Rethinking Alternatives to Migrant Returns: Comparative Insights from Greece, Germany, and Turkey and the Human Rights Trade-Offs

Return has become a central pillar of contemporary migration governance in Europe, yet actual removal rates remain low, producing a persistent gap between the large numbers of non‑EU citizens ordered to leave and the much smaller share who are effectively returned. Against this backdrop, this concept note foregrounds “Alternatives to Return” (ATR)—defined as policies applied to migrants who cannot be easily returned—as the empirical core rather than the residual margin of return governance, and asks how ATR are designed and what human rights trade‑offs they entail for deportable irregular migrants. Building on the GAPs project’s broader focus on return governance, this concept note argues that while official discourse tends to prioritise enforcement, deportation capacity and ‘return effectiveness’, in practice most systems generate long‑term non‑removal, governed through ATR instruments that manage deportability, structure conditional access to rights, and are frequently framed as humane or pragmatic despite often embedding coercive or disciplinary dimensions.