Migration Control as Communication? Voluntary Returns, Information Campaigns and the Justification of Contested Migration/Border Governance

ABSTRACT

Assisted-voluntary returns and information campaigns are common tools in immigration policy. They participate of a communicative strategy, whereby migrant-receiving states do not only exercise their sovereign right to control their borders, but communicate with migrants about borders and migration. This article discusses the relationship between control and communication. On the one hand, communication is showed to be tactically used to complement and achieve control, leading to the strategic (and usually untruthful) diffusion of negative messages about migration. On the other hand, and like all communication, assisted-voluntary returns and information campaigns rely on a rational/normative basis, by putting forward sensible arguments (for example about the risks associated with unauthorized migration) that appeal to the rationality of the audience and have, to some extent, the performative effect of increasing the acceptability of immigration policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration governance
• border management
• migration control
• assisted-voluntary returns
• information campaigns

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ine Lietaert, Anissa Maâ, Julia Van Dessel, Amandine Van Neste-Gottignies and the anonymous referees for helpful comments. I am also grateful to the organizers of the seminars “The end of externalization? Migration, politics, and new configurations of the border spectacle” (Paris, June 2022) and “Sécurité & Migration: état de recherche, limites, perspectives” (Institut Convergence Migrations, June 2022), at which earlier versions of this paper were presented and discussed.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).