EU exit regimes in practice: case studies from the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Denmark, ADMIGOV Deliverable 2.2

Enforcing the exit of irregular migrants from EU Member States, and the EU as a whole, is undoubtedly one of the most politically charged and operationally contested aspects in EU migration governance. By the term exit regime we refer to all the institutions, procedures, and specific measures that are meant to ensure that irregular migrants with an order to leave an EU Member State will exit – one way or another – the sovereign territory of that particular country. In our terminology, an exit regime includes two prevalent forms of ensuring that irregular migrants leave a certain country: ‘forced return’ (also referred to as deportation, expulsion and forced removal) and so-called ‘voluntary return’ (which comes in different modalities, mostly differentiated according to the level of assistance that is provided to the migrant). There is a third form, which is often referred to as ‘independent return’, and is meant to capture irregular migrants who decide to leave an EU Member State without informing and/or drawing on the services of any state or non-state organization that work within the exit regime. Strictly speaking, and in our understanding of it, independent return forms part of an exit regime, as the decision of both regular and irregular migrants to leave a certain Member State independently can be largely influenced by the exit regime which is at work (as well as various other factors). However, this reports concerns the ways in which state and non-state actors actively enforce the exit of irregular migrants.