ABSTRACT

This chapter, although focusing empirically mostly on the case of Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Spain, draws attention to two cunning elements that are characteristic of programmes of assisted voluntary return (AVR) across Europe: first, the very classification of these programmes as being based on the voluntarism of the migrants; second, the implicit formulation with respect to a return of migrants to their 'home' (country). It demonstrates that these two guileful elements are problematic in their claims and manipulative in their formulation. The chapter argues that the couching of migrants' assisted return in the language of voluntarism, patterned on positive notions of 'home', reveals the deeper neoliberal ideological underpinnings of such programmes as part of the 'migration apparatus'. AVR programmes, in their function as soft deportation, should therefore be seen as part and parcel of states' immigration regimes, aiming at the incorporation of healthy, fully employed and self-sustaining migrants, while rejecting and repatriating 'failing' migrants.