In March 2017, the European Commission published new recommendations to Member States on returning refused asylum-seekers and irregular migrants. The pressure to make the EU’s returns policy ‘efficient and credible’ has led the Commission to urge states across the region to use the full scope of the enforcement powers available to them under EU law. The fear is that this will be interpreted as encouragement to increase both the numbers of migrants detained, and the periods of times that they are detained for. The recommendations demonstrate the scale of alarm at the EU’s failures to manage effectively irregular migration and return refused migrants. They are framed as primarily a response to one statistic: in 2015, the ‘return rate’ to third countries was a mere 36% – almost three times as many migrants were ordered to leave Europe as actually left.

To read the full article please follow this link Will More and Longer Detention Solve the ‘Migration Crisis’? — Border Criminologies blog