Verleihung des 1. Best Paper Awards des Netzwerks Fluchtforschung an Valentin Feneberg für den Aufsatz „Money, not Protection. The use of Assisted Return Programmes in Refugee Status Determination by German Courts”
Zoom-Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85753141839?pwd=b2tHVVlWaGtqYmpxcml5bytWbWlMdz09
Abstract: European states have intensified assisted return programmes in recent years. Politically framed as 'voluntary return' and thus as a more humane (and less expensive) alternative to deportations after a failed asylum application, these programmes have increasingly become an argument in Refugee Status Determination. Analysing an extensive body of case law from German courts (n=247) on claimants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, and the Russian Federation, this paper fills a gap between two major strands of refugee studies literature, namely research on administrative and judicial decision-making on the one hand, and on return migration on the other. I show how these programmes are mostly used as evidence that deprivation or impoverishment upon return is impossible and that thus no protection is warranted. Only few courts argue that these programmes do not protect from deprivation. This disagreement is based on a different assessment of the programmes’ efficacy and thus of their evidentiary value. Moreover, courts consider different periods upon return when assessing the risk of harm, arguing either that only a risk of imminent deprivation warrants protection, or that sustainable reintegration must be taken into account. The analysis of the so far overlooked use of assisted return programmes in asylum decisions thus not only concerns the assessment of evidence, but also shows how the timing of future harm and the allocation of responsibility between host states and asylum seeker affects status determination. I argue that the clear dominance of the imminence requirement leads to poor fact-finding on AR programmes’ effects, and is only insufficiently justified by the courts. It also coincides with the judicial expectation that asylum seekers are personally responsible for availing themselves of return assistance, bringing about their own “deportability”, with most courts applying the logic that states must rather provide money to compensate protection instead of humanitarian protection against life threatening impoverishment.
Für eine Kurzfassung der Thesen des Aufsatzes siehe Rückkehrhilfen gegen alsbaldige Verelendung. Wie nachhaltig muss die Rückkehrförderung bei Abschiebungsverboten sein? Verfassungsblog 2022.