AU-EU Cooperation on Returns: Understanding Transregional Dialogues and Contesting Regional Mobility Agendas

Several studies on return diplomacy focus on how the EU and its member states use their power and resources to shape negotiation outcomes and control migration by developing bilateral, regional, and inter-regional mechanisms and through international organizations. As a result, studies on return (migration) diplomacy either look at negotiations from a top-down standpoint, highlighting the inherent Eurocentrism of migration diplomacy, or the bilateral negotiations between the EU, member states, and third countries and how non-EU countries navigate the power of asymmetries in their negotiations, as well as the EU’s turn to informality in negotiating returns. As a result, there is a general research gap on return diplomacy between African regional and supranational bodies and a specific research gap on developing a continent-wide and intra-regional approach in Africa to the EU’s return diplomacy. This study aims to address this gap and focuses on understanding the place return occupies in the AU’s existing migration policy frameworks and studying the AU’s approach to return and readmission. With a mix of tools including a review of relevant policy papers and expert interviews, this study seeks to understand transregional dialogues and contesting regional mobility agendas and contribute to efforts to understand the interests and perspectives of actors in the Global South.