Samenvatting

Policies that seek to limit unwanted migration - which include governmental efforts to promote the return of rejected asylum seekers and (other) irregular migrants - tend to depend on negative sanctions and deterrence. Such policies are known to come with various undesirable side effects, while their effectiveness is also questionable. In this contribution, the author argues that paying more attention to the legitimacy of migration policies in the eyes of migrants and governments of source and transit countries of irregular migration, can be an alternative way to promote migrant return. He also shows that deterrence policies put pressure on how these actors perceive the legitimacy of migration policies, which suggests that ‘instrumental’ and ‘normative’ models of compliance can only be combined to some extent. The argument is based on various Dutch studies on migrant decisions and intergovernmental cooperation on return, and some evidence from the international literature on enforced return.