Project Activities

Conference: Return and old age – return and reintegration counselling for elderly migrants 

With this conference, the organizers of the Transnational Exchange V events tackled a topic which had not been discussed in the context of workshops or conference for AVRR counsellors before. According to Dr. Horn, the governments and leading organizations in the field of AVRR work with a certain youth gaze. The programs focus mainly on assisting returnees who are still young enough to start a business and/or to be reintegrated in the labor market with the idea that the reintegration support for the group would decrease the risk for remigration to Europe. In terms of vulnerable returning groups, the main manuals by IOM provide guidelines on protecting minors, women and mentally/physically ill persons in the return process. Elderly migrants are rarely payed attention to in the voluntary return discussions. Looking only at the German voluntary return numbers, a certain number of returnees aged 60+ benefitted from the REAG/GARP program - 2017: 548, 2018: 482, 2019: 380, 2020: 197 (Source: IOM Germany). Regarding the reintegration support, ERRIN supported 187 returnees age 60+ in 2021 (Source: BAMF). The main three countries of return with regards to ERRIN assistance were Armenia, Russia and Iraq. 

The conference was structured in three parts: an update on AVRR in Europe including the introduction of the AVRR counselling systems in Malta and Croatia, an introduction to the topic of old age and return as well as an overview of the JRS project by Frontex. The conference took place online on the 05th and 6th of April 2022.The content of the conference will be published in a brochure in the next couple of months. For now, you can find the conference agenda here.

Field trip to Austria

The second field trip of the Transnational ExchangeV project took place on the 15^th and 16^th of March 2022 with a group of six European return counsellors from Croatia, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. The Federal Agency for Reception and Support Services (BBU) in Austria was only founded in 2020 after the legal framework of the BBU foundation was laid in the BBU Establishment Act and passed on the 16.05.2019. The BBU offers to (rejected) asylum seekers basic care in reception centers, legal advice and legal representation during and mostly after the first decision of the asylum procedure, return counselling and return assistance, human rights monitoring during deportations and interpretation and translation services. The BBU as the only provider of AVRR counselling in Austria since 2020 hired many of the previous return and reintegration counsellors from Caritas Austria and the Human Rights Association Austria (VMÖ).

The agenda of the Transnational Exchange V field visit was packed with exchange sessions with representatives from the different BBU services, a representative of the Ministry of the Interior who is overseeing the reintegration projects and IOM. The group also visited the main reception center for newly arriving asylum seekers in Traiskirchen close to Vienna. The visit ended with a long exchange session about the counselling systems in the EU countries of the participating counsellors.

You find the complete report on the Field visit to Austria here.

4. Workshop: Addiction as a challenge in the return process

The online workshop took place on the 3rd and 4th of November 2021. Offering assisted voluntary return and reintegration counselling to persons struggling with addiction such as alcohol addiction, drug addiction, medication addiction, etc. holds many challenges. Nevertheless, representatives of this vulnerable group want to return and ask for help. The workshop started with a short medical introduction to addiction and its effects on body and mind. Afterwards the participating counsellors were assigned to online working groups in which they discussed different scenarios of addicted clients who showed more or less willingness to discuss their addiction in the return counselling process and how they would work with the clients then. The findings from the working group were enhanced with the input by an addiction counsellor who spoke mainly about the counselling method "Motivational Interviewing” when counselling addicted clients throughout the lengthy decision-making process. Another round of discussions took place in the second working group focusing on when and how to end the counselling session when the client is too intoxicated. After addressing counselling topics of the pre-departure phase, IOM Germany held a presentation about the medical preparation for a fit-to-fly state of the returning migrant and the medical escorts who usually accompany addicts during the return flight. The return process, however, is not over after landing in the country of return. The partner organization to which the returnee is referred in many cases can inform about follow-up medical treatment and give psychosocial counseling. According to the experience of the reintegration partner Caritas Georgia, returning addicts usually do not manage to find a job or start their own business. It is rather a success, if the returnees manage to fight their addictions and reintegrate in their social networks. In a final working group session, the participants discussed the cultural influence on the willingness and openness to address addiction in the return counselling setting. The last input of the workshop focused on the nexus of (re)migration and addiction.