Return and readmission policy in Europe: Development, implementation, impact and controversies

This introductory article presents the aims, context, and main findings of a symposium on return and readmission policies in Europe. It situates contemporary return policy within the historical transformation of European migration governance, from postwar labor recruitment and refugee protection to the politicization, securitization, and administrative intensification of removal. Drawing on eight national case studies covering seven EU member states and the United Kingdom, the article examines how return and readmission have become central organizing principles of migration governance. It identifies common patterns across the cases, including deterrence, detention, externalization, accelerated procedures, expanded discretion, weakened safeguards, and the production of deportability and legal limbo. The article argues that these developments reveal not merely technical changes in migration administration, but increasingly visible authoritarian tendencies within European return governance.