APLICACIONES: VENTAJAS E INCONVENIENTES

Early writings on immigrants’ transnationalism have often been critiqued for overstating the phenomenon’s occurrence, yet now it is well-recognized that not all immigrants participate in transnational practices, and studies document possible barriers (e.g., low socio-economic or weak legal position) that may reduce or inhibit immigrants’ transnational lifestyle (Bloch, 2008; Guarnizo, Portes, & Haller, 2003; Levitt & Jaworsky, 2007; Portes, 2001; Van Meeteren, 2012). Though in the field of return migration, we notice that this link between

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migrants’ return and their transnational connections still seems to be much stronger (Carling & Erdal, 2014). One reason might be that these transnational linkages in return migrations are mainly studied in rather mobile groups of returnees who are more easily involved in the transnational social field (Carling &

Erdal, 2014; Conway et al., 2012; Marcu, 2014, Sinatti, 2015). However, for several groups of returnees, the mobility opportunities after return to the country of origin are restricted (De Giorgi, 2010; Kalm, 2012; Weiβ, 2005), which may impact on their transnationalism. Moreover, migration trajectories as a whole influence the types of transnational practice accessed, meaning that the post-return transnationalism of migrants probably varies widely (Carling & Erdal, 2014).

Yet, those migrants whose access to transnational practices is not self-evident, because they have little or no access to mobility, they possess few resources or their return could be considered as (partially) forced, have been largely left out of the debate. An important, but still limited, exception here are studies of the transnational ties and practices of deportees, migrants forced to return by deportation, but strongly constrained in realizing a transnational life after return (Drotbohm, 2011; Miller, 2012; Peutz, 2006). Golash-Boza (2014) reveals that deportees do maintain certain forms of transnationalism, in particular their use of transnational ties as a coping strategy to deal with the emotional and financial hardship caused by their deportation. At the same time, the reliance on these ties also serves as a reminder of the shame of their deportation, giving transnationalism an ambivalent meaning. Drotbohm (2011) argues that deportees maintain a strong desire to stay connected to the place they feel part of, despite the exclusion, echoing Pedersen’s (2003) statement that returnees experience continuing ties with their life abroad.

This paper aims to integrate the experiences of asylum seekers, rejected asylum seekers and undocumented migrants who return through AVRR programmes into the study of transnationalism. This group is of interest and relevance for several reasons. First, owing to their specific migration trajectory, most migrants subscribing to AVRR programmes lack residence documents in the host country, which restricts backwards and forwards mobility between different countries (Whyte & Hirslund, 2013). Second, these migrants often return with few resources and little capital (Cassarino, 2004), a factor possibly inhibiting their access to transnationalism and transnational resources that could help to rebuild their lives after return (Pedersen, 2003). Third, their motives for returning are heterogeneous and may combine elements of both compulsion and choice, since most consider returning as their only left-over option (Koser & Kuschminder, 2015; Webber, 2011). Yet, at the same time they often do not consider their return as ‘forced’. This diverse position in-between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ return may also impact their transnationalism once returned (De Bree et al., 2010; Sinatti,

169 2011). These three elements render these returnees’ access to transnationalism less obvious than for other returning groups, which is possibly also a reason why the theme of transnationalism is under studied in this group (Snel, Engbersen, &

Leerkes, 2006). Studying transnationalism in such a specific group with a particular migration trajectory will provide more analytical clarity in the content of transnationalism, and will add nuances to the discourse on transnationalism, as a precondition for fully grasping the theoretical potential of this perspective which can act as a lens for understanding migrants’ everyday lives (Boccagni, 2012; Carling & Erdal, 2014).

6.2 Methods

This study investigates whether the everyday post-return lives of migrants returning with AVRR support contain transnational dimensions by examining their transnational ties with the host country from which they returned. Following Boccagni (2012), we focused on the perceived importance of those ties from the subjects’ perspectives through interviews with 79 migrants who returned with AVRR support from Belgium to two countries of origin, Armenia and Georgia.

When returning with AVRR support, returnees receive organizational (travel documents and flight ticket), financial (an amount in cash given at the airport and a reintegration budget given after return), and reintegration support (counselling in the host country to prepare the return; advice and support from a local non-governmental organization in the country of origin to enhance the reintegration process) (Fedasil, 2009). Admission to the programme requires that, if present, returnees give up their Belgian residence status or permit, and consent to refunding the costs of travel if they return to Belgium in the next five years.¹ Through studying returnees’ transnational ties in one particular context (one host country: Belgium; two adjacent countries of origin: Armenia and Georgia), we attained a relatively homogeneous sample with regard to migration trajectory and to structural factors in the host and home countries that influenced post-return lives and transnational ties.

The respondents were selected through purposive sampling (Neuman, 2006): all Armenian and Georgian migrants who returned with AVRR support from the Belgian NGO Caritas International² within the research period (January 2010 – May 2012) were asked to participate in the study at a meeting prior to their return. Once returned, respondents were as far as possible interviewed twice, in the first and second years after the return respectively. These data were completed with detailed field notes of observations of the returnees and their families during several home visits, thereby creating an in-depth picture of the existence of participants’ transnational ties, their importance for the migrants

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themselves, and the role they played in returnees’ everyday lives. After being informed about the study’s content and objectives, 85 ‘returning units’

(representing a single migrant, a couple or a family) agreed to participate before their departure, of whom we were able to interview 79 after their return.

Fourteen returning units were interviewed once after return and 65 were interviewed twice, resulting in 144 interviews in total.³ The respondent group consisted of asylum seekers (n=27), rejected asylum seekers (n=45) and undocumented migrants (n=7) (39 men returning single, 15 women returning single, 7 couples and 18 families with children). The average time they had lived in Belgium was 1 year and 7 months (SD: 19.7 months; range 1 - 132 months). At the end of their stay in Belgium, the living conditions of most respondents were characterized by a difficult housing and financial situation, though their return motives and general attitudes and feelings towards the return varied.

The interviews took place at a location chosen by the respondents (in a public place, at their homes or at the office of the local NGO supporting the returnee).

Some interviews (n=9) were conducted without an interpreter (in Dutch, French or English), but in most interviews (n=135), respondents preferred the support of an interpreter (Armenian, Georgian or Russian). Before the start of each interview, the research aims and conditions of anonymity and confidentiality were clarified, and after receiving the interviewee’s oral informed consent, the interview started. Using open-ended questions, participants were asked about their post-return lives, their ties with Belgium and the influence of these ties on their daily lives.

To investigate whether migrants’ everyday post-return lives contained a transnational dimension and to operationalize what exactly comprised

‘transnational ties’, we used the analytical framework developed by Boccagni (2012) to analyse our data. In this framework, three analytical categories of ties are distinguished based on what lies at the other end of the tie. The first category involves migrants’ interpersonal relationships with significant others abroad (further referred to as ‘interpersonal ties’), which may result in the circulation of remittances, in cross-border communication practices and in transnational caregiving practices. A second category involves migrants’ interactions with institutions related to the state, the market and civil society abroad (further referred to as ‘institutional ties’). Migrants maintain institutional ties when the institution concerned has a persisting relevance for them as a perceived source of rights, opportunities or obligations. Third, migrants may have ‘symbolic’ and

‘emotional ties’ with past life experiences abroad, which may drive them to reproduce particular elements of their previous lives in, for example, certain consumption patterns, ways of dressing or use of symbols. In a first step of the analytical process, respondents’ different descriptions of their contacts with

171 Belgium were coded and subdivided into Boccagni’s three categories. In a second step, as presented in the following sections, the data in each category were further analysed to explore the content of the ties, their intensity and their specific meaning for the respondents and for their daily lives.