“Voluntary” return schemes might be good for state – but not for asylum seekers, activists and academics say

On 30 September, Leanke Nikles’s phone lit up with a text on her asylum centre’s WhatsApp group.

It was a “voluntary return leaflet” with the message asking people in the group to read it. Two people reacted with a thumbs-down emoji.

These leaflets are also sometimes slipped under bedroom doors or handed to them as they go about their day at the shelter, said Nikles, sitting at a café in Tallaght recently.

The leaflet sent to Nikles and others at her centre lays out three financial schemes for people who opened an asylum claim before 28 September. 

“For a limited time only, we are increasing the reintegration grant you could receive through our voluntary return programme,” it says.

The longer people fight to stay and appeal, the less money they can claim. Families who agree to leave after an initial rejection can claim up to €10,000, it says. For single people in the same boat, it’s €2,500.

These programmes are entirely voluntary, and up to 2 October of this year, 1,212 people left Ireland under them, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice said. “Which is an increase of 106% compared to the same period in 2024.

But some activists and academics argue that these programmes aren’t truly voluntary; they are pressure campaigns that can lead people to make bad decisions under duress. 

Those who might eventually win immigration papers in Ireland – if they stayed and fought their corner through the legal processes – could instead end up leaving “voluntarily”, and returning to an unsafe situation that they had fled.

These kinds of aided return programmes are, of course, needed for people who truly want out, but that they should be pressure-free and centre free will, they say.

The Department of Justice spokesperson said there are safeguards in the programme, and it might refuse to send someone back if it’s unsafe for them. It considers these cases with care, they said.

Go your own way 

Offering money and promotion campaigns encouraging some immigrants, often on precarious statuses, to leave is nothing new across Europe. These programmes are officially called “assisted voluntary return”.

They are, essentially, part of governments’ deportation regime, but cheaper and less hassle for the state than formal deportation.

Here, and in some other places, they’re managed by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a responsibility that has drawn criticism towards the agency.

One perk of the programme is that people don’t face re-entry bans if they agree to leave, said the spokesperson for the Department of Justice.

They might try to apply for a visa if they need one from their country of birth and “follow the legal pathways such as obtaining an employment permit”, and come back later, they said.

Though Wendy Lyon, an immigration solicitor at Abbey Law, says their unsuccessful asylum-seeking history here can impact future visa applications. Visa officers take that into consideration when reviewing entry requests, she said.

The top five countries whose citizens are seeking asylum at the moment and at the same time last year all need visas. 

Voluntary return schemes are cheaper than deportation because even at higher grant rates, deporting people costs more than getting them to leave, says William Walters, a professor of politics at Carleton University in Canada who co-wrote an academic paper examining IOM’s role in voluntary return in October 2021.

“It’s still less than what you have to pay three security personnel to travel with them all the way to, say, Lagos, Nigeria, stay overnight, come back,” said Walters by phone, recently.

Earlier this month, Fianna Fáil Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, told the Dáil that a deportation flight from Ireland carrying 35 people to Nigeria back in June had cost €324,714. 

The company Air Partner Ltd. has been contracted to offer these chartered flight services since November of last year, and the over €320,000 figure is the cost of the aircraft, he said.

There are also operational costs involved to hire paramedics for the flight and the like, said O’Callaghan.

“Deportations are costly and complex to enforce. It is the preferred option to return people voluntarily,” he said.

Still, on 7 October, independent TD Mattie McGrath voiced concerns in the Dáil about people not facing re-entry bans if they take a voluntary return package, asking why the government would “not just deport them without having to pay them money to leave”.

Walters says these returns are generally less of a headache for governments, too. Deportation can be gruesome and uncomfortable. 

People might self-harm to avoid it, he says, fight it tooth and nail, saved by their lawyer just in the nick of time. 

Though all of this can happen with voluntary return, too, Walters says, if people get cold feet at the eleventh hour. 

Nevertheless, they’re promoted as endorsed by both immigrants and state officials alike, Walters says. 

“If a person deports themselves, and leaves without any accompaniment, they kind of look like another traveller, another tourist,” he says. 

In Germany, some pilots have in the past refused to fly deportation planes for various reasons, sometimes because they find it morally reckless to uproot people against their will.

A spokesperson for the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) said its position on voluntary return remains the same as outlined in a policy brief last year.

Among other things, the report calls for human rights protection and monitoring after immigrants are returned.

Stay where you are

The academic paper co-written by Walters, published in the journal Ethnic and Migration Studies, mentions how promotion of immobility and the idea that people’s countries of birth are their homes forever is echoed in the messaging behind voluntary return campaigns. 

In reality, millions of people relocate to other countries for all kinds of reasons – because they are fleeing war, or just because they found love, or a better job – and settle in new homes.

The academic paper criticises IOM’s management of voluntary return schemes – which are largely aimed at people seeking asylum or others who face hurdles and rigid visa conditions they can’t meet – and its use of “returnees’” voices and their difficult migration journeys as an anti-immigration “marketing tool”.

As part of its “No place like Home” campaign, it says, the IOM has quoted vulnerable people who’d risked their lives to leave their countries of birth but later agreed to return.

These campaigns are focused on people from lower-income, mostly non-White countries, convincing their citizens not to travel to wealthier countries to seek safety or fresh opportunities.

For example, in 2020, the IOM launched a nationwide “No Place Like Home” campaign in Ghana. 

“The advice I have for potential migrants is that before you embark on this journey it better to try and do business or do something different than embarking on the backway,” the campaign has quoted one former immigrant from Gambia, says the 2021 paper.

People who had agreed to return are presented as resilient and empowered, encouraging others to stay put, it says.

“They are cautionary tales, confessionals even, against mobility. In the final part of these stories, all the migrants entreat their audience to resist the temptation to migrate,” says the academic paper.

“No place like home” campaigns aren’t trying to convince young Irish people leaving because of struggles with finding good jobs or decent housing to stay and be resilient and tough it out, though.

A spokesperson for the IOM said its voluntary return schemes offer a humane, dignified option for people who want to return to their “countries of origin”.

It doesn’t convince or pressure anyone to go back, they said. 

“Through individual counselling, migrants are empowered to make an informed decision and can withdraw at any point before departure,” the spokesperson said. 

Integration support is on offer to help people rebuild their lives, they said.

“The protection and well-being of migrants is central to all of our work,” they said.

It works with the United Nations and civil society groups to “strengthen oversight and uphold international human rights standards”, the spokesperson said.

In April 2021, when French officials asked other EU countries about their communication strategy on voluntary return through an EU Commission ad-hoc query, Ireland asked that its response not be made public.

But in the same year, the Department of Justice repatriation unit agreed to share it outside the Freedom of Information process.

It said IOM Ireland is responsible for the communication campaigns of voluntary return. 

“IOM look to establish links with expatriate groups for specific countries so as to circulate information to third-country nationals from specific countries who may be interested in [voluntary return],” it says.

It also links up with asylum centres, says the response.

Fighting their corner

Lucky Khambule of Movement of Asylum Seekers Ireland (MASI), says that the state should not pressure people who’ve come here to seek asylum to leave.

“A voluntary return should be exactly that, voluntary return, no pressure, no convincing at all,” Khambule says. 

The process for seeking asylum offers three chances to win immigration papers.

To get refugee status, people have to prove that they’re being persecuted based on things like race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, political opinion or membership of a social group.

If an asylum officer decides they weren’t, they or, later, an appeals tribunal member might grant “subsidiary protection”, a lower form of protection for people who may still face harm if the government deports them. 

Then there’s humanitarian permission to stay. People can make a case to the Minister for Justice to let them stay because going back would completely flip their lives upside down. 

Good candidates normally haven’t had any past brushes with the law and have contributed positively.

In reality, though, the government has shortened the window of appeal for some people in the asylum process, and people are getting hasty deportation orders if their lawyer misses the deadline for one kind of appeal by one or two days. 

People have said in the past that these quick orders freak them out and impact their mental health.

As cases from some countries are also redirected to a faster processing route, their citizens might not get proper legal advice until after an unsuccessful asylum interview. 

If, under all this duress, someone is persuaded to accept a voluntary return package, they might miss out on a fighting shot to stay.

But if there were little marketing or convincing involved in voluntary return programmes, wouldn’t more people get deported?

Khambule, of MASI, says it’s crucial to remember that deportation is the final stage of a process that offers opportunities to fight for the right to stay.

“Offering the voluntary return when there are still legal steps that have not been taken”, that’s not fair, Khambule says. 

The voluntary return leaflet shows that the grant money after a final decision is the lowest, €1,200 for a single person and €3,000 for a family.

For people with deportation orders, assisted return isn’t even an option, according to the Department of Justice. 

“I think it’s obvious that this isn’t being done in the interest of the people who want to stay here,” says Lyon, the solicitor. 

Stand clear of the closing doors

Thabang Mokhantso says he and his family get a voluntary return leaflet in the emailed responses that the International Protection Office (IPO) sends them.

Mokhantso has two kids, a baby girl and a teenage daughter, he said, sitting outside a city café.

His family has settled into the community in Dublin and has considered it their home for the past two years, even as uncertainty hums in the background, he says.

He has never had a chance to work here because the IPO quickly processes asylum claims filed by people like him, whose countries are designated as “safe” just before they qualify for a work permit – something that only those who have not had a decision after five months can get.

Still, he’s gotten a degree in physiotherapy, joined an Irish musical band, and does volunteer charity work to help his community, said Mokhantso, who lives in one room with his family in an asylum shelter in the city. 

“We normally go and sing in nursing homes and hospices and everything. I love music,” he said.

He’s joined a group of asylum seekers championing the right to stay and amnesty for long-haulers, too, says Mokhantso. 

He and his family are not here to cash in on return packages, said Mokhantso. They are searching for safety and belonging in a country of their choice, he said.

A statement from MASI says that the asylum seekers they work with “do not need money from the government”. “Granting them the right to work and supporting them to live independently in the community remains the number one priority,” it says.

A statement by Mokhantso’s group has a similar message, calling on the government not to pressure people to leave under the guise of “voluntary” return. 

He says the government should use the €10,000 to invest in communities, rather than reinforcing the stereotype that people seeking asylum “are looking for handouts”.

Nikles, the woman in Tallaght, says she knows people who accepted a voluntary return package and were “worse off for it”, still facing the same ordeals that made them want to leave in the first place.

She and her mum are staying in Ireland and fighting their corner.

They’re fighting a deportation order now, travelling regularly to the city’s immigration office to prove they haven’t dropped off the radar, she said.

Their humanitarian leave-to-remain application is still undecided, she said.

She’s dreading deportation, she said. But she’s going to stay and hope someone at the Department of Justice finds it in their heart to let them stay, even if all they will ever know of her and her mum is paperwork charting the map of their troubles.

“I don’t feel like I’m a human, for them, I feel like I’m just a piece of paper,” she said, sobbing.