The Care/Security Nexus of the Humanitarian Border: Assisted Return in Norway

Synnøve Bendixsen

doi:10.1111/imig.12630

Abstract

AbstractWhile Assisted Return and deportation are frequently viewed as two different return policies, the first represented as humanitarian and the latter as enforcement, this article argues that there is a continuum between these policies and that they form part of humanitarian border enforcement. Drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with NGOs and with irregular migrants, the article provides a two‐level analysis by examining how AR is presented from the Norwegian governmental perspective and how it is experienced from the Afghan migrant perspectives. The article argues that the government bases its AR policy on the need to maintain the credibility and sustainability of the asylum system, as part of fighting crime, while presenting it as a humanitarian solution. For irregular migrants, however, the experienced lack of proper asylum procedures delegitimizes return policies. Overall, the performative aspects of humanitarianism in return policies contribute to depoliticizing return.

Highlights

In the autumn of 2017, the Norwegian government planned to deport all Afghan youth with a temporary permit who had turned eighteen by October that year
There was significant media coverage about this controversial case of a group of youth who became known as the “October children”: after arriving as unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan they had received a temporary permit until they came of legal age
This article has made clear how Assisted Return (AR) policies in Norway are intrinsically tied up with the deportation regime. This constellation of return policies, in which AR and deportation coexist but both are contingent upon each other, operates through a care/security nexus. It is by presenting AR as a caring and humanitarian approach that deportation can continue and even be expanded

Summary

Introduction

In the autumn of 2017, the Norwegian government planned to deport all Afghan youth with a temporary permit who had turned eighteen by October that year. Many civil actors (lawyers and guardians of unaccompanied minors) and human rights organizations (including Amnesty International Norway) signed petitions and demonstrated against the return of these youth. They argued that several of the asylum cases had procedural errors and demanded a halt of returns – Assisted Return (AR) and forced return – to Afghanistan until the country became stable enough to ensure returnees’ safety and dignity. As this discussion went on, the outspoken and controversial Norwegian Minister of Immigration Sylvi Listhaug (from the Progress Party) went on a trip to Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya with the aim of securing return agreements. As covered widely in Norwegian newspapers and activists, some of these youth went missing and others went to Paris, where they lived on the street

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