Return in Switzerland: A Complex Reality Behind a Simple Word
Return – the departure of migrants back to their countries of origin, whether voluntarily or by force – is back at the top of the political agenda in Switzerland and Europe. But what do we actually mean when we talk about it? Often treated as a simple outcome, it is in fact a complex and contested process, caught between competing interests, legal constraints, and the realities of people’s lives.
Return migration policy cannot be understood in isolation. It is embedded in a wider migration system and extends beyond a technical question of enforcement. It involves law, diplomacy, administrative processes, and, most importantly, trust. In practice, return is not simply implemented, but negotiated, experienced, and lived.
More Than a Single Story
“Return” is often used as if it described a single, clear-cut process. In reality, it covers a wide range of experiences, from voluntary departures to forced removals, from short-term circular movements to longer-term or permanent relocations, and from state-managed procedures to individual decisions made under varying degrees of pressure, both within and across borders. It is also rarely a one-off event with a clear endpoint — in practice, it is largely circular: people move, go back, and move again. Yet political and media narratives continue to frame return as final.
The dominant framing compounds this: it looks at return almost entirely through the lens of host states, positioning countries of origin often as passive recipients rather than actors with their own policies and realities.
Beyond this, political and statistical attention has also become narrowly concentrated on coercive forms of return: in Switzerland, around 90,000 departures per year go almost entirely unnoticed because they are counted as voluntary, while debate focuses overwhelmingly on those without a right to stay. Over time, this has blurred the line between „return“ and „removal“ or „expulsion“ in public discourse.
These distortions have real consequences. Focusing almost exclusively on coercive, cross-border return means that the realities of circular, and voluntary return are largely ignored. It concentrates attention on a small group, often portrayed as “undesirable.” This, in turn, reinforces coercive approaches, frequently framed within a North–South dynamic that echoes older power imbalances.
Why Return Keeps Coming Back to the Political Agenda
Low enforcement rates of return decisions are often described as a “problem.” But this situation is not new. It has taken shape over decades and is driven by actors with divergent and often conflicting interests.
European states seek to maintain the “credibility” of their asylum systems. Individuals facing return decisions often have strong reasons to stay, including family ties, economic investments built at considerable personal cost, and political uncertainty in the country of origin. Countries of origin, in turn, cooperate selectively, using readmission as leverage in broader diplomatic negotiations.
Seen in this light, the persistence of low enforcement rates is not surprising. It is not a technical failure in migration management waiting for a better solution. It is the product of competing interests, structural constraints, and the gap between what policies promise and what all actors involved can realistically deliver.
Where Policy Meets Reality
European return policy is under growing pressure and current debates are increasingly focused on stronger enforcement and the political messaging such measures are meant to convey, with proposals such as “return hubs” outside EU territory at the center. But these hubs, temporary detention centers outside the EU where people with return decisions wait for deportation, do not resolve the underlying challenges of return. Instead, they shift responsibility elsewhere, weaken the legal link between a person and the state sending them, and create serious questions about legality, accountability, access to rights, and long-term sustainability.
Experiences with similar externalization models in Australia and the UK suggest that such models may be politically visible, but they do not offer lasting solutions. In several key areas, current policy appears to be moving in the opposite direction to what research shows, driven less by evidence than by the need to reassure publics and contain the rise of the far right.
Switzerland’s approach has traditionally been partnership-based. With 72 bilateral agreements linked to readmission and a whole-of-government approach built up over decades, the country has a dense and coordinated institutional network. On paper, the system is strong. In practice, outcomes vary.
Differences between cantons and legal categories shape how cases unfold. Formal rules are only part of the picture. A person’s health, nationality, available support, and readiness all play a role. So does the quality of cooperation across public authorities, specialized services, and civil society. What makes the biggest difference, however, is trust. It depends on honest counseling and reliable information about conditions in countries of origin.
Sustainable reintegration after return is also far more complex than departure alone. It is a multi-layered process in which people, changed by their migration experiences, aim to rebuild their lives across families, communities, and structures that have also changed.
Measuring this process, and whether sustainable reintegration is achieved, requires going beyond return rates. Community engagement, and crucially, the perspectives of the returnees, including a gender lens, matter greatly, but remain absent from too many program designs.
Furthermore, a Eurocentric view of return often misses the bigger picture. Most returns globally occur between neighboring countries, not from Europe. In that context, return is part of migration life cycles, not an exception to be managed.
More Than a Number
Return is often treated as a simple administrative output: a number, a rate, or a signal sent to public opinion. Political language tends to present it as a clear‑cut outcome, but in practice it is a difficult and contested process, marked by multiple points of friction before, during, and after return, revealing the complexity of operating across legal systems, institutional boundaries, and individual lives that do not fit neatly into administrative categories.
The deeper question is what kind of return policy a society can defend legally, politically, and ethically. This requires being honest about what return really means and what responsibilities states carry. If return is framed only as enforcement, it may be politically visible, but it will remain fragile.
In reality, return is a process. It involves counseling, safeguards, cooperation, and sustained support for reintegration, including monitoring over time. Ultimately, return policy is a test of political maturity, institutional balance, and human decency.
Event illustration and visual recording: Filippo “Sketchy” Buzzini
This blog post draws on discussions across policy, research and practice from the roundtable „Le retour entre politiques et pratiques : défis et enseignements pour la Suisse“ / „Rückkehr zwischen Politik und Praxis: Herausforderungen und Lehren für die Schweiz“ held in Bern on 31 March 2026.
Julia Litzkow is the Knowledge Transfer Officer of the nccr – on the move at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Inka Sayed is the Communication Officer of the nccr – on the move at the University of Neuchâtel, and the Editor-in-Chief of its blog.
Dr. Robin Stünzi is a Senior Researcher at the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies and the Education, Careers and Equal Opportunities Officer of the nccr – on the move at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
