organization for Migration's (IOM) Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration Program in Morocco and Tunisia as an example, the article shows how state-enforced deportations and non-state incentive-based "voluntary return" programs work together in order to persuade "undesirable" sub- Saharan migrants, still far away from the European external border, to return to their countries of origin. It is argued that the interplay of the various return instruments does not result in the actual repatriation of all migrants in transit, but that it does put them in a state of permanent returnability, which - in analogy to state-produced deportability - is intended to encourage them to return "voluntarily". At the same time, the article demonstrates that even under these complex conditions of return in transit, there remain different ways for migrants to escape repatriation, to appropriate the various instruments, or to actively and collectively resist them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]